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

THE MAURYA PERIOD 73
Saisunaga Dynasty (642-322 B.C.), and at least
one authority has tried to attribute it to the
Sunga Period. The statue bears an inscription
in Brahmi script of the Maurya Period, reading
in part: 'Made by Bhadapugarin . . . Gomitaka,
the pupil of Kunika'. 18 Except for the indication
of torques and jewelled bands, the figure is nude
to the waist. The lower part of the body is
clothed in a skirt or dhoti, a garment worn by
Hindus to-day, which consists of a long single
piece of cloth wound about the waist and
allowed to drop in front in two loops sheathing
the legs almost to the ankles. The figure is conceived
as frontal, so much so that the sides are
completely flattened. It is as though the sculptor
had executed a figure in relief to be seen from
front and back, and then disengaged it from the
enclosing panel. The statue is characterized by
no real sense of physical beauty or spiritual
meaning. It is a very direct and crude representation
of a being or force which, as its
superhuman size and power indicate, was to be
propitiated by offerings - in other words, a very
appropriate characterization of a nature spirit.
This image belongs to an art that is at once
archaic and Indian. It is archaic in the completely
conceptual representation of the effigy as
a whole and in such details as the drapery folds,
which are not realistic, but only indicated symbolically
by zig-zag lines and shallow incisions
in the stone. The statue is specifically Indian in
the sculptor's realization of tremendous volume
and massiveness, qualities which, together with
the scale,
give the idol such awesome impressiveness.
The quality of surface tautness gives
form through a kind of pneumatic expansion.
This is no more nor less than a realistic representation
of the inner breath or prana; in this
respect the yaksha of the Maurya Period is
simply a perpetuation of the stylistic character
of the torso from Harappa, dated 2500 B.C. The
24. Yaksha from Parkham. *\»>
Aluttra, Archaeological Museum
yaksha type, essentially a princely figure, is
important, too, as a prototype for the later
representations of the Bodhisattva in Buddhist