DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68516#0201
INDIAN ART
Museum can produce) is extremely inadequate—all the modelling in the
lighter parts has disappeared. The modelling is in fact unusually
nervous, energetic and incisive for Indian art—it has little of that
unctuous sinuosity which we have so often noticed. The inner life and
energy of the figure seem to hold it taut and intense at every point and
the delicately modelled hands show this tense and nervous energy in
every detail.
We must pass now to further India, for in the early Middle Ages
Indian influence spread over an immense area—all round to Annam.
Java was Indianized while Buddhism was still ascendant and it re-
mained Buddhist after India had reverted to Brahmanism.
Indeed much the most beautiful examples of Buddhist iconography
of the thirteenth century which we possess are the reliefs on the stupa
of Borobadur (277). Although the inspiration of these is purely Hindu
we are clearly dealing with a different race or at least a different
civilization—the disposition of the forms, the choice of quantities and the
placing of the accents of light and shade all show a people capable of
more deliberation and control than the Hindus. They are people with a
finer taste, they exercise more restraint on the exuberance of their fancy
and above all the rhythms are soberer, less abandoned; the tempo is
graver and slower. It is this restraint exercised upon the Hindu feeling
for pose which gives to these figures a peculiar gracious suavity, so that
the almost caressing tenderness expressed in their regard and gesture
never degenerates into blandishment. They remind us inevitably of
some of the early Italian renderings of the St Francis legend in the
compunction and delicacy of the feeling. The scene of Prince Sudhana
and the water-drawing Kinnaras, apparently a kind of sprite, is beauti-
fully composed in its sequence of subtly changing rhythms. These reliefs
are cut in a very gritty volcanic rock which renders impossible any
fineness of accent, but it is surprising how much the delicate sensibility
of these artists comes through the rather clumsy modelling. The
sculpture is conceived almost entirely in terms of light and shade, and
great effect is got by the contrast of the deeply undercut reliefs—the
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Museum can produce) is extremely inadequate—all the modelling in the
lighter parts has disappeared. The modelling is in fact unusually
nervous, energetic and incisive for Indian art—it has little of that
unctuous sinuosity which we have so often noticed. The inner life and
energy of the figure seem to hold it taut and intense at every point and
the delicately modelled hands show this tense and nervous energy in
every detail.
We must pass now to further India, for in the early Middle Ages
Indian influence spread over an immense area—all round to Annam.
Java was Indianized while Buddhism was still ascendant and it re-
mained Buddhist after India had reverted to Brahmanism.
Indeed much the most beautiful examples of Buddhist iconography
of the thirteenth century which we possess are the reliefs on the stupa
of Borobadur (277). Although the inspiration of these is purely Hindu
we are clearly dealing with a different race or at least a different
civilization—the disposition of the forms, the choice of quantities and the
placing of the accents of light and shade all show a people capable of
more deliberation and control than the Hindus. They are people with a
finer taste, they exercise more restraint on the exuberance of their fancy
and above all the rhythms are soberer, less abandoned; the tempo is
graver and slower. It is this restraint exercised upon the Hindu feeling
for pose which gives to these figures a peculiar gracious suavity, so that
the almost caressing tenderness expressed in their regard and gesture
never degenerates into blandishment. They remind us inevitably of
some of the early Italian renderings of the St Francis legend in the
compunction and delicacy of the feeling. The scene of Prince Sudhana
and the water-drawing Kinnaras, apparently a kind of sprite, is beauti-
fully composed in its sequence of subtly changing rhythms. These reliefs
are cut in a very gritty volcanic rock which renders impossible any
fineness of accent, but it is surprising how much the delicate sensibility
of these artists comes through the rather clumsy modelling. The
sculpture is conceived almost entirely in terms of light and shade, and
great effect is got by the contrast of the deeply undercut reliefs—the
< 165 >