Studies in Indian Art c7.s1.1

c7.s1.1

Indian art representing life through the ages speaks an eloquent language of vast and varied symbolism. Art in India is not factual record of life in various forms, but from the outset it was intended to become a vehicle of the forms of thought, which enriched culture, religion, philosophy and literature. In India art has been employed to convey through its symbolical language—the ideas of the mind. Human speech has a limited appeal, but the language of art presents a universal approach to ideas. It was an open book for all, speaking a language which was the outcome of spiritual experience of ideas, or in other words, of religion. The feeling of art was dictated by man's devotional approach to such experience. This was the higher purpose of art; higher only in the sense that its theme was of a sublime world, not that art was in any way the preserve of the select few only, and inaccessible to the masses of people, or deliberately kept back from them.