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

THE
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EARLY CLASSIC PERIODS
Sanchi. It is an illustration of how little regional
differences exist between works of art made in
widely separate parts of India. We find here the
same mechanistically constructed figures, flattened
out and attached to the background in
exactly the same fashion. The modelling
consists of little more than a slight rounding
of the contours, and the detailed definition of
every feature of costume and ornament is
executed almost entirely by linear incisions in
the stone. The only real differences between
these two carvings fi;om the opposite coasts of
India lie in the greater precision of carving in
the Jaggayyapeta slab, made possible by the
nature of the stone, and the more elegant
attenuation of the figures in this same relief that
seems to herald the towering, graceful forms in
the sculpture of the Later Andhra Period at
Amaravati. 5
We have already encountered this same
tendency to isolation and enumeration of detail
in the medallion reliefs from Bharhut. Although
many of these are scarcely more developed in
style than the carving of the oldest stupa at
Sanchi, some of the sculptors at Bharhut were
adventurous enough to assay relatively complicated
arrangements of figures and setting. Such,
for example, is the representation of the
veneration of the Buddha's head-dress in the
Paradise of Indra [35]. We shall return to this
relief presently, since it furnishes us with a
representation of a free-standing chaitya-hall
which will be compared with the rock-cut
sanctuaries to be discussed below. The figures
of dancing celestial maidens and the gods
watching the nautch are carved with some concern
for their relative scale to the building, and
the carver has even attempted to create an
illusion of space by overlapping figures.
The decoration of the stupa at Bharhut was
at one time dated as early as 150 B.C., but a
comparison with the carvings ornamenting
Stupa 2 at Sanchi clearly reveals that the
Bharhut fragments must belong to a later period
of development, probably no earlier than 100
B.C. The Bharhut sculpture represents a distinct
improvement over these primitive efforts. Although
still too descriptive in the enumeration
of surface details, the sculptors of the figures of
yakshas and yakshis are certainly more successful
in evoking a feeling of plastic existence in the
forms. The sculptors of the panels and medallions
are no longer restricted to stock decorative
themes and a few figures painfully combined in
relief, but now venture into a more complicated
relation
of narratives from the Buddha story
involving the manipulation of many separate
figures and the illusion of their existence in
space.
A monument certainly to be associated with
the very early Sunga Period is the old vihdra at
Bhaja, a sanctuary located in the green hills of
the Western Ghats to the south of Bombay [59].
The vihara, a monastic retreat for the Buddhist
brethren during the rainy season, consists of a
rectangular chamber or porch hollowed out of
the rock, with individual cells for the accommodation
of the brothers. The carved decoration
of the Bhaja monastery consists of panels
with representations of yakshas and, on either
side of a doorway at the east end, reliefs of a
deity in a four-horse chariot, and, confronting
him, a personage on an elephant striding
through an archaic landscape. We would
certainly be right in identifying the subjects of
these reliefs as representations of the Vedic
deities Surya and Indra [36 and 37]. Surya, like
the Greek Apollo, drives the solar quadriga
across the sky, trampling the amorphous
powers of darkness that appear as monstrous
shapes beneath the solar car. Gigantic Indra
rides his elephant Airavata, the symbol of the
storm-cloud, across the world. 6 It might at
first seem difficult to explain the presence of
these Vedic titans in a Buddhist sanctuary.
Actually, they are here, not in propria persona,
but as symbols of the Buddha who has assimilated
their powers. Surya and Indra are