Every block of stone has a soul,” says sculptor Prabhakar Maharana, as he carefully chisels out thin layers of sandstone from a boulder that has partially taken the shape of Lord Buddha. The 58-year-old Odia artist has been breathing life into inanimate stones and turning them into works of traditional art for the past four decades.
At his workshop in the foothills of Dhauli Shanti Stupa on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar, these days Maharana is busy carving a four-armed image of Gautam Buddha in standing posture by joining two sculptures, both monumental in size. Work on the statue measuring 100 ft by 18 ft—it is one of the tallest Buddha statues to have been created in Odisha—started two years ago. The end product weighing around 200 tonnes will be sent to Taiwan in a month, where it will be installed in a monastery.
“This is a unique form of Lord Buddha. The four-armed idol will be accompanied by a two-armed Buddha image in a different posture,” explains Maharana, who runs his stone sculpture institute-cum-studio Konark Kala in Bhubaneswar. Here, he not only creates sculptures of Hindu deities but also trains youths in Odisha style of temple architecture and Shilpa Shastra—the ancient science of sculpture making.
Maharana’s minute detailing of sculptures and intricacy in his work can leave any connoisseur spellbound.
He is also carving a 13-foot high sculpture of Acharya Padmasambhav, who was born in Kalinga (ancient Odisha) and travelled to Tibet where he spread Buddhism. “The idol will take another four-five month before being installed at Padmasambhava Mahavihara monastery at Jirang, a quaint village in the southern Odisha district of Gajapati. The sandstones, used for both the sculptures, were specially procured from Rajasthan, as there is no availability of raw material here,” says the sculptor, who was recently conferred the Padmashri award. Apart from red sandstone, he likes working on varied mediums such as granite, wood and brass.
Lord Buddha is Maharana’s favourite subject. Though he has shaped up several deities of Hindu pantheon such as dancing Lord Ganesha, Lord Shiva, Panchamukhi Hanuman, Vishnu in his Dasa Avatar, Goddess Durga, Lord Krishna and the likes, Maharana finds sculpting Lord Buddha difficult. “The sublime expression of compassion on the face of Lord Buddha is the most difficult to achieve,” he says.
Maharana’s creations have found a place in monasteries and museums across Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Bhutan, Nepal, Brazil and Paris. He has also fashioned Buddha images for monasteries in Assam and Himachal Pradesh. But his craftsmanship did not come overnight. Maharana was inspired by his father, who had made a name for himself by carving images out of wood in the undivided Puri district. “My ancestors were a part of the group of sculptors, who carved the Sun Temple at Konark. In 1975, I joined the State Handicrafts Training Institute here at the age of 15. After completing my training at the Institute (now named State Institute for Development of Arts and Crafts), I started working on my own and later set up my unit near Gangotri Nagar in Bhubaneswar,” says the artist, who received the National Award for sculpting in 1992.
Stone sculpting, he says, is a dying art. “Very few youths are coming forward to learn the craft as it is time-consuming and strenuous. After our generation of sculptors ends, there will be hardly anyone who can even repair the temples that our ancestors had created,” he says. Every year, Maharana trains at least five young sculptors to keep the craft alive. He wants to create more traditional artists who can take care of the existing monumental heritage of Odisha.