Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/108

RV 86 however, stand four clay statues of the Deva Kings, which are among the treasured relics of Tōdai-ji. Trampling on the demons they have subdued, the faces of the four Devas display four different phases of combat, from fierce defiance and strong effort to stern resolve and calm triumph; their attitudes are modelled in consonance with these moods; the details of their armour and costume are skilfully rendered, and their proportions betray no anatomical errors. Even greater force of conception is attributed by Japanese connoisseurs to a clay statue of Shikongō (Vadjrapāni), belonging also to the gallery of the eighth century and kept in the same temple, Tōdai-ji. This statue has suffered much from the effects of time, and the condition of its right arm greatly impairs the general effect; but such as it is, it certainly deserves much of the praise bestowed on it since the public began to discover that early Japanese statuary merits attention. Among eighth-century works in dry lacquer, undoubtedly the most notable are the Hokke-do Trinity, by the priest Rōben. These figures present a marked contrast to the four Devas and the Shikongō mentioned above. Brahma and Indra, whose effigies form the acolytes of the group, are shown in an attitude of prayer, the expression of the faces majestically and profoundly serene, and even the folds of their garments modelled so as to accentuate the idea of passionless piety. A wide interval separated these figures from the conventional Indian deity which threatened at first to impose its type upon the Japanese sculptor. There is here nothing whatever of the curiously modelled torso, the massive sensuous cast of features, and the jewelled tiara which some of the earliest Japanese sculptures