Studies in Indian Art c7.s1.12

c7.s1.12

Religion provided food for the soul. It opened the gates of human heart for a tide-like flow of human emotions. Religion also provided zest to life and gave to it its most valuable motive-forces. Inspired by Religion, art retained its purity. It was utilitarian from the worldly point of view, but was worshipped for its own sake, i.e. for the sake of a higher spiritual purpose. Its function was not to please the eye, but to satisfy the spirit. There was no compromise on this vital point. Although portraits also received some attention in the Hindu paintings of Rajasthan and Kangra, but portraiture was a very small part of the total creative activity of these schools. They gain their excellence not as perfect portraits, but as figures in which the factual treatment of the human body is the least part. It is the emphasis on the symbolic character of the scene which gives to the paintings their true value. Indian art, except for the brief interlude of Mughal art, did not interest itself in portraiture. In the words of the Śukranīti, portrait painting is unheavenly (asvargiya). At another time, viz. in the Gandhara school of the North-West, the artists were working with consciousness of the human element in art, the figures being conceived as true to human anatomy rather than as the idealised products of the mind. It was the fatal weakness of Gandhara art that it conceived the Buddha in terms of the human body rather than in terms of the ideal Yogī. The more it succeeds in its anatomical representation, the poorer it becomes on the spiritual side. No human figure, as it is, carries with it any attention unless it undergoes a spiritual transformation. To the extent that the image seeks direct representation, it becomes weakened in its symbolism.