About the features found in Indian images

[Periannan Chandrasekaran]

--- Samar Abbas <abbas at IOPB.RES.IN> wrote:
>..
>   Also, Gupta statues generally depict the Buddha with thick lips, wide
> nose and curly hair; likewise I have made a rough count and found that
> most icons even of this late period seem to be of Dravidians. Being
> patrons, they would naturally depict the ruling class. Were these persons
> dark-skinned ? Generally, Guptas are portrayed as revivers of Aryan
> Hinduism, and the Amar Chitra Katha comics portray Harsha and the
> Guptas as Caucasians. How does one resolve this apparent contradiction ?

The contradiction seems to arise from your own assumptions about what Dravidian
features...
though you have raised the issue of dichotomy of features found in classical
indian images.
To anyone studying the Indian images it is striking how the features of Tamil
images such as the Chola bronzes and stone sculptures are sharp and slender
whereas the images of the North even as late as the central Indian 12th century
are very different.

Anyway, to quote Heinrich Zimmer, "The Art of Indian Asia" Vol I, ("The Ideal
of Feminine Beauty") pages 114-117, 1955:

"One feels, when working back from such a late work [Pattini Devi of the
Seventh to the tenth century] to the much earlier yakSis of the Mathura school
of the second century A.D. that essentially, the general features of feminine
beauty have scarcely changed in India through the centuries; and yet the type
found in other works of the South is dramatically different from that of the
North. Thsi cannot be explained as the result of a general evolution in the
Indian ideal of woman; neither is it a consequence of the special conditions
and possibilities of the metalwork technique. It derives simply from the fact
that there is here involved another population (that of Southern India),
another ethnic group (the Dravidian), and that this race is portaying its own
women in its divinities. Noses with a markedly thin ridge, long, and set in
oblong faces; thin long arms and legs; very slender upper thighs; these are the
prominent anatomical traits. ...
The contour of the hips of the female forms greatly varies in the art of the
south, sometimes following the traditional outline, emphasizing breadth and
weight, sometimes exhibiting an extraordinarily slender grace, corresponding to
the actual, rather delicate and slim figures of the women of the region. Such
an image as that of Parvati is striking for the vitality of its refined realism
and its almost portaitlike vivacity. The hips show no suggestion of the
traditional ideal and are as remote as possible from the usual type of the
North.
Consider the yakSi in contrast.... She reflects an ideal of feminine beauty
that is still evident in the living forms of women throughout the North of
India.

The South, on the other hand, has had its own ideal. The figure shown of
Parvati, the consort of Siva, conforms to the traditional mould; yet the long,
slender limbs pay full tribute to the type of the South. The shape and
expression of the face are unmistakably Southern, with the long features and
thin, pointed nose;..."




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