The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

442 CEYLON AND SOUTH-EAST ASIA
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temples. The construction of this enormous
pile, over one hundred and sixty feet high and
three hundred feet wide, is, as usual, almost entirely
of brick with walls of great thickness and
true vaults and arches of the type described
above, employed in the porticoes and interior
corridors. Much of the exterior decoration is of
an almost incredible extravagance and floridity.
Although a great deal of this carving, typically
Burmese in its exuberance, may be a modern
embellishment, the terra-cotta decoration of the
exterior terraces and the stone reliefs of the interior
corridors represent work of the Classic
Period of Burmese art.
The Ananda temple gives the impression of a
compact plastic unit in much the same way as do
the temples of the Classic Period in Cambodia.
The only possible Indian prototype for the
Ananda temple and Burmese structures related
to it is the great Brahmanical temple at Paharpur
in Bengal [195]. The plan of this temple in the
shape of a Greek cross and the elevation in a
series of terraces leading to a central spire are
features dramatically adapted in the Burmese
reworking. The decoration of the facades of the
successive terraces with countless relief plaques
is another feature repeated in the shrine at
Pagan. In view of the close connexions between
Burma and Bengal throughout the Classic
Period, it is not at all surprising that the shape of
the great temple should have been determined
by such a North Indian prototype.
The history of sculpture in Burma is marked
by an original derivation from Indian models
towards the formation of a Burmese style that
exactly parallels the evolution of architecture.
Little or nothing is known of the sculpture of the
early periods. Such fragments as have appeared
are only provincial variants of the Gupta style.
Among the earliest examples of relief sculpture
are the the panels decorating the Nat Hlaung
Gyaung. The style of these carvings, which
illustrate the avatars of Vishnu and date presumably
from the tenth or eleventh century,
has something of the hieratic elegance and
refinement of detail characteristic of Hindu and
Buddhist sculpture under the Pala Dynasty in
Bengal. The most frequent subjects for illustration
in the Burmese reliefs of the Classic
Period are the Jataka stories. These evidently
enjoyed an enormous popularity after the introduction
of Singhalese Hinayana Buddhism to
Pagan in a.d. 1057. The style of the reliefs
decorating the Mingalazedi pagoda seems to
have little to do with any Indian or Singhalese
prototypes. In each panel the principal or key
episode is presented in a conceptual, archaic
manner, in which directness and conciseness of
portrayal were the sculptor's principal aim. 6
Most typical of Burmese sculpture of the
Classic Period are the countless reliefs illustrating
the Jatakas and the life of Buddha in the
Ananda pagoda at Pagan. Perhaps in the interest
of directness and the opportunities for picturesque
elaboration of detail, the sculptors have
entirely abandoned the traditional method of
continuous narration, in favour of a system in
which each episode of the story is presented in a
separate panel. These reliefs also have a certain
stiff, archaic quality, but are characterized by
qualities of clarity, animation, and grace, together
with a fondness for the elaboration of
decorative minutiae, that are typically Burmese.
The remains of painting of the early period in
Burma are so scanty that little can be said of its
development. Such fragments of thirteenthcentury
wall-paintings as survive in various
shrines near Pagan are clearly derived from the
style of Tantric painting of Bengal. 7
After the disastrous invasions of the twelfth
century, all art in Burma falls to the level of a
folk art that is known mostly in the enormously
elaborate wood-carving of the declining centuries
of the dynasty. At the very end of this last
period - the nineteenth century - were produced
the hideously sentimental and miserably
carved alabaster Buddhas, images that are a
final, sorry degeneration of sculpture in Burma