Notes on Sculptures developed during Mid-Eighth Century AD to the Thirteenth Century

From the middle of the eighth century, the search for a new direction in the arts would appear to have ended giving rise to medievalism or the medieval factor in Indian art. In sculpture, it meant the absence of two most prominent features of the classical period, the roundness and the flowing rhythm associated therewith.

Following it, there was no longer the plasticity of the modelling and the suavity of the contours. Sculptures seem to represent a series of lifeless, living forms occupying space without virtually any aesthetic effect. There were, of course, exceptions to this generalized scene, but there was very little of genuine creativity in North India upto the beginning of the tenth century.

The aesthetics of the art now had to compro­mise with the functional relevance, because the artists now had to seek support from their patrons, who, in the changed circumstances of the times, looked at life and art from an altogether different perspective.

The sculptor, therefore, had to forego his artistic feeling in the matter and to do what his patron wanted. He was required to know the iconographic norms of the various religious orders in all possible details. This knowledge was coded in different texts like the Silpasastras and the Vastusastras, literally a transliteration.

The decorations on the walls of the temples were also to be created as given in the texts, but here again exceptions were allowed and medieval temples with examples of such deviations exist.

A rigid frontality of the cult images was the characteristic of the age, as this only could give a visual replica of the deity required for the concen­tration of the mind of the devotee.

Tantra was in full flow during this phase, influencing the mental attitudes and outlooks of almost all the sects and cults. There was growth in art, nourished by the treasuries of the various cults and sects, but it did not reflect the cultural and religious feelings of the people in general.

However, from about the tenth century, there was a welcome awakening and sculptures showing new hopes and promises started to appear.

Most of the sculptures in Bengal and Bihar are cultic images, generally in stone and metal, rarely in ivory and wood. The stone is usually black chlorite (kastipathar) and the metal is either brass or octo-alloy (astadathu), in which the image was cast by lost-wax process. Regardless of the theme and the material of the image, the strong presence of the classical Sarnath features was indicated.

Orissan sculptures during this time seem to follow more closely the Sarnath tradition than the others. There was a preference for heavy physiog­nomical details along with plasticity of modelling.

Allahabad in the east, Gujarat and Rajasthan in the west form the boundaries of the Central India, the region where sculptural activity flourished, especially in the last half of the medieval period, drawing heavily either from eastern Indian or from western Indian norms.

Classical norms lingered while medieval trends gradually emerged in western India comprising of

Gujarat, Kathiawar and Rajasthan. But the classical, influence lasted a little longer in Rajasthan; even in the tenth century, sculptures from Sirohi, Osia, Baroli and Harshagiri showed distinct traditional norms. Gujarat, apparently, shed the classicism earlier, introducing lines with nervous tensions, sharp angles It in flexions and curves-innovations which somehow lacked vitality.

But western India, particularly Rajasthan from in the ninth century introduced a new dimension, the beautiful female form as a separate decorative element.

Highly stylised and with accentuated physi­cal attributes, these pleasing female forms first appeared at Baroli and became more attractive in the hands of the sculptors of Harshagiri who gave them large, oblong eyes and sharply arched eye­brows. In time to come, this mode gained wide acceptance and was seen in nearly all the later sites in Rajasthan.

If Badami is the logical outcome of the trend set in motion at Aihole, then Pattadakal is the worthy successor of Badami. Situated on the left bank of the river Malaprabha, Pattadakal grew up as a temple city in the seventh-eighth century.

Sculptures of the temples at Pattadakal like Papanatha, Virupaksa, etc. are reminiscent of the sculptures at Badami for their composition as well as treatment of mass. Papanatha illustrates in relief episodes from the Mahabharata, the Ramayana and the Puranas, a practice also repeated in the Virupaksa. The best of Pattadakal is, however, found in the reliefs of Virupaksa.

There are three distinct groups of rock exca­vations at Ellora representing the progress of the different faiths, among which the Buddhists being the earliest cover the period 600-900 AD, the Brahmanical group the years 650-1000 and the starting in Jains starting in the eighth century continued upto the end of the twelfth.

The Buddhist art, although these were the first had nothing significant in them that was fresh and new and was in no way different from the Buddhist artists’ achievements already recorded at Ajanta in its late phases.

In the Brahmanical caves, there is a resurgence; a sort of new awakening which has no parallel in the domain of art of the entire subcontinent, j

It was at Ellora (particularly in Kailasa) that the Deccanese art was waiting to flower, under the patronage of the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I (753 78 AD). The themes of the sculpted relief panels are many.

Anyway, the efflorescence was short-lived. In a few years after the creative phase in the Kailasa, the art of Ellora became listless and ordinary in the cave of the Jainas. Thereafter followed a gap of few centuries when the solid and massive Deccanese art expressed itself anew under the Hoysala’s conventional and ostentatious but otherwise competently executed artworks.

The Hoysalas were great temple builders, supreme examples of which are the Kesava temple at Belur (in Hassan district) dedicated to Vishnu and the Iloysaleswara temple dedicated to Siva at Halebid (or Dwarasamudra).

Continuing the Chalukyan style, rich decoration in the form of sculpted panels showing a panorama of life adorns the temples indicating a close integration of life with religion. The ground plan was star-shaped or polygonal.

The temple was built within this on a raised platform. Sandstone was given up in favour of the more tractable chloritic schist for construction. The pillars of the temples acquire a special shape owing to the practice of fashioning the monolithic blocks by turning them on a large lathe.

The foundation of Chola sculpture was laid in the early Chola period (850-985) when attempts were made to break free of the trend set up by the Pallavas, to create a new visual aesthetics.

The efforts were not particularly successful, but when they branched off to metal casting, a new beginning was made that subsequently raised Indian bronze sculpture to unprecendented peaks of excellence. In this endeavour, the bronze-casting workshop associated with the Konerirajapuram Uma-Mahesvara temple (976) with its prolific output played a significant role.

The practice of installing images of deities in niches (usually one at a time) flanked by pilasters is a temple feature the Cholas inherited from the Pallavas. They regularized it, especially in the temples built by Rajaraja and his successors, with an extreme flourish and infused in some of them a clear sense of realism.

Among Chola bronzes, the Nataraja image in its various forms holds the first place. The Nataraja image in the Nagesvara temple at Kumbakonam is one of the largest and finest images known. Inci­dentally, in sculpting the Nataraja image, the same careful attention to detail is given to the back of the figure as it is to the front.