The President and Fellows of Harvard College

Harvard Art Museum

Amaravati Sculpture
Author(s): Benjamin Rowland, Jr.
Source: Bulletin of the Fogg Art Museum, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Nov., 1936), pp. 2-7
Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College on behalf of Harvard Art Museum
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BULLETIN OF THE FOGG ART MUSEUM
BULLETIN OF THE
FOGG ART MUSEUM
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
VOLUME VI NOVEMBER, 1936 NUMBER I
Published in November and March, in 1936-37,
by the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University,
Cambridge, Mass.
Price, twenty cents a copy,forty cents a year. Mail
orders should be addressed to the Editor. Sent to all
Friends of the Fogg Art Museum without charge.
CONTENTS
The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 2
Amaravati Sculpture
BENJAMIN ROWLAND, JR. 2
Recent Books, etc. 7
Some Illustrations by Pierre-Antoine
Quillard in Portuguese Books
ROBERT C.
SMITH,
JR. 8
Two Daumier, Drawings
BERNARD LEMANN
13
Lectures, Exhibitions, Accessions
I7
THE CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
LECTURES
Professor Johnny A. E. Roosval, of the
University of Stockholm, is to give the Nor-
ton Lectures this year. His subject is "The
Poetry of Chiaroscuro," and there will be
eight lectures beginning in November. He
is the author of many works on the me-
diaeval art of the North, and was called to
Princeton in I929 to deliver the Kahn Lec-
tures, later published under the title of
"Swedish Art."
The Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of
Poetry, founded in I928 by C. Chauncey
Stillman, of the class of I 898, for the purpose
of bringing to the University men of inter-
national eminence in literature and art, has
included among its recent lecturers T. S.
Eliot, Laurence Binyon, and Robert Frost.
AMARAVATI SCULPTURE
A marble slab originally forming part of
one of the stone hedges or Buddhist railings
that invariably girdled the relic mounds or
stupas in early India now forms one of the
most interesting exhibits in the Oriental
Collection of the Museum (Figures iA and
iB). Although nothing definite is known of
its provenience, the character of the style
and stone immediately place it in the region
of Amaravati, the site of numberless Bud-
dhist monuments in the great days of the
kings of the Andhra Dynasty. Another sec-
tion of the same railing, in the collection of
the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, is said to
have been found at Goli in Guntur District.
The most notable remains from this region
are the magnificent fragments of the great
tope at Amaravati now divided between the
Government Museum, Madras, and the
British Museum in London.'
Although the earliest Buddhist sculptures
in Southern India, notably the slabs from
Jaggayyapeta, were carved as early as the
second century B.C., the period of flores-
cence began in the second century of our era
under the inspiration of the great preacher
Nagarjuna and probably continued on into
the era of the Imperial Guptas. In the
fourth century, with the rise of Hinduism,
Buddhism and Buddhist art ceased in South
India. Drawing their inspiration from the
school that grew up at Mathura under the
patronage of the Kushan Dynasty, the later
sculptors of Amaravati, taking the typically
Indian models of the ateliers of Mathura,
created what was in many ways the most so-
phisticated and exquisite style in the whole
history of Indian art. Except for a few con-
ventions to be mentioned later, almost all
traces of the bastard style of Graeco-Roman
art that flourished in Gandhara have disap-
peared, and there emerges a delicately sen-
sual, vitally articulated canon of beauty that
is essentially Indian. The languorous, some-
what attenuated figures swaying with the
beauty of flowers mark the last stage toward
the evolution of the Indian ideal in the
Gupta period. If the carved fables at Sanchi
represent the healthy, robust adolescence of
2
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BULLETIN OF THE FOGG ART MUSEUM
FIGURE I A
LEFT
-
SCENE FROM THE VIDHURA PANDITA JATAKA (?) RIGHT - THE ELEPHANT NALAGIRI
RELIEF FROM AMARAVATI DISTRICT
Indian art, the work at Amaravati is the
final languid expression of an exquisite civili-
zation, already as complete and consum-
mately rounded as the artistic production of
the Gupta Age,
-
the prelude to the techni-
cal virtuosity and the dictates of the esoteric
form of revived Hinduism, that clothed the
mediaeval temples with a luxuriant growth
of sculpture and remained to the last the
mannered parody of the Indian Renaissance.
The canon of the human form with broad
shoulders and wasp waist and shapely taper-
ing limbs was that of the images of the
Mathura school, the ideal prescribed in the
Indian manuals of aesthetic procedure, the
silpa sastras. The Amaravati figures with
their attenuated, indolent grace are a re-
finement of the somewhat coarse and sensual
concept of beauty evolved by the Kushan
sculptors of Mathura. One should compare
the figure of Chakravartin in our relief
(Figure xB)
with the statue of a naga from
Chhargaon in the Museum at Muttra,
where we have not only the same pose but
the basis for the sophisticated modelling of
the Andhra sculptures.2
Almost all the authorities to write on the
Amaravati sculptures have hinted at the pos-
sibility of a classical influence not only in the
composition of the reliefs but also in the
treatment of the individual figures. Cer-
tainly even in the damaged panel of the
VidhuraJataka (Figure iA) the form of the
horse projecting diagonally from the back-
ground suggests the illusionistic devices of
Roman relief and such Byzantine deriva-
tions from Roman work as the Barberini
diptych.3 The possibility of artistic contact
with the West is supported by the evidence
of Roman trade settlements in Southern
India. The Peutinger Tables give a temple
of the deified Augustus at Muziris; great
hoards of Roman coins have been found not
only in the Malabar and Chola regions but
in the neighborhood of Amaravati. The
closest analogy between Roman and Indian
art is to be found in the deep undercutting
at Sanchi and in the Constantinian reliefs;
this is not a satisfactory parallel, however,
since this technique was evolved in India
centuries before its independent develop-
ment in Rome. There is, however, a striking
similarity to Roman work in the fondness the
Amaravati sculptors had for complicated
and un-Indian arrangements of figures in
several planes. Certain reliefs from Nagar-
junikunda are so strongly Western in feeling
that, despite the arguments to the contrary
3
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BULLETIN OF THE FOGG ART MUSEUM
FIGURE I B
LEFT - A CHAKRAVARTIN RIGHT - SCENE FROM THE NAGA CHAMPAKA JATAKA (?)
RELIEF FROM AMARAVATI DISTRICT
by Bachhofer and others,4 it seems almost
necessary to assume a connection with the
art of Gandhara if not with Rome itself.
The subjects of our relief, by comparison
with other fragments from Amaravati, may
be determined with some certainty. At the
extreme right we have the first part of the
story of Buddha's encounter with the ele-
phant Nalagiri,
-
the maddened pachy-
derm rushing through the crowd trampling
men under foot and hurling people aside
with his trunk (Figure iA, right). The
story seems to be completed in a panel with
the submission of the elephant in another
part of the same frieze in the Boston Mu-
seum. These two panels together duplicate
the composition contained in a single panel
of a relief from Goli, now in the Government
Museum, Madras.5
The next scene (Figure i A, left) cannot be
identified with certainty. It seems most
tempting to find here and in its counterpart
in London an episode from the Vidhura Pan-
dita Jataka, possibly the meeting between
the Yaksha Purnaka and the nagini Irandati
(Figure 3).6 The Vidhura Jataka deals
with the story of the sage Vidhura. On be-
ing told of the sagacity of this holy man
by her husband Varuna, the naga queen
Vimala, becoming desirous of listening to
the discourse of the ascetic, feigns a longing
for the actual heart of the sage. Her daugh-
ter Irandati offers her hand to any man or
deva who will procure for her the object of
her mother's desire. On the Himalayan
height where she sings her song the nagini is
approached by the Yaksha Purnaka. On
learning from her and Varuna of the con-
ditions of her marriage, he betakes himself
to Vaisravana, who advises him to gamble
with Dhananjaya for the jewel in which
may be seen the worlds of men and gods.
The Yaksha plays and wins, asking for a
prize the minister Vidhura. After trying
vainly to kill the sage, Purnaka conveys him
to Varuna's court, where one and all are so
impressed by the wise man's speech that he
is returned to Indrapranpha; Purnaka re-
ceives Irandati as his bride. The composi-
tion of the panel recalls the representation
of this encounter in Cave 2 at Ajanta, where
Purnaka, leading his horse as in the reliefs
in Cambridge and the British Museum, ap-
proaches the damsel and her companion.7
The Yaksha with his faithful charger, sur-
rounded by court ladies and hosts of devas,
appears again in another Ajanta fresco in
the same cave.8 In the upper portion of the
4
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BULLETIN OF THE FOGG ART MUSEUM
FIGURE 2
SCENE FROM NAGA CHAMPAKA JATAKA
RELIEF FROM GREAT STUPA, AMARAVATI
BRITISH MUSEUM
(Courtesy of R. B. Fleming and Co.)
relief in Cambridge may be made out a group
of divinities such as surround the Yaksha
in the representation of this story at Bharhut.9
The third panel (Figure iB, right) shows
a scene from the Naga Champaka Jataka
with the Naga Raja entertaining his bene-
factor, the King of Magadha (Figure 2).10
The relief may represent the conclusion of
the episode when the latter, vanquished by
the Angas, plunged into the river where the
Naga Raja welcomed him in his palace.
There is a possibility, too, that it may rep-
resent the portion of the Jataka when
Champaka, venturing into the world of man
to keep the Sabbath, was spellbound by a
snake charmer who forced him to dance.
Unwilling to exercise his destructive powers
and thus break his Sabbath vows, the naga
king submitted to these indignities until,
having been brought to perform before the
king Ugrasena, his wife interceded with the
monarch, and, in gratitude, Champaka en-
tertained the king in his palace.
The fourth panel (Figure iB, left), even
in its worn condition, may be recognized as
a familiar subject in the decoration of the
Amaravati stupa (Figure 4). The principal
figure is a Chakravartin or universal ruler
represented with the seven symbols of his
rank." In the version of this subject in the
Fogg Museum, there may be recognized the
elephant and the forms of the wife, the gen-
eral, and the minister; the wheel, star, and
horse have been obliterated. As in an early
fragment from Jaggayyapeta and a panel
in the British Museum, Chakravartin is
represented with his right hand raised to the
heavens and showering gold.12
In the procession of beasts below the
frieze may be recognized forms belonging to
the sphinx-chimaera family, which, spawned
in that homeland of monsters, the deserts
of Mesopotamia, spread with the so-called
"animal style" to the furthest reaches of
Asia. These beast motifs are borne along by
currents, mysterious in their movements,
5
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BULLETIN OF THE FOGG ART MUSEUM
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BULLETIN OF THE FOGG ART MUSEUM
in the great ocean of art forms that, from the
earliest historical periods, covers ancient
Persian, Gandhara, India proper, boundless
Scythia, and China. The exchange of these
and other motifs, passed from hand to hand
by nomad tribesmen and traders almost like
articles of barter along the ancient arteries
of commerce, is one of the most fascinating
problems in the history of the relations be-
tween East and West in the ancient world.
In style as well as in the disposition of the
carving, this slab and the related fragment
in the Boston Museum seem most closely
related to the sculpture that once decorated
the base of the great tope at Amaravati and
of a smaller stupa discovered at Goli.13 The
same frieze of running animals appears and
the separate episodes are framed by similar
bosses. The completely mature, elaborate
style is that of the fourth or last period of
Amaravati sculpture of the third century
A.D.14 This group of late sculpture related
to our relief is dated ca. 200-300 A.D., by a
fragment from Amaravati itself with an in-
scription in the Gupta alphabet of about
300 A.D. and by the tradition that names a
certain Rajah Mokunte of the early third
century as builder.
BENJAMIN ROWLAND, JR.
Notes
1
Fergusson, J., Tree and Serpent Worship in
India (London, 1873).
2
Bachhofer, L., Early Indian Sculpture (Lon-
don, I929), II, pl. 97.
3
Compare also the reliefs at Taq-i-Bustan:
Sarre, F., Die Kunst des Alten Persien (Berlin,
1922), Taf. 87.
4
Annual Bibliography of Indian Archaeology
(Leyden, I927), pl. vi. For the appearance of
classical motifs as late as the eighth century in
Eastern India, see Vogel, J. Ph., 'A Remin-
iscence of Classical Art in the Sculptures of
Mamallapuram (Mavalipuram),' Etudes d'ori-
entalisme a la me6moire de R. Linossier (Paris,
1932), II, p. 526; Bachhofer, p. I2I.
5
Ramachandran, T. N., 'Buddhist Sculp-
tures from a Stupa near Goli Village, Guntur
District,' Bulletin of the Madras Government Mu-
seum, vol. I, pt. I (I 929), pI. InI, H.
6 The relief in London is illustrated by Fer-
gusson, J., Tree and Serpent Worship (London,
1873), pl. xcvI, I; and in a drawing in Bur-
gess, J., The Stupas of Amaravati and
Jaggay-
yapeta, pl. 50, i. Bachhofer has identified the
subject of a similar panel in Madras as the
meeting between Prince Siddhartha and his
future wife Gopa.
7
Yazdani, G., Ajanta (Oxford, I933), II, pI.
4'.
8
Ibid., pl. 37-
9
Cunningham, Sir Alex., The Stupa of
Bharhut (London, I879), pl. xx, I8.
10
Vogel, P. H., Indian Serpent Lore (London,
I926), p. I5I, p1. vii b.
"
These are the elephant, the horse, wheel,
star, wife, minister, and general. See notes
facing pl. v in Coomaraswamy, A. K., Elements
of Buddhist Iconography (Cambridge, I 935).
12
Bachhofer,
p1.
I07, and Fergusson, pl.
XCI3, XCV4, and Coomaraswamy, loc. cit.
13 Burgess, J., Report on the Stupas at Amara-
vati and Jaggayyapeta (London, 1892), p1. XLII,
4, XLIII, 4, and LIV, 2, and Ramachandran,
p-
39.
14
Ramachandran, pp. 2I-22.
RECENT BOOKS
BY MEMBERS OF THE FINE ARTS DEPARTMENT
AND THE MUSEUM STAFF
THE CRAFT OF THE JAPANESE SCULPTOR.
By Langdon Warner. McFarlane, Warde,
McFarlane, and Japan Society of New York.
55 pages.
85
plates.
$5.00.
(August, I936.)
HARVARD PORTRAITS. Compiled by Laura
M. Huntsinger, under the direction of Ed-
ward Waldo Forbes, edited by Alan Bur-
roughs. Harvard University Press.
I58
pages. 34 illustrations. $2.00. (Septem-
ber, I936.)
REPRODUCTIONS OF PAINTINGS. Edited by
Arthur Pope, Professor of Fine Arts, and
John Davis Hatch, Jr., Assistant Director of
the Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum.
Harvard University Press. I47 collotype
illustrations. Portfolio. $ I 0.00. (April,
1936.)
BOOKS ON ART, A Foundation List. Com-
piled by E. Louise Lucas. Published by the
Fogg Museum of Art. 83 pages. $2.00.
(1936.)
7
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