Gupta Sculpture, Indian Sculpture of the Fourth to the Sixth Centuries A.D. by James C.HarleReview by: Joanna WilliamsThe Art Bulletin, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Mar., 1977), pp. 119-121Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3049603 .

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Book Reviews

JAMES C. HARLE, Gupta Sculpture, Indian Sculpture of the Fourth to the Sixth Centuries A.D., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1974. Pp. xii + 57; color frontispiece and 149 pls. $19.25

Our understanding of Renaissance art would be very strange indeed if scholarship were limited to Jacob Burckhardt and a group of mono- graphs on the order of Tolnay's Michelangelo. That we should need a generalized art-historical consideration of what is often called the Golden Age of India's sculpture indicates the state of this field. On the one hand, there do exist interpretations of the spirit of the Gupta period that use art largely by way of illustration. On the other hand, specialized studies of individual monuments proliferate, reflecting the meticulousness of young scholars and expanding the previously accepted corpus of works of the period. Between these poles lie only a handful of essays that summarize developments over two centuries in a sometimes insightful but always skeletal fashion.

The lack of "middle-ground" writing is a matter not only of scale but also of audience. We have very little between works addressed to the public at large and those addressed to an extremely small body of art historians and archaeologists concerned with the period at hand. The audience that has been left out includes art historians dealing with other fields, Indologists interested in other aspects of ancient India, and undergraduates who have been exposed to the broad framework of Indian art without being ready for an exclusively technical discussion of chronology. These are a diverse bunch; the differing background of each class may in part explain the failure of most writers to speak to any one of them. James Harle confronts this difficulty by including a general text, comprehensible for the reader who knows little about Indian art, followed by extensive plate captions that meet the further needs of the Indologist, student, and specialist in the field.

Another aspect of this same problem is the failure to deal with intellectually stimulating issues because of the writer's deliberate breadth or myopia of viewpoint. It is particularly poignant that a period as highly admired as the Gupta has been considered only piecemeal. Yet the problem is still worse for the 7th century and later. In reaction against the gross periodization of "medieval," much scholarship today focuses upon developments in regional and often dynastic terms. Questions of commonalities between different regions and the actual nature of patronage generally go begging. These are matters that in turn relate to the Gupta period, where our terminology seems to imply that style corresponds to the Gupta dynasty. Harle's book deserves attention as a work that does consider this period as a whole throughout north India, that addresses itself to intelligent non-specialists as well as to scholars in the field, and that raises issues not yet broached, particularly in view of our widely extended picture of Gupta sculpture in recent years.

It might be objected that at last some studies of appropriate scale are coming out of France. Philippe Stern and Odette Viennot have produced magisterial volumes, each concerning the evolution of a single artistic element and resulting in the placement of a number of monuments of the Gupta period in a logical sequence.1 Viennot has also prepared a study, soon to appear, on temples of the 6th century and later, combining a number of structural and decorative elements from a more architectural viewpoint than that in Harle's book. The

purpose of all these French works is ultimately chronological. All can be faulted for losing sight of the forest of style for the trees of motif. There is often the danger that an element is examined in isolation from the larger context of design and function, a context which may influence the treatment of the motif in contradiction to chronological tendencies. The strength of such "analyse de motif" at the same time lies in its systematic and objective nature. Although Harle often accepts Viennot's conclusions and has never explicitly criticized her method, he stands in the opposite corner of the ring. His plate description on p. 43 shows his position: "It is the difference in aesthetic rather than particular details" that leads to a proposed dating. Hence for the specialist his study poses the danger of subjectivity and unclarity, coupled with rewards that the French works lack.

The question must, therefore, be asked whether this is simply an old-fashioned recasting of earlier Anglo-Saxon approaches to Indian art. Harle's own modesty might support that conclusion, for in the foreward he announces "no claim to being definitive." One may wonder momentarily who would propose to be definitive, before realizing that this is in particular a disclaimer about chronology, generally considered the main point of any study in the Indian field. Though not systematically developed, Harle's chronology seems to me as acceptable as any we have at the moment, although a few debatable points require discussion below. Moreover, the fact that he is not engrossed with chronology allows him to deal with several issues that are significant and new, making this more than a mere "picture book" or version of earlier surveys.

The first issue is one that might well be overlooked: there is a Gupta style, one of long duration (almost two centuries) and of broad extent (much of northern India). It may seem at first that Harle defines the Gupta period in political terms and goes on to consider the art produced under the Guptas, concluding that it is unified in style. In fact, however, he takes the more radical and interesting position that style alone defines Gupta art. This enables him to include both Ajanta~ (carved under the rule of a dynasty that had at best been related to the Guptas by marriage half a century earlier) and Devnimori in Gujerat (which he ascribes to a period before the Gupta conquest of that area).

Harle's characterization of the style is two-fold: [There is]

a turning inward, an ability to communicate higher spiritual states, which distinguishes Gupta and post-Gupta sculpture as well as that of all those subsequent schools in South-East Asia, which owe their origins to India, from any other sculpture in the world, and which has left its mark on Indian sculpture to this day. The other is an elegance, a stylishness, a brio, to which little in world art can approximate.

This is eloquent; Harle points to the combination of opposites that is central to the Gupta aesthetic. As a definition, it is not specific enough. I would include some reference to the degree of realism in rendering the human body, whose poses are still three-dimensional and convincing, whereas the general forms and details of surface are increasingly abstracted. Whatever the verbal formulation, Harle applies his definition consistently and discriminatingly. It is refreshing to see that Aihole, Elephanta, and Ellora are excluded, sites too often classed as Gupta on the basis of motifs that were indeed borrowed from that period but were used to very different effect.

The existence of so broad a style might be questioned in our general reaction against the dynastic periods that have been used for both history and art in India. It is important to start with the stylistic reality, in this case one more widespread than ever before or after in India, and to proceed to examine its historical circum- stances. Although the style, present from A.D. 375 to 550, does not correspond exactly to the period of the Gupta dynasty, ca. A.D. 320 to 500, the style does seem to develop and spread with Gupta hegemony as a precondition. Undoubtedly the actual political control by the Gupta rulers should not be exaggerated; yet communications must have been relatively easy between the various territories the Guptas claimed to have conquered. Furthermore an aura of prestige was attached to the dynasty, not only when it ruled but also afterwards: witness the use of the Gupta era in some regions

P1 . Stern, Colonnes indiennes d'Ajantia et d'Ellora, Paris, 1972. 0. Viennot, Les Divinite's fluviales Gaigli et Yamuna aux portes des sanctuaires de l'Inde, Paris, 1964.

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120 THE ART BULLETIN

throughout the 6th century. Gupta roads and the cachet of the central style would seem to explain the phenomenon of an "imperial" art, rather than direct imperial patronage, for which little evidence exists. This is particularly so in the case of terracottas, which vividly illustrate Harle's final point, a single style stretching from Bihar to Sind, 1400 kilometers to the west. Patronage for the art of terracotta, cheaper than stone, must have varied in social terms. Probably bands of workmen moved over large areas of north India like the itinerant brickmakers who today set up and dismantle their kilns over the same region.

A second general problem that Harle confronts is sub-periodization and regional variation within the general category of Gupta. These two variables are difficult to disentangle, for similar changes take place at different times in different regions. For example, Harle admits that "late Gupta" works may precede A.D. 450 in Mathura- (p. 51), whereas he places the Budhagupta pillar of 485 at Eran in the earlier phase. It is instructive to consider his chapter headings: 1. Eastern Malwa and Central India; 2. Mathura; 3. Eastern Madhyadesha and Sarnath; 4. The Periphery: Ajanita and Western India; 5. Late Gupta style; 6. Terracottas. Obviously these are not intended to be parallel, for the last alone is a category of medium. The first three are very real regional divisions within both early and middle Gupta phases. Harle's fourth heading,

"Ajant.a and the

West," raises a more complicated problem. Ajan.ta

is indeed peripheral, but to my mind to a central Vakataka style (Pavnar, Ramtek, Manasar), which might as a whole form a southern region of the Gupta style. I see little in common between the western Deccan and Gujerat and would be inclined to place most of the Gujerati examples in the following "Late Gupta" chapter. This last phase merits subdivision even more than the previous period; such expansion would allow for more late Gupta material, particularly from central India, where the selection of examples is disproportionately small.

A third major theme of interest is implicit throughout this book, the role of Gandharan and ultimately Western influence upon Gupta art. Although I do not agree with Harle's position here, I must acknowledge his courage in redressing a long-standing cliche, the nationalistic basis of Gupta style. Certainly India in the 5th century was no more xenophobic than it has been in recent years, whatever the attitude of the central government. Yet to see a new wave of foreign influence seems misleading. For example, the Udayagiri Lion Capital in Gwalior represents for the first time, so far identified, the signs of the zodiac, an importation from the West; yet this importation had been made textually by A.D. 270 in the Yavanajataka, two centuries before the carving of this capital.2 There is no reason to ascribe the Udayagiri piece to a new wave of contact with the West (a mistaken impression possibly given by my article on the sub- ject in Artibus Asiae, xxxv, 1973). Nor are the solar disks of the twelve Adityas, a traditional Indian group, of immediate Western origin. Likewise the ridged folds of drapery on Mathurh Gupta Buddhas are the last, much-modified gasp of a convention derived from the Mediterranean world, which had been accepted under Kushan rule almost three centuries before. The flat-roofed structure of early Gupta shrines with peristylar porch may well go back to Kushan Mathur5, to judge from fragments of T-shaped doorways of that period. Thus to repeat the reference to Western sources imported centuries before is like referring to the Greek origins of the Corinthian order in a discussion of Romanesque capitals. When it comes to the Gadhwi reliefs, it is dangerous to jump from putative Western elements of iconography (again the solar disk) to the "Attic grace" of style, as Harle does on p. 7. It is hard to imagine a "genetic throw-back" to Classical sources in a part of Gangetic India where these sources had never existed. Surely the long Vaisnava frieze and the door posts show the hand of a sculptor unusually adept in representing three-dimensional poses, with an exceptionally slender canon of proportions, by contrast with a second

and less atypical carver responsible for the Bhima-Jarasandh lintel from Gadhwa, done presumably at the same time. Other citations of Gandharan influence that I would question include the comparison of the Kausambi Siva and Parvati to Paficika and Hariti (p. 19), the connection of water imagery at Udayagiri with that at Hadda (p. 35), and a reassertion of the resemblance between the Mandasor Siva stele and the hosts of Mara (p. 50).

The concern with Western sources leads to the inclusion of works from the Gandharan sphere in Kashmir (Akhnur and Harwan), which seem to me quite different from the Gupta aesthetic in their sensitive and impressionistic surface modeling. Admittedly there was strong Gupta influence in the northwestern provinces, as the remains of Murti and Agroha in the Lahore Museum show. Yet the Kashmiri terracottas seem to belong within a strict definition no more than would the Dvaravati sculpture of Thailand.

Turning from these broad and provocative issues, I feel compelled to comment on some specific points, largely chronological ones with which Harle does not claim to deal in detail.

Western India: This is a case in which chronology is of real signifi- cance for all the major problems just outlined. Harle accepts the date proposed by the Gujerati excavators for the Devnimori stfipa as A.D. 375. Such a conclusion is indeed most probable from the inscribed casket and coins buried there, although it is also possible that both were re-used at some later date. This second hypothesis seems in fact preferable if we also consider the style of the terracotta decor, which would represent the earliest appearance of many elements of the Gupta style, if Devnimori were dated to 375. Now in Gujerat no background leads up to these Gupta decorative forms (as opposed to the Rajasthani version of Gandharan styles at Rang Mahal), whereas Mathura does provide a clear picture of the gradual development of element upon element. Thus it is hard to accept the primacy of Devnimori. Rather, I would suggest that some mahastiipa was begun at the end of the Ksatrapa period, only to be reestablished soon after the year 400, using, the earlier reliquary and coins. Likewise the stone sculpture of Samalaji can hardly be early 5th-century, as Harle suggests for some pieces, following the lead of the great Gujerati scholar U.P. Shah. Although elements of the Gandharan aesthetic continue here, the mannered poses and elaborate decoration of these pieces are surely a late development from the sculpture of the neighboring Mandasor, relatively securely dated to the second quarter of the 6th century.

Licchavi Marriage of Candragupta I: This alliance is less likely to have brought actual territory (p. 4) than an increase in prestige and power.3 The Licchavi name of course continues in Nepal.

Udayagiri: If the figure beneath the great relief of the Boar Incarna- tion of Visnu is indeed the king as donor (p. 11), this would rule out the equally intriguing and unverifiable suggestion that the Boar itself represents Candragupta II delivering the Earth from the Sakas. At Cave 6, the Doorkeepers do not wear boots; the slanted lines that Harle so interprets (p. 34) are the lower edge of the dhoti, whereas a horizontal mark above this is in fact a striation in the rock itself. The "funnel-shaped object with leaf patterns" held by the nearby Durgpi (p. 36) is probably an umbrella or fan of peacock feathers (cf. later examples at Kharod and Borobudur).

Mathurai: It seems to me that we must view our one dated image from the 5th century as unfortunately retardataire (p. 45). In view of provincial reflections at Besnagar and Bodh Gaya, surely works such as the fine Tirtharikar with an early Gupta halo in pl. 46 should belong closer to A.D. 400 than the mid-5th-century date that Harle suggests (p. 43). The development thus becomes clearer, leading toward the great Mathuri Buddha images, which incidentally are not entirely "stiff-legged" (p. 17).

Besnagar Narasirhtha: The earliest image of the Man-Lion form of Visnu is not this (p. 13) but that from Kondamottu in Andhra. One might also expect that Mathura in the late Kushan period was in the lead here as it was with so much Hindu iconography.

2 D. Pingree, "The Indian Iconography of the Decans and Horas," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxvi, 1963, 223-54.

3 Thoman Trautmann, "Licchavi-Dauhitra," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, I, 1972, 1-15.

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BOOK REVIEWS 121

Mankuwar Buddha: The inscription on this image has been convincingly read to correspond to A.D. 429, rather than 449 (p. 20).4 This image, therefore, implies a somewhat longer and more reasonable span for the development of the eastern Gupta school than had previously been suggested in light of the mature Sarnath images of the 470's.

Marhia: Pramod Chandra has cogently placed this temple after Bhumara, and Harle's reversal (p. 51) at least requires explanation.

Bhumara: The figure within a chaitya-arch in pl. 110, which Harle, following R. D. Banerji, identifies as Yama, surely represents Visnu. The miter-like crown and two female attendants are thus explained. The long object with knob at one end in the god's left hand is the standard form of Visnu's club, not Yama's smaller stick. The god of Death is represented in another arch from Bhumara, with his stick held, as is common later, across his knees, without a crown, and with two male attendants; Banerji identified this figure as Indra, again improbable. It is significant that Bhumara with ecumenical spirit should include Visnu, Giva's chief competitor in the decor of the Siva temple.

Bhitargaon: The dating of this temple to the first half of the 5th century (p. 54) is original and well argued. Moreover, the extended discussion of the iconography is welcome. I am not sure, however, that the Boar image with the large Earth Goddess held in the rescuer's arms is an early feature (cf. the Adi Varaha Cave at Mamallapuram).

Rang Mahal: The important, transitional Umi-Mahesvara plaque in pl. 129 represents a four-headed form of Siva, as on the recently published late Kushan reliefs from Musanager. And the "Indra(?)" from Mathur5, to which Harle aptly compares this, has been shown to represent Visnu with Balarama emerging from one shoulder.5

On the whole the selection of objects in this book is distinguished by high aesthetic quality and the interweaving of standard examples with new discoveries. There are remarkably few pieces open to question on any grounds. One exception is the Narasirhha image in the Los Angeles County Art Museum (pl. 112). I would ascribe this to some period that could explain the precious, Rococo flavor of the personified weapons (flattened in parts yet with unusual contrapposto for the late Gupta), the misunderstood Gupta headdress of the Club, and the Lion's face, for which I would grant Western influence, perhaps a distant awareness of Walt Disney. Given the vast uncertainties of connoisseurship as well as chronology in this field, to include only one dubious piece is an enviable record.

JOANNA WILLIAMS

University of California, Berkeley

4 D. C. Sircar, "Date of the Mankuwar Buddha Image Inscription of the Time of Kumairagupta I," ournal of Ancient Indian History, InI, 1970, 133-37.

5 N. P. Joshi, "Early Vi.iu

Images," Bulletin of Museums and Archaeology in U.P., 2, 1968, fig. 1.

JEAN-PHILIPPE LAUER, Saqqara, The Royal Cemetery of Memphis: Excavations and Discoveries since 1850, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976. Pp. 248; 210 ills., 20 in color, map, plans, bibliog. $25

Saqqara, the necropolis of ancient Memphis, is one of the major and best-known sites in Egypt, containing tombs of every period of Egyptian history from the First Dynasty to the Christian era. Unlike Thebes, Saqqara's counterpart in southern or Upper Egypt, it was not until the mid- 19th century that the vast treasure-house of monuments and antiquities was opened up by the work of the excavator. A few decades earlier, a large number of loose blocks, architectural fragments, sculptures, and small objects was removed from the necropolis, in particular from the southern part adjoining the Causeway of the Pyramid of Unas, by agents and collectors of antiquities. For the most part, these finds were chance finds, the work unrecorded and unsystematic. Since the mid-1850's almost each year

new splendors have been uncovered; and Saqqara has become not only one of the most important sites of the ancient world for the historian, but one of the most frequented stops on the tourist itinerary. All the more surprising, therefore, was the lack of a comprehensive and scholarly account of the Saqqara plateau and its monuments, suitable both for the layman and the student. Lauer now admirably fills this notable gap in the literature. True, a valuable brief account of Saqqara was published many years ago by Etienne Drioton and Lauer (a fourth edition appeared in 1972, entitled Les Pyramides de Sakkarah, by J.-P. Lauer), but this booklet is virtually unknown to the layman and, generally speaking, has been available only in Cairo. No one is better qualified than Lauer to write on Saqqara: he is now celebrating the 50th anniversary of his arrival there, he has an intimate knowledge of every monument in the necropolis, and he has known personally every archaeologist and epigraphist who has worked there for the past half-century. Lauer's own work of restoration and interpretation in the Saqqara pyramids is a lasting memorial to his skill, patience, and devotion. The Pyramid and enclosure of Zoser, in which so much of his own scholarly life has been spent, was the earliest of the great Saqqara monuments to be explored-by Von Minutoli, a Prussian general, in 1821.

In his introduction the author outlines the religious and funerary beliefs of the ancient Egyptians. The surviving art and architecture largely served the needs of the various cults; comparatively little secular art and architecture is extant. Lauer explains why the Egyptians decorated their tombs, temples, and pyramid complexes with scenes of daily activities. The succeeding chapters give succinct accounts of the various monuments of Saqqara.

Chapter 1 describes Mariette's discovery of the Serapeum, the burial-place of the Apis bulls; Chapter II follows with an account of the principal mastabas cleared wholly or partially by that intrepid explorer, including the Tombs of Ti, Hesyre, and Khabausokar. It is easy to criticize Mariette's manner of working, but his were pioneer days. Tomb excavation, unlike settlement excavation, is rarely destructive. Thus the monuments he only partly cleared (generally to reach the stelae and statuary in the chapels and serdabs) are still there, just under the surface of the sand, awaiting the study of a more painstaking archaeologist.

Chapter III deals with the work of Mariette's successors at Saqqara: Maspero (who initiated the valuable work on the Pyramid Texts), De Morgan (who cleared many mastabas, including those of Mereruka and Kagemni, and then moved south to the pyramid field of Dahshur), and Loret (who worked in the area of the Teti Pyramid). Lauer describes the excellent work of the copyist N. de Garis Davies in the Tombs of Ptahhotep and Akhethotep. Davies's facsimile copies set a new standard for Egyptian epigraphy. The excavations of Quibell in the Monastery of Apa Jeremias, as well as in the Archaic tombs of northern Saqqara, and his excavations around the Teti complex are next dealt with. The archaeologist Firth also worked in the last of these areas; he was the first Egyptologist to tackle systematically the great Step Pyramid enclosure of Zoser and the mastabas in the vicinity. In this he was aided by Lauer, who cleared large areas of the enclosure on behalf of Firth. Many monuments were also uncovered by the Egyptian excavator Z. Y. Saad, particularly in the area of the Userkaf and Unas Pyramids. Finally, the work of W. B. Emery is touched upon, before being dealt with at more length in the following chapter. Despite all this fruitful work (some of it still unpublished), vast areas of the necropolis still await excavation; neither is there a detailed and reliable plan of the cemeteries.

Chapter IV deals with the tombs of the Archaic necropolis, and in particular with the work of Emery, whose excavations there re- vealed such a wealth of material to complement and augment the First and Second Dynasty finds from Abydos. Lauer agrees in principle with Emery's thesis that the great Saqqara tombs of the First Dynasty were royal, the contemporary structures at Abydos being cenotaphs. Presumably within the compass of the present book it was not possible to present the counter-arguments of other Egyptologists, e.g., B. J. Kemp, who maintain that the Abydene monuments of the First Dynasty are royal tombs and that the Saqqara mastabas are those of contemporary high officials. With regard to the "palace-

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