Page 12 - Stone and Bronze, Indian art of the Chola Dynasty, Metropolitan Museum, NYC

shaped splay; it is most prominent on the Buffalo icon.
Between the shoulder blades of the Boston Brahma, a
large pipal-shaped pendant hangs from the necklace.
The backs of at least the New York, Buffalo, and Boston
images-we have no photographs of the others-are
rather flat and do not show the same precision and fin-
ish as the fronts; this is especially true in the case of the
Boston one.
The stay supporting the right arm is, on all these
sculptures, cut down to the absolutely necessary. In
the four-armed images the back hands and their em-
blems are pulled close to the shoulders, reducing their
support (the connection with the upper arm) to a mini-
mum. The background panel seen in the relief sculp-
tures has been almost entirely eliminated.
In front, the body sensitively modeled. We notice
is
the swelling stomach, which is almost a stomach roll
on the sculpture in the Tanjavur Art Gallery. On the
Buffalo icon, the chest muscles are underlined, while
the torso of the Kandiyur one seems to be rather tubu-
lar. The swelling stomach has been noted at Kumba-
konam and Kilayur, and in even more pronounced
form at Pullamangai and Erumbur, but it was not in
evidence at Punjai.
Gangoly assigned the New York Brahma to the late
tenth century. It seems fairly evident already that it can-
not be as late as those at Kilappaluvur (note 7) and
Govindaputtur (Figure 5). It is actually closer to the
Kilayur icons (Figures 2, 6) than to those at Punjai and
Erumbur (Figures 4, 7). The sensitive treatment of
the slender body strongly recalls the Srinivasanallur
image of 895.20
Taking the regional differences into account, I do
not believe that the entire group covers a period of
much more than fifty years, approximately between
FIGURE I 2 and As we shall see, there are other
arguments
x
Brahma, late ix or early century. Height 63 /2 875 925. claimed that these
this date.
to
sculp-
Gangoly
support
in. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, tures were not and could not have been the main im-
gift of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., acc. no. but were icons in
ages of temples, subsidiary placed
42.120
niches outside the sanctum. Coomaraswamy also be-
of the late ninth century,18 but no longer at Punjai
(Figure 4) and Erumbur (Figure 7).19 The lion mask i8. Kaveripakkam: Barrett, Tiruttani, pl. I8.
of the girdle clasp is less realistic on the Buffalo image. 19. At the other end of India, it occurs in Nepal in the eighth
In back, the end of the dhoti is pulled up between and ninth century; see Pratapaditya Pal, "Vaishnava Art from
the buttocks and under the girdle, above which it Nepal," Bulletin, Museum of Fine Arts 65 (Boston, i967) pp. 40-60,
figs. 3, 6.
stands out, three-dimensionally, as a furled, shell- 20. Balasubrahmanyam, Early Chola Art, fig. 47.
40