SCULPTURE. 9) 
that they are gifted with great powers of mind is evinced by their possession 
of a highly elaborated language, a religious system skilfully wrought out, 
and poetry teeming with imagination and fancy. Still they were not fitted for 
the successful cultivation of the plastic art in an original manner. The 
quiet contemplative spirit of ancient and the luxurious fancy of later times 
found in the existing forms of nature no expression for the shapes to which 
imagination gave birth; and hence we meet among them with only super- 
natural and chimerical images of deities. And although our wonder is 
excited at the perseverance of Indian artificers in excavating their grotto 
temples, and in hewing out entire mountains, still we miss that guiding 
spirit which might have regulated and used such great industry and such 
an enormous expenditure of power to the attainment of magnificent results. 
We have had occasion in an earlier part of this work to express our senti- 
ments in full with respect to Hindoo architecture; but in the sculptures of 
India, i. e. in the high and low reliefs which adorn the walls of the rock 
temples, and which, in addition to their images of the gods, also represent 
scenes from the heroic and legendary ages, we miss both the guiding spirit 
and that strictness of system which characterize an art that has long been 
cultivated on a native basis. Hence while the Indian sculptures surpass 
those of Egypt, of which we shall soon speak, in naturalness of position and 
freedom of movement, they must yield to the latter in strictness of drawing 
and the regular disposition of the figures. In the expression of characteristic 
distinctions of the bodily form of the different personages little seems to 
have been accomplished, as appears for instance from the relief on the 
facade of the sanctuary in the grotto temple at Kenneri (pl. 1, jig. 4); and 
everywhere the attributes are represented by the dress, the coloring, or by 
monstrous appendages. The greatest amount of skill is shown in the 
representation of female figures, as e. g. the image of Lakshmi from the 
pagoda of Bangalore (pl. 2, jig. 14), and another from the grotto temple of 
Rama in Isura (jig. 15). Nevertheless in the accumulation of attributes, 
the combination of figures with many limbs, as e. g. in the Trimurti on the 
bas-relief in the grotto temple of Elephanta (pl. 1, jig. 2) and the relief 
from the grotto temple of Wisua Karmah at Ellora (jig.3), the constrained 
postures, and the striving after ornament (see the head-dress of the Trimurti, 
jig. 2), the art of ancient India, as exhibited in the rock-hewn temples, is on 
the whole very moderate, when compared with the monstrosities of many 
modern Indian idols and paintings. 
B. The Medes and Persians. 
The architecture of the Medes and Persians has already been discussed 
in its appropriate place. Of the remains of their sculpture but little has 
hitherto been known; but great light has been thrown on their progress in this 
art by the recent explorations in Nineveh. Most of the plastic monuments 
discovered are reliefs, in which the principal figure is usually a king or a 
hero (see the relief from the ruins of Persepolis, pl. 1, jig. 1), who is 
clothed in a richly embrcidered tunic, with an upper garment and a tiara, 
and usually followed by two figures similarly dressed; or who is represented 
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