Dr.R.Nagaswamy #6B8E23 The assimilation of sculptural beauty has a story of at least 2,000 years in the Tamil country. Eminent poets of the Sangam age (of the beginning of the Common era) have gone into raptures, while describing the beauty of a sculpture, called "Kollip-pavai" which was probably a rock-cut sculpture in the Kolli hills of Salem district. This legendary sculpture has not so far been located. Tamil literature also refers to the assimilation of different schools of art flowing into the Tamil region from places like Avanti, Magada and Maharashtra countries as well as the Yavana artisans and the Greeco-Romans, working with Tamil artists The inflow of different traditions has not swept away the local ethos or idiom. On the contrary, the regional Tamil school got strengthened and blossomed. That the Yavana architects were held in great esteem, even in the Eighth century CE, is made known from a Sanskrit work: Avanti Sundari Katha composed by Dandin, a court poet, under the Pallavas of Kanchi, in the beginning of the eighth century CE. Referring to a great artist Lalitalaya, who was working at Mamallapuram, the text mentions him as an accomplished sculptor surpassing in his skill even the Yavanas. Master sculptors The Pallavas of Kanchi (7th to 9th centuries) were master-sculptors. They made use of mainly two materials, the hard granite and the soft sandstone. Prior to the use of stone, structures were erected with brick and mortar and sculptural embellishment was fashioned with stucco in situ on the walls. When stone temples became the norm, the same technique of carving sculpture on the walls was adopted. The wall was first built with plain dressed stones and later the sculptures were chiselled on the wall itself. The sculpture was not carved separately and fitted on to the walls. This technique was adopedt in sandstone and granite monuments. This approach to sculptural art made the Pallavas view even architecture as a delicate sculpture as in the case of the five rathas at Mamallapuram. The Pallava artistes, emphasized lucid exposition of sculptural beauty, clothing them with simple costumes, but endowing them with tremendous power, movement and at the same time bringing out vividly the emotional content of each figure, be it portrayal of divine, human or animal. Even when they are portrayed within the architectural framework, they overflow the frames and appear to emanate perceptibly into the space and be in direct communication with the spectator. Visitors to the monuments of Mamallapuram or the great Kailasanatha temple of Kanchipuram never fail to experience this joy. From about the ninth century CE, with the advent of the Cholas, the trend gradually changed, mainly because a great number of stone temples came to be erected especially in sacred places haloed by the hymns of Saivite and Vaishnavite savants. The emphasis is now on temple structure and the beauty of the stone sculpture was steadily pushed within the bounds of architectural frames. From the concept of narrative communication, the sculptural art changed into symbolic forms of divinities. With the beginning of the 11th century under Rajaraja Chola the Great and his son Rajendra Chola, architectural art reached its zenith, reaching over 200 feet height, as at Tanjore and Gangaikonda cholapuram. The main thrust was the overwhelming architecture which by its magnitude, enclosed sculptural wealth within its mouldings. Though the stone sculptures in the Tanjore temple are of considerable size, some of them standing 16 feet tall, the height of the temple structure dwarfs their appearance. Perfect metal icons However there are two fields in which the plastic art asserted its eminence· The large-scale festivals instituted by the Chola emperors, their queens and others saw the art of making metal icons reaching the acme of perfection. Bronze images of unequalled form and beauty were made mainly under royal commissioning. Some of the accomplished families were living in different parts of the Chola empire, each with its own individual style; Nagappattinam Thiruvenkedu, Konerirajapuram, Kumbakonam, Chidambarem and Tanjore were such centres. Among the two greet royal patrons, one was the Chola queen, Sembiyan-mahadevi(last quarter of the l0 th century) whose dedications are known for their delicateness and classical refinement as illustrated by the bronzes, still under worship in the temple of Konerirajapuram near Kumbakonam. The other ruler was Rajaraja the Great, in whose age some of the finest Nataraja images were made as for example, the Nataraja of Tanjore. The second field in which art showed its dynamism was painting. The best illustrations are the Chola frescoes in the Big tample of Tanjore. The paintings, executed with sinuous lines and aesthetic application of colour schemes, are not confined to narrow strips of panel but encompass the entire wall surface, dramatising the whole narration. The bhavas delineated in each of the face, suggestive of different rasas like Vira, Srngara, Hasya, Soka etc., surpass many paintings at Ajanta, where all the figures are oriented towards Karuna rasa (compassion). Perfection in metal icons The perfection, reached in iconic representation in metal soon left its impact on the ar[ of stone sculpture in the later Chola period, between the 12th and the 13th centuries A.D. The stone sculptures now fitted into the niches of the temple walls and gopuras were given metallic finish and resemble the bronze images as found in the gopurams of Chidambaram and the Chola, temples of Darasuram and Tri bhuvanam, both near Kumbakonam. The end of the Chola empire around 1300 CE, may be said to be the end of the regional idiom. The 14th- 17th century Tamil Nad saw the integration of the Andhra, Karnataka and part of Kerala regions and consequently their language and culture with the Tamil land, ushered in by the Vijayanagara emperors and their subordinates, the Nayakas of Tanjore, Gingee and Madurai. Though it was the Karnataka -Telugu rule it was the Tamil tradition in art and architecture that left its imprint even in Hampi, the capital of the Vijayanagara rulers. Some of the monumental structures like the great audience hall at Hampi seem to have Tamil numberings indicating Tamil artists working in the capital. In the field of sculptural art, the age witnessed many new innovations in productions. The huge corridors and the hundred and thousand pillared mandapas came to be the signal contribution of this age. The 1000 pillared mandapam of the Meanakshi Amman temple, Madurai, built by Virappa Nayak and the 100-pillared mandapam in the Varadaraja temple Kanchi, bear testimony to the sculptural wonder of the age. The Sculptural art of the age shows three distinct trends. 1. Over life-size sculptures of Gods and portraits, often with sharp bends of the body, came to be carved as part of the pillar designs, shifting the emphasis from divine images for worship to decorative Sculptures. 2. The Vijayanagara rulers imported a great numbers of horses from Arab countries for the wars with the Deccani Sultans. The large number of horses in the cavalry influenced the decorative element of pillar designs of this age. Horse-rider motif is one of the principal devices in the pillared mandapams and corridors of the period. 3. The cavalry of the Vijayanagara emperors was manned by Arab soldiers. The 16th and the 17th centuries also witnessed the Portuguese and later other European powers on the Tamil soil. The age also witnessed the introduction of the firearms like muskets. The services of European soldiers were requesitioned by the Hindu rulers of the south. The sculptural representation of this age shows Arab soldiers with beards in Muslim attire and European soldiers carrying firearms being depicted with horse riders in stone sculptures. However due to frequent wars and disturbed conditions in the Andhra region most of the accomplished Telugu artistes migrated to Tanjore and Madurai courts where they received royal patronage. With them came the Telugu tradition together with the Deccan and Mughal art trends which are reproduced in the art of the Tamil country. Even in the Marava court of the Sethupathis of Ramnad, Mughal costumes, music and dance forms were quite common. With the advent of the European colonial powers, especially the British and the French, in the late 18th and 19th centuries, art underwent a radical change. Two distinct trends are discernible (1) Quite a number of the Britishers who came to India were those who had training in landscape paintings and allied arts in the school of arts England. They introduced European techniques of three-dimensional realistic paintings in courts of Tanjore. When the kingdoms like the Mahrattas of Tanjore, were made to accept British regents, European trends became the overriding force in the art of paintings. Largescale sculptural activity ceased. However, the amalgamation process had an interesting side effect. Many of the Christian missionaries and even European company's civil servants, evinced interest in Hindu way o¢ life and customs. They commissioned Hindu artistes,to prepare albums of paintings of Hindu Gods and Goddesses and of people. Several such albums of paintings exist in European countries in their museums and private collection in places like Paris, London, Denmark and other places. The British Museum, London for example, has in its collections two such albums. The albums carry the title "Hindu mythology." An inscription on the title page of one of the albums, reads "personal library of legal to (ambassador) Gargoil Baronis Farnborough." The album belonged to Lord Farnborough and was made around 1830s. Most of the illustrations are of deities of celebrated temples of Tamil Nad like Srirangam, Madurai, Rameswaram, Palani, Kanchi, Mannarkoil, Thirupati and Thiruvallore near Madras. The Tanjore Mahratta rulers, especially Serfoji II (19th century) commissioned European artists to depict some of the court scenes. One such remarkable painting depicts the annual festival -Brahmotsava procession of the Great temple of Tanjore in which a number of deities, Saivite, Vaishnavite and Mariyamman are shown, carried in procession with thousands of people lined up on either side of streets to see the procession. King Serfoji himself is shown at the head of the procession riding his royal elephant, followed by the then British Regent on horseback. At the rear of the procession are a number of coaches of British make, carrying royal ladies and dignitaries. Painted on a twenty feet long scroll of paper it is a fine example of the European school of paintings in the Tanjore court The paintng is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, London. There are other areas also where the European school has left its mpact. The history of Tamil art tradition through the centurles shows clearly the assimilation of art forms that flowed into it from different regions and at the same time retaining an individuality of its own, an individuality which seems to be totally lost in the wave of abstrac tion in modern times which produces nothing that could be termed native. R.Nagaswamy THE HINDU, Wednesday, June 24, 1992