Stone lends itself to delicate work
PRADEEP CHAKRAVARTHY
| The Government Museum has several stone sculptures which are of great importance, architecturally and historically. |
(This is the second of a five-part series on the Government Museum, Chennai.)
The Indian tradition has always been known to reserve the best for the divine. References to ancient temples and palaces in works such as the Silappadikaram show that they were predominantly brick, wood and stucco structures elaborately painted and c arved. The Pallavas (600-850 A.D.) were not content with such transient buildings and chose a more permanent material for their construction – stone.
Found in abundance in most parts of Tamil Nadu except in the Thanjavur belt, granite and sandstone became the preferred mediums.
Cave temples were the first attempt and they morphed into free standing monolith temples such as those in Mahabalipuram. These in turn gave way to full scale stone structures. The trajectory of the bronzes applies here too. Chola (850-1350 A.D.) temples, except for Brihadeswara, Gangaikonda Cholapuram and Thribhuvanam, were modest but delicately crafted structures.
Poetry: Samples from the gallery — (from left) Vijayanagar crest, Bikshatanamurti-Mahishasuramardini and a section of the Amaravati stupa.
Nayak vintage
The Vijayanagar Nayaks (1350–1600 A.D.) made up in quantity what they lacked in quality. Nayak stone work is massive and gigantic.
Think of the tallest gopurams in Tamil Nadu that stand as gateways to large and complexly planned out temples, be they in Thiruvannamalai, Kanchipuram, Madurai or Srivilliputtur, they are all of Nayak vintage. Royal buildings continued to be built in perishable material and none have survived.
But the stone carving tradition continued though the figures lacked the realism of the Chola/Pallava/Pandya periods. Great attention was paid to the ornamentation but the features of the face were angular and stern in nature.
The gallery of stone artefacts at the Government Museum has many important pieces such as stone antiquities from the Amravati excavations of Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. The early Buddhist sculptures date back to about 200 B.C. to 250 A.D., and that of the Jain and Hindu ones from about 600 A.D. to recent times.
The Amaravati findings
Among the stone sculptures, those from Amaravati are of importance. Amaravati was an important Buddhist settlement on the banks of the Krishna.
The buildings, particularly a ruined stupa, were documented by the British in 1801. From then on, most of the important stone sculptures and panels were removed from there and brought to the Madras Museum or taken to London. The collection in the museum numbers to around 300 pieces and it depicts the development and progressive finesse of Buddhist sculpture from 200B.C. to 250 A.D.
There are over 600 specimens of stone sculptures belonging to the period from about 600 A.D. to recent times in the section. Of these, about 50 are Jain, about 25 memorial or hero stones, about a dozen Buddhist figures and about 10 snake stones. The rest are of Hindu deities. Several artefacts also have inscriptions on them that make them invaluable from the historical point of view.
The collection includes a group of door lintels that date from the 13th century. They have fine bas reliefs of auspicious signs that include the ashtamangalas. The hero stones are also worthy of mention for their finesse.
The Museum is open from 9.30 a.m.-5 p.m. It is closed on Fridays and national
holidays. For more information, visit www.chennaimuseum.org/
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