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THE INDIANNESS OF INDIAN SCULPTURE 2i3

Havel and Coomaraswamy tried to articulate theoretical background. The work of Stella Kramrisch is in the same direction, seeking the Indianness of Indian art without regarding it simply as a ąuestion of identifying cultural conventions.

Stella Kramrisch finds the essential feature of Indian sculpture to lie in a characteristic and deep-seated way of seeing and understanding reality. She says, ⁴⁴ Plasticity, dynamie coherence and accentless distribution as well as naturalism, are among the essential and permanent aspects of Indian sculpture.... The eye sees the confirmalion of ‘naturę’ in the appearence of the world, extended and imagined.... Any aspect or monument of Indian art visualises a subsistent awareness of Iife, that is, of ‘becoming’.... In unending rhythm or with an all-filling and intense compactness, the undifferentiated, the un-formed, is coincd into form’*.⁶ Stella Kramrisch's characterisation traces the pcculiarity of Indian modelling to the paradigm of the potter who shapes the clay by a continuous touch. She distinguishes it from the accented fragmentation and construction of the primary chiseler who is guided by the varied texture of the materiał. This is certainlly a profound insight which has not received enough attenlion. On the olher hand, she gives a morę profound insight, when she says, “Seeing, according to Indian notions, is a going forth of the sight towards the object. Sight touchcs it and acquires its form. Touch is the ullimate connection by which the visible yields to being grasped, while the eye touches the object, the vilality that pulsates in it is communicated, and the form which is given creatively is fuli with lite... The object seen is an enduring token of the force that has moulded it.”

Abanindranath calls this force prśnacchanda, thereby, linking the objective with the subjective. One would like to emphasize that this foundalional perspective is deeper and wider than the geometrical pcrspective which is used in classical modern art. Geometrical and aerial pcrspectives are really parts of an illusionislic conccption of art. The western tradilion shows a curious dichotomy. On the one hand, it identifies the reality of things with their measurability, mathematics being the ultimate paradigm of the knowlcdge of things. On the other, it secks to capture in art the purcly phcnomcnal, illusionislic aspect of expericnce. Thus, Plato idcalizing mathemalical forms condemncd naturalistic rcpresentalion in art as the ⁴shadow of shadows’.⁸ Kant identifying knowlcdge with conceplual judgements, leaves art to be the product of free, non-cognitive imaginalion.⁹ Reconciling the beauty of sensuous phenomena with ralional truth has bcen a perpctual dilemma in the western tradition.

In the Indian tradition, on the other hand, the reality of the perceived forms of objects is seen to lie in the creative, formativc process which pcrvades the objective and subjective worlds alikc. The mind through the eyes goes to the object and assumes its form. The objcctively presenled form and