Page 143 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

More directly modelled on an Indian prototype — perhaps on a
version of the celebrated sandalwood image reputedly made by
King Udayana in the Buddha's lifetime, a copy of which was
brought back by Hsiian-tsang in 645—is the thoroughly Gupta
torso in marble from Ch'ii-yang-hsien, Hopei, in the Victoria and
Albert Museum. This tendency to treat stone as though it were
clay reached its climax in the cave shrines carved out at T'ien-
lung-shan during the reigns of Wu Tse-t'ien and Ming Huang.
Here the figures are carved fully in the round, with the exquisite
grace and richly sensuous appeal that we find in Greek sculpture of
the fourth century B.C. The modelling has an all-too-Indian suav-
ity and voluptuousness; the drapery seems as though poured over
the fleshy body. But, to compensate, there is a new mobility of
movement. In these figures, the Indian feeling for solid swelling
form and the Chinese genius for expression in terms of linear
rhythm are at last successfully reconciled in a great synthesis, pro-
ducing a style which was to become the basis of all later Buddhist
sculpture in China.
154 Scaled Buddha (head restored).
Stone. From Cave XXI. north wall.
T'len-lurig-than, Sturm Tang
Dynasty.

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