The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Pallava · known also as Arjuna’s Penance, the two names being the two readings of its central figure · an open-air relief cut across the east face of two adjoining granite boulders divided by a natural vertical cleft, worked from near sculpture in the round to shallow incision · the Pallava court workshop, seventh century in the usual frame, the reign and the date disputed · Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram), on the Coromandel coast south of Chennai, among the Group of Monuments at Mahabalipuram, a World Heritage site since 1984 · scored as the relief as it now stands in the open air, with its cleft; the unfinished second version of the composition nearby and the other monuments of the site are context
Mode
Narrative relief at the scale of a cliff, cut in the open air into the living rock, with a natural fissure made the subject’s spine
Mythos
The descent of the heavenly river to earth and a penance answered by grace; the penitent read as Bhagiratha, who brought the Ganga down, or as Arjuna, who won Shiva’s weapon, and perhaps designed to be both
Phase
The Pallava court, in an early campaign of a dynasty newly working in stone, seventh century in the usual frame; about thirteen centuries in the open since
Presentation
The east face of two adjoining granite boulders, worked in relief of graded depth, from elephants and serpents swelling almost free of the rock to celestials shallowly cut
Register
Grandeur and delight together: the slow weight of the elephants and the rising of the serpents, and between them comedy, the deer at its itch and the cat at its prayers
Scale
A whole cliff face; the largest elephant at about life size; a multitude of figures, gods to mice, in one field
Governing Proposition
Two granite boulders stand side by side on a coast, and the crack between them has been made a river. Serpent powers of the waters rise in the cleft with their hands joined; on either side the whole created order turns toward it: gods and flying couples, sages at a shrine, an ascetic on one leg with the god who answers him, hunters, deer, monkeys, a herd of elephants at about life size with their young, and among the mice a cat standing in a parody of penance. The wager of the relief is that a natural flaw in the living rock, taken as the spine of a myth and the measure of a world, can hold every being from the god to the mouse in one convergence, under the sky and in the weather of the people who stand before it.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
At Mamallapuram, also called Mahabalipuram, on the Coromandel coast south of Chennai, two granite boulders stand side by side, and between them runs a natural vertical cleft. Across their east face the Pallava court workshop cut a single relief. It is usually set in the seventh century; the reign is disputed, most often given to Narasimhavarman I Mamalla, about 630 to 668, though a date around 700 under Rajasimha has been argued, and the attribution is not settled. The relief stands among the Group of Monuments at Mahabalipuram, a World Heritage site since 1984.
It has two names, and the names are a question about the work. As the Descent of the Ganges it shows the heavenly river coming down to earth; as Arjuna’s Penance it shows the hero who won a weapon from Shiva by austerity. Both readings turn on one figure at the upper left of the cleft, and both are in the literature. The desk scores the relief as it now stands in the open air, with its cleft. A second, unfinished version of the same composition nearby, and the other monuments of the site, are context.
The face is worked in relief of varying depth, from near sculpture in the round, in the elephants and in the serpents of the cleft, to shallow incision. On it are gods, celestial couples, ganas, sages, hunters, nagas and naginis, and animals: elephants, deer, lions, monkeys, a cat and mice, birds, a tortoise. Nothing is enthroned at the centre. The centre is a crack in the rock.
Movement II
The cleft is the river. It runs from the top of the face to the ground between the two boulders, and in it the naga king and a nagini rise, serpent powers of the waters, their hands joined, carved so deep they swell almost free of the stone. They rise against the descent: the river comes down, and the beings of the waters come up to meet it. Water is reported to have been let down the cleft once from above, making the image of descent a descent in fact; that report is not certain, and the relief does not depend on it. The cleft and the rising serpents build the descent without it.
Everything on the face is placed by its relation to the cleft. The celestial couples fly toward it from both sides, so that the upper face seems in flight; the gods attend it; the elephants advance toward it on the right; the shrine and its sages keep the human order on the left. The myth is not alluded to. It is constructed out of a natural flaw in the living rock, and the structure bears the load: take away the cleft and nothing on the face knows where to turn.
That is the turn the relief made in its tradition. Indian narrative relief had been cut on cave walls and in panels, as in the great Varaha relief at Udayagiri of the fifth century, and the Chalukyas were cutting rock in the same century; the Pallavas had begun with rock-cut shrines. Here a whole cliff face, under the sky, became one field, and a fault in the stone became the spine of the subject, on a face that could not be corrected. The iconography, the figure types and the idiom of carving remained the tradition’s; the field and the spine did not.
Movement III
At the upper left of the cleft an emaciated ascetic stands on one leg with his arms raised above his head. Beside him stands Shiva, four-armed, with a gana. The grace that answers penance is the event toward which the face converges. Read as Bhagiratha, the penitent is the king whose austerity brought the Ganga down to earth; read as Arjuna, he is the hero whose austerity won Shiva’s weapon. The ambiguity may be designed, so that two myths of penance rewarded stand on one figure. Either reading puts the same structure under him, a penance answered by grace beside a river descending, and the doubling deepens it.
Low on the right, beneath the elephants, a cat stands on its hind legs with its forelegs raised, in the ascetic’s posture, and mice play about its feet. It is the work’s argument in miniature. The posture of austerity can be copied, and the copy fools only mice. True penance and false stand on one face, the one answered by a god and the other by the indifference of its prey, and the relief says this with a wit that needs no text. Whether the parody turns against the penitent or for him is one of the questions the face still holds open.
The two figures are the farthest apart on the face, and one law governs both. Every being is placed by the descent at the centre and answers it in its own manner: reverent, absorbed, playful or comic. The comic is not outside the law. The cat is the law’s shadow, penance without grace, and it belongs to the composition as surely as the god does.
Movement IV
At the lower right the great elephant herd moves toward the cleft, the largest at about life size, with young beneath. They are modelled in broad planes that keep the weight and slackness of hide; the calves are tucked in at the right proportion, and one sleeps. They are the mass of the earthly world on its side of the river and the measure of the face’s scale, and their slow weight is the relief’s second height after the first sight of the whole cliff, alive from foot to crown. The world’s weight is paying attention.
Around them the created order attends without ceasing to live. A deer scratches its nose with a hind hoof while the gods arrive; monkeys groom; a lion rests; a hunter carries game. The world is shown as a congregation that does not stop being ordinary while it witnesses the sacred. That is the relief’s disclosure, and it holds. It is also the received cosmology made visible more than a condition newly uncovered, and the relief’s meaning, though stated in stone, is the tradition’s meaning given a world to stand in.
The making is a master workshop’s rather than one hand’s. The animals are observed with a naturalist’s precision; the relief is graded so that the face reads from a distance and close at hand; the cleft and the two boulders are used, not fought. The celestial couples are worked to a repeating type and some are summary, the human faces are generic, and the registers of the upper rock join loosely. Those couples and the lesser beasts are also where the composition is additive: their number is permitted by the size of the rock rather than compelled, and several could go without loss.
Movement V
The open air is the form. The relief takes the sea light and the shadows of the day, and its figures stand in the same weather as the people before them. It has stood in the same place since it was cut, about thirteen centuries, known to the pilgrims and fishermen of the coast and later to scholarship, and it is now among the most visited monuments in South India. Salt wind and monsoon have softened the granite and blunted faces and edges, and the lower face has weathered most. The composition, the cleft and nearly every figure remain legible; no part that carries the meaning is lost.
Its reach is narrower than its force. Pallava art as a whole bore on the later temple sculpture of the Tamil country, but the colossal open-air narrative cliff had few successors, and the workshop’s own second version was left unfinished. Its later fame as an emblem of Indian sculpture and of the site is presence, and counts for little. The questions stay open: the penitent’s name, a possible royal allegory of Pallava rule and a Pallava claim on the Ganga, the part water played, the meaning of the cat. Much of that debate is about naming and patronage, and less about depths the image itself opens.
The desk sets it a tenth below the Kailasa Temple at Ellora, at 8.8, the greater rock-cut monument of the next century, and two tenths below the Chola bronze Shiva as Lord of the Dance (Nataraja) at 8.9, a single cast whose every part is required; three tenths above the Ajanta Caves and the Bayeux Tapestry, both at 8.4. The literary neighbours that carry the descent of the Ganga and the penance of Arjuna, the Ramayana at 8.9 and the Mahabharata at 9.1, stand above it. On the coast the serpents still rise in the cleft, and the cat still keeps its pose among the mice.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged by subtraction. The cleft cannot go: it is the river, the axis and the reason this face was chosen. The ascetic and Shiva cannot go, because the grace that answers penance is the event. The elephants cannot go: they are the mass of the earthly world on the right and the measure of scale. The cat cannot go: its parody of the ascetic is the work’s one argument made in miniature. The shrine with its sages anchors the human order on the left. What yields is the multitude itself. The flying couples, the ganas and the lesser beasts are an array whose number the size of the rock permits rather than compels; several could be removed and the convergence would still read. A congregation is additive by nature, and that holds the axis here.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Something can be stated and holds. The whole created order, gods and animals, ascetics and hunters, the high and the humble, is drawn toward a single event of grace at the centre, and each being keeps its own life while it attends: a deer scratches its nose with a hind hoof, monkeys groom, a lion rests, elephants shelter their young. The world is disclosed as a congregation that does not stop being ordinary while it witnesses the sacred. And the cat on its hind legs with forelegs raised, mice at play about its feet, sets false austerity beside true: the posture can be copied, and the copy fools only mice. That is a meaning, said in stone with a wit that needs no text. Held below the gate because the main proposition is the received cosmology made visible more than a condition newly uncovered.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The elevation is grandeur, and it recurs. The first sight of the whole face, a cliff alive from foot to crown, is the summit. The elephants, the largest at about life size, move with a slow weight that is the work’s second height; the serpents in the cleft, hands joined, rise against the descent. The celestial couples sweep toward the centre from both sides, so that the upper face seems in flight. The cleft still carries the river down through the rock. Between the summits the register is delight, often comic, rather than awe, and the ascetic’s emaciation has an austere force that stops short of terror. High and frequent, short of the top.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Myth built, not evoked. The descent of the heavenly river is not alluded to: it is constructed, with a natural fissure in the living rock as the river’s course and the naga powers of the waters rising in it. The structure bears the load: everything on the face is placed by its relation to the cleft. The particular stays particular throughout: this cat, that sleeping elephant calf, a hunter carrying game. The central penitent is read as Bhagiratha, who brought the Ganga down, or as Arjuna, who won Shiva’s weapon, and the doubling may be designed, so that two myths of penance rewarded stand on one figure; either way the structure holds the same myth of penance answered by grace. Held at 9.0 rather than higher because the identification is not secure.
Score: 9.0 / 10
The inheritance: Indian narrative relief on cave walls and in panels, among them the great Varaha relief at Udayagiri of the fifth century; the contemporary rock-cut work of the Chalukyas; the Pallavas’ own first rock-cut shrines. The departure: a whole open-air cliff face as one field, under the sky and not within a cave or a frame; a natural flaw in the rock made the subject’s spine; and a composition with no central icon enthroned, but an event toward which an entire world turns. The stake was real: an early campaign of a dynasty newly working in stone, at a scale with no settled precedent, on a face that could not be corrected. Held below the top because the iconography, the figure types and the carving idiom were the tradition’s.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Substitute another form and the work loses what it knows. In a painting or a panel the cleft would be a line; here it is a real fissure in a real rock, and the river descends through the earth’s own body. The open air is the form: the relief takes the sea light and the shadows of the day, and its figures stand in the same weather as the people before it. The depth of the relief is graded to meaning: the elephants and the serpents swell almost free of the rock, the distant celestials are shallow. The unfinished second version nearby shows by contrast how much the choice of this rock with this cleft did. Held a step below the top because the many figures of the upper register would read nearly as well in any large relief field.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Evidence over promise: about thirteen centuries, and the questions stay open and are questions of the image. Whether the penitent is Arjuna or Bhagiratha, or deliberately both; whether the work is a royal allegory of Pallava rule and of a Pallava claim on the Ganga; what part water played in the cleft, and whether it ran at all; what the cat means beside the ascetic, and whether its parody turns against the penitent or for him; how the two boulders and the shrine organise the narrative. The face yields new small figures on each return. Held below the top because much of the debate turns on naming and patronage more than on depths the image itself opens.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The field is South Indian and wider Indian sculpture of the seventh and eighth centuries. The intrinsic force is high: the relief is a real reorganisation of what a carved field could be, a landscape of the whole created order in one open-air face, with a naturalism of animals unmatched in its tradition, and with the natural rock taken into the meaning. The reach is narrower, and it is the lowest of the twelve. This kind of colossal open-air narrative cliff had few successors, and the workshop’s own second version was left unfinished. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: Pallava art as a whole bore on the later temple sculpture of the Tamil country; this face is now an emblem of Indian sculpture and of its site, which is presence and is credited lightly.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, at about thirteen centuries. Form: whole. The composition, the cleft and nearly every figure are legible, and no part that carries the meaning is lost. Water is reported to have been let down the cleft once from above, which would have made the image of descent a descent; that is not certain, and if it ran it is a small loss of form, since the cleft still carries the river. Presence: the relief has stood in the open in the same place since it was cut, known to the pilgrims and the fishermen of the coast and later to scholarship, and it is among the most visited monuments in South India. Fabric: salt wind and monsoon have softened the granite and blunted faces and edges, the lower face most; the smallest charge.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Judged as command of relief carving in granite at the scale of a cliff, to the same anchors as every medium, and the making bears the load. The elephants are modelled in broad planes that keep the weight and slackness of hide, and the calves beneath them are tucked in at the right proportion; the deer scratching its nose and the monkey grooming its mate are observed with a naturalist’s precision. The relief is graded across the face from near round to shallow, so that the composition reads from a distance and close at hand. The cleft and the two boulders are used, not fought. The costs are charged: the celestial couples are worked to a repeating type and some are summary, the human faces are generic, and the joins of register across the upper rock are loose. A master workshop, not one hand at every point.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: Shiva granting grace to the ascetic at the upper left of the cleft, and the cat in mock penance among mice low on the right, beneath the elephants. One law governs both: every being on the face is placed by its relation to the descent at the centre and answers it in its own manner, reverent, absorbed, playful or comic. The comic is not outside the law; the cat is the law’s shadow, penance without grace. The range is wide, from gods to mice, from the sacred event to the scratch of a hoof, from near-round carving to incision, and nothing contradicts the governing convergence. Held at 9.0 rather than higher because the repeated figures of the upper registers thin the law into pattern in places.
Score: 9.0 / 10
The orders held: the sacred, in Shiva, the shrine of Vishnu and the river’s descent; the cosmos, in gods, celestials and the serpent powers of the waters; the natural order, in the animals of forest and river at their own lives; human life, in ascetics, sages and hunters; the family, in elephants sheltering their young and the serpent pair; ethics, in the true penance and the false; and, by the usual reading, kingship, in the Pallava claim the work may carry. They are integrated by the cleft, not listed. What holds the axis below the top: labour appears only as hunting and devotion, history and the state only by inference, and consciousness only as attention. For a visual work it holds an unusual breadth of orders in one structure.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.7 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Living Form and The Imperishable at 9.1, then The Archetypal Deep and The Inner Law at 9.0, and The Made at 8.9. A form in which a real fissure in a real rock is the river, in the open air and the weather; a face whole and legible at about thirteen centuries; a myth constructed out of the stone rather than alluded to, its structure bearing the load whichever name the penitent bears; one law that places every being from the god to the cat by the descent at the centre; and a carving of animals in granite at the scale of a cliff that keeps the weight of the elephants and the itch of a deer.
Limiting Dimension
Pressure on Tradition at 8.2: the force is high, but the colossal open-air narrative cliff had few successors, the workshop’s own second version was left unfinished, and the later fame is presence. Then The Inevitable at 8.3, for a multitude whose number the rock permits rather than compels, and The Unconcealment at 8.4, for a disclosure that is the received cosmology made visible. The three are one fact: the relief gives a whole world to a known story, and the world is more than the story needed and was not taken up after it.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.3 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 9.1, The Made at 8.9, The Inner Law at 9.0, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on two of five: The Imperishable at 9.1, The Archetypal Deep at 9.0 and The Swerve at 8.7 clear the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 8.4 falls a tenth short, the disclosure being the received cosmology made visible more than a condition newly uncovered, and Pressure on Tradition at 8.2 falls three tenths short, the kind of open-air narrative cliff having few successors. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis it covers falls below Pressure on Tradition at 8.2, against 7.5), and The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 8.5. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The twelve sum to 104.5, an average of 8.71 that displays 8.7, in the Canonical tier, three tenths short of the 9.0 that the summit requires; were the aggregate higher, the Epochal Gate would still hold the work in Tier IV.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the relief from photographs, plans and the literature, not from measurement; the main parts are known well, the small figures of the upper registers less well. The work scored is the relief as it now stands in the open air at Mamallapuram, across the east face of two adjoining granite boulders with the natural cleft between them; the unfinished second version of the composition nearby, the other monuments of the Group of Monuments at Mahabalipuram and the rest of Pallava rock-cut work are context, and the relief is not credited with them. Both names, the Descent of the Ganges and Arjuna’s Penance, are given, and neither identification of the penitent is taken as settled. The date is given in the usual frame of the seventh century, the reign and patron being disputed. That water was once let down the cleft from above is stated as a report, not a fact; it is charged under The Imperishable only, and only as uncertain. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the dimensions of the face, the count of its figures, a cistern above the cleft, whether the sun and moon are figured at the top, rough passages in the lower face, the date of the first European accounts of the site and any reach of the relief beyond India.