Samipya 2007 Vol 24 Ank 01 02

Author(s): R P Mehta, R T Savalia
Publisher: Bholabhai Jeshingbhai Adhyayan Sanshodhan Vidyabhavan

Page 11

Constructive Decorative Sculptures - A Part of Temple Architecture
Dr. Priyabala Shah* Indian Sculpture in its best period is nevr a mere embellishment, but an indivisible part of an architectural scheme; and yet a part which never loes its individuality as pure sculpture of the highest perfection. Apart from architecture, it exists in the form of statues. It very probably arose to satisfy man's first artistic urge, mode of manifest first as a decorative art develping later into giving a concrete from to ideas about god and His manifestations.
The early period has given us a few images cut in the roung. Not so the mediaeval, where all figure (god, goddesses and human figures) and decorative sculpture become part and parcel of architecture and actually appear as different part of a building wall, pillar, bracket, ceiling and so forth.
Sculpture in India had, thus, a double existence. (1) The life is shared with architecture, and (2) The life it enjoyed by itself.
Here we are concerned mostly with the decorative sculptures of the temples, i.e. the life it shared with architecture. Because these sculptures from a part of temple architecture and serve to give charm and grandeur to the structures.
The decorative sculptures in temples are of three types
(a) Constructive, (b) Representative and (c) Purely ornamental or Decorative. (a) Construcutive-decorative sculptures
The heavy pillars with their brackets and the corniced stepped pyramidal roof with Caitya-arch ornament and at times with amalaka of the pre-Calukyan temples are the best illystrations of the constructive aspect of ornamentation. In Calukyan temples also, the decoration given to pillars of the mandapas, porches as well as mandovaras and super-structures have constructive value. (b) The representative class of decorative sculpture
This again can be divided into (1) Natural and (2) Conventional decorative sculpture, In Gujarat, hardly we find the sculptures copied from the nature. But the scenes of forest, rivers, hills or mountains and villages are not found depicted in the sculpture but they are symbolically suggested by a tree or a fish or a few lines suggesting
* Retd. Principal, M.V.M.Mahila College, Rajkot.
Ruh
: 4.28, zis -2, 2014 - 22., 2009