following is the mail recd from Prof S. Swaminathan :
" Quote ::
This morning I had a long chat with Thiru Sivaramakrishnan. He seemed to be getting some 'visions' after the site seminar. He has decided to study our sculptures in greater detail and also practise drawing them, which, according to him, he has neglected so far.
I have been working towards a series on appreciation of Indian art following Ananda Coomaraswamy for some time, though work on this has not begun.
During the talk today, I explained to him my ideas on the subject of styles in styles in south Indian sculptures. It is accepted by most that the Pallava and the Early Chozha temples are in the classical classical style. But the question is did the Pallavas influence the Early Chozhas. To me it does not look so.
Let me explain. We are generally aware of the Pallava art of Mallai and to some extant of Kanchi. The Early Chozha art is ween in Pullamangai, Nageswaran Koil and Muvar Koil of Kodumbalur. The former two are narrative and the last isn't narrative. In terms of the sculptural idiom, I am not competent to express my opinion, though from the point of view of expression the Kodumbalur sculptures do excel.
There are niche (Devakoshtam) Pallava sculptures, but they look so different from the Kodumbalur ones, which have no apparent similarity with the Pullamangai-Nageswaran.
There is also another route of thinking. Take the case of temple architecture. We are aware two styles of temple architecture - at the cave shrine stage - had been prevalent in the Tamil country in the early period: the Pallava and the Pandya. Both had significantly different. When it came to structural temples, it were the Chozhas and not the Pandyas who the pioneers in the lower Tamilnadu. Then what was the Pallava influence in this? If you look at the Early Chozha temples, like at Kaliapatti, they seem to9 be totally different from the Pallava ones.
Hence I suggested to Thiru Sivaramakrishnan that he should also study the developmentt of temple architecture along with that of sculpture and identify areas of similarity and differences. I will be giving him the books by SR Balasubramanian.
I took liberty to inform you of our lines of thinking.
If some else is interested on this or have even better topic, we may discuss.
I will keep those interested developments on this inquiry.