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

Sh
THE EARLY CLASSIC PERIODS
dagger confronted by a rampant lion. This latter
motif, reminiscent of a favourite subject of the
Achaemenid art of Persepolis, showing the
great king in combat with a leonine monster,
almost certainly represents a borrowing from
the repertory of western Asiatic art forms. In
both these reliefs the figures and the floral
accessories that fill every available space are
carved in only two planes. The contours of
every element in the composition are cut
directly at right angles to the flat background, as
though the sculptor were too unfamiliar to
venture any subtleties of transition. This is a
method of carving that in a way recommends
itself for the glare of Indian sunlight, since it
provides a deeply shadowed reinforcement to
the silhouettes of individual forms that comes
to be very subtly exploited in later periods of
Indian art. The treatment of these flat, decorative
figures is entirely conceptual, and in the
ground of the lower panel we see the first
instance of the block-like, almost cubistic
stylization of rock-forms that survives as a
34. Cakravartin from Jaggayyapeta Stupa.
Madras, Government Museum 4*
35 {opposite). The Paradise of Indra from Bharhut
Calcutta, Indian Museum
regular convention of Indian painting and
sculpture of later centuries. A very curious
detail in the upper panel is to be seen in the
plinths or pedestals on which the figures are
standing. This might be taken as a convention
to indicate that they are placed on some solid
mound or eminence. Another explanation,
which cannot be proved, is that these are representations
not of personages real or mythical,
but of cult images or statues, since even in the
Maurya Period the yaksha figures were fashioned
with attached bases or plinths.
These same supports are placed under all the
figures in a relief from eastern India that must
be dated in exactly the same period of development.
This is a carving from the stupa at
Jaggayyapeta near Amaravati on the Kistna
River [34]. It represents the Cakravartin or
ruler of the world, surrounded by the Seven
Jewels of his office. 4 This relief, carved in the
greenish-white limestone characteristic of this
region of eastern India, is in every way the
stylistic equivalent of the sandstone panels of