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

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237- 6. In the life of Hsiian-tsang (Beal, I, xx) we read
how this famous Chinese traveller brought back to
China from India a small collection of images, some
originals, some copies of famous Indian cult images.
His collection included examples in gold, silver, and
sandalwood. This passage is often cited as one of the
means whereby styles of Indian art were introduced to
the Far East. See also B. Rowland, 'Indian Images in
Chinese Sculpture', Artibus Asiae, x, i
(1947), 5-20.
Note particularly the 'copies' of Gandhara statues
found in China.
238. 7. Themethodofindicatingdrapery folds bylines
incised in the surface is frequently found in stucco
images in Gandhara; it is natural that this method
would have been used in preparing the equally
malleable wax mould for the metal statuette.
239. 8. Another metal image of a somewhat different
type is
in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This is
said to have been found in Burma, but was almost
certainly made in India. It is not difficult to see how
closely this figure repeats the formula of the stone
sculpture at Sarnath in such particulars as the smooth,
rather attenuated proportion and limbs sheathed in a
robe that completely reveals the body beneath. With
the figure from Sultanganj, which it
resembles in its
general form, this statuette must be assigned to the
high point of Gupta sculpture in the fifth century.
See Coomaraswamy, History, figure 159.
240. 9. S. Kramrisch, Indian Sculpture (Calcutta,
1933), i7i-
10. Vishnudharmottaram, part in, chapter 43.
242. n. The term cetand (movement of life) seems to
imply the necessity for endowing living things with
a feeling of vitalized existence with attention to their
specific growth and articulaion that is to be understood
by the first of Hsieh Ho's Six Principles of Painting
(see S. Sakanishi, The Spirit of the Brush, Wisdom of
the East Series (London, 1929), 47 ff.).
12. A. K. Coomaraswamy, 'The Painter's Art in
Ancient India', Journal of the Indian Society of
Oriental Art (1933), 28.
243. 13. This appearance of the talented amateur is
paralleled in China in the T'ang Period. In the Far
East the work of the non-professional 'gentleman
painter' comes to be preferred over the 'uninspired'
traditional products of the professional artist.
14. A. K. Coomaraswamy, History, 90-1.
244. 15. This method has its exact equivalent in the
church an of the Middle Ages in Europe: the twelfthcentury
aesthetician Witelo remarked that almond
eyes were preferable to the actual shape of any human
eye for representations of the Virgin and saints.
16. It was this effect of relief in painting that never
failed to surprise and confound the Chinese, when
this manner was introduced in the Six Dvnasties
Period (a.d. 220-589). See the many quotations on the
Liang Period painter, Chang Seng-yu, in T. Xaito,
The Hall-Paintings ofHo'ryuji, 199 ff.
17. A. K. Coomaraswamy, History, 90.
250. 18. As an indication of the essential unity of the
arts in Gupta India, it may be mentioned that the same
compositions of fantastic animals and floral forms as
seen in these ceiling-paintings may be found in the
sculptured decoration of Cave XIX.
251. 19. For the Badami paintings, see Rowland and
Coomaraswamy, plate 23, and S. Kramrisch, 'Paintings
at Badami', Journal of the Indian Society of
Oriental Art, IV, 1 (June 1936), 57. The Sittanavasal
decorations are discussed in A. B.I. A., 1930, 9. Coloured
reproductions of details of the Bagh paintings
are to be found in Rowland and Coomaraswamy,
plates 21-2.
252. 20. M. Chandra, 'Ancient Indian Ivories', Bulletin
of the Prince of Hales Museum, Bombay, Xo. 6,
1957-9-
253. 21. Sir J. Irwin, 'Textiles', in The Art ofIndia and
Pakistan, Sir L. Ashton, ed. (London, 1950), 201 ff.
254. 22. A. S. Altekar, The Gupta Gold Coins in the
Bayana Hoard (Bombay, 1954), 296, plate xxxvii.
CHAPTER 16
255. i. Taranatha, a seventeenth-century Tibetan historian
of Buddhism, speaks of an 'Eastern school' of
Buddhist art under the Pala Dynasty, which, he states,
included two famous artists, Dhiman and Bitpalo,
painters and sculptors, active in the ninth century
(see Vincent Smith, History of Fine Art in India and
Ceylon (Oxford, 191 1), 304-7).
2. S. Beal, The Life of Htuen-tstang (London, 191 1),
iu-12.
256. 3. S. Beal, Buddhist Records, II, 173-4. This is
only one of a number of mentions by Hsiian-tsang of
copies of the great temple at Bodh Gaya; another
similar tower was described by the Master of the Law
at Sarnath (idem, 47-8).
259. 4. See above, p. 180.
262. 5. See A. J. Bernet Kempers, The Bronzes of
Xdlandd and Hindu-Javanese Art (Leiden, 1933).
264. 6. Imbedded in the foundations of the Xepalese
stupas was a square stone chamber divided, like the
mandala of Hindu temple plans, into nine compartments
in the centre of which was fixed the wooden
mast. In Xepal this axial member is known as the
lingam, a clear indication of the Hindu character of late
esoteric Buddhism.
7. Presumably all the chaityas in Xepal were dedicated
to Adi-Buddha, the Creator and Preserver, and
the five mystic Buddhas of his creation.
266. 8. These manuscripts are discussed and illustrated