THE EVOLUTION OF INDIAN TEMPLE SCULPTURE The Gupta Period, 319–550 In 319 Chandragupta II established the Gupta kingdom at Pataliputra (Patna) in Bihar, the site of Ashoka’s capital some five hundred years earlier. His rule led to a two-hundred-year period marked by a cultural richness that looked back to Mauryan times. The renowned paintings at the Buddhist site of Ajanta are among the most celebrated works surviving from this era. The Gupta age brought lavish developments in painting, sculpture, and architecture. At the same time, the Kushan arts at Mathura, which survived the decline of the Gandharan empire, influenced Gupta styles. The radiant, poised character of Gupta art is often described as classical, expressing a deep sense of divine power through strongly centered figures. The Gupta era indeed is known as a golden age for the arts. A fine example of this style is the male torso from Mathura, which may represent the Hindu god Vishnu (cat. 16). Balanced and frontal in composition, the subtly modeled figure suggests muscular flesh beneath the thin garment. Even headless, it conveys omnipotence and grace. Two similar works are the stone capital (cat. 17), whose lions and palm tree foliage have a rich character found in Kushan art, and the majestic head in a stone niche (cat. 19), the eyes closed in meditation, suggesting a calm transcendence.
After the Guptas, Seventh to Fifteenth Centuries The arrival of invading Hun tribes in the sixth century brought an end to Gupta power. In succeeding centuries, power shifted among various contending states and political entities in northern India. Eastern India remained powerful under the Pala dynasty until the twelfth century. Although Buddhism had declined elsewhere in India, it continued to endure here, the homeland of the faith. The Buddhist sites in north and eastern India—Bodhgaya, where the Buddha achieved enlightenment, Sarnath, near Varanasi, where he preached his sermons, and Nalanda, the great Buddhist university—were important as pilgrimage sites for Buddhists across Asia and also were influential artistic centers. It was from the Pala kingdom, as well as from Kashmir, that the Tantric form of Buddhism spread to the Himalayas. For Hinduism this was an important time of development. Sacred texts such as the Puranas reflect expansive religious and metaphysical growth expressed in the evolution of Indian temple architecture. Politically, Brahmanic Hinduism was a powerful cultural force, supported by rulers who commissioned important temples and other arts. Following the development of carved and painted cave-temples such as Ajanta and Ellora, free-standing temples devoted to various Hindu deities were constructed
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with lavish sculpture adorning exterior walls and worshipped in interior shrines. The artistic growth was not only Hindu. Jain temples also adopted this dynamic mixture of painting, sculpture, and architecture, as Buddhist stupas and monastic halls had earlier. Early Hindu temples, such as the Durga temple at Aihole in the Deccan, are relatively small in scale. Over time projects became much more lavish, like the temples at Khajuraho that were supported by the Chandella dynasty rulers. In Orissa, the great temples at Konarak and Bhubaneshvar are among the superlative examples of ambitious artistic projects devoted to Hindu deities. While Islam arrived with the conquest of northern India by Mahmud of Ghazni in the eleventh century, the Hindu states remained powerful and Hinduism continued to be a central religious and cultural force in India. Rajasthan, in northwestern India, consisted of independent principalities, whose rulers might serve Muslim overlords, but whose cultural life was largely Hindu. Rajasthan was also an important center for Jainism, and the Jain temples at Mount Abu are among the striking creations of this period. Similarly, the development of Indian miniature painting, which among Muslims in India was influenced by Persian painting, built on earlier Hindu and Jain painting both in themes and in styles.
Examples of Post-Gupta Temple Sculptures in the Museum’s Collection An important work at the DMA reflecting the time immediately following the Gupta period is the eighth-century Uma-Maheshvara sculpture (cat. 18). Its calm, majestic, and softly rounded forms recall Gupta art. The image of Shiva (also called Maheshvara, the Great Lord) embracing his wife Parvati (also known as Uma, the Shining One) became a popular representation of this complicated deity. It combines complex ideas about Shiva, who is a great yogic ascetic, and who is also a devoted husband, embracing Parvati lovingly in his role as a deity of fertility and passion, a theme emphasized by the children at the couple’s feet. Similarly the lovely relief of the great Jamuna River, personified as a voluptuous and vibrant woman (cat. 23), further expands the possibilities for dynamic female imagery. As an expression of the fertility and power of nature, it forms an interesting comparison with the earlier ritual vessel from Chandraketugarh (cat. 6), where similar figures are frontal and rather stiffly formal. Like the doorjamb figures (cat. 22), the sculpture of Agni, the Vedic fire god (cat. 20), has fully adopted the Mediterranean S-curve into a Hindu image. The pose implies motion, life, and energy, here animating the somber and mature figure of the
TH E A RTS O F INDIA , S O U THEA S T A S IA, AND T H E H IMAL AYAS AT T H E DAL L AS MUSE UM OF ART