Studies in Indian Art c7.s1.3

c7.s1.3

In the Vedic period forms of thought and of art were taking shape. It was the period of land settlement. Vast unmapped horizons stretched before man's vision, and the mind was grappling in all its fresh vigour and joy to understand nature, and to evolve an alphabet adequate for expressing that experience in tangible word and form. Such is the nature of Vedic art conception. Everywhere it is a new world of symbols. Forms of deities are in the making. Ideas surge, are understood, analysed, clarified, and robed in tangible imagery, half revealed and half concealed. As the Vedic seer put it: "The daughters of Heaven are neither fully nude nor fully robed." Similar is the case with the symbols of Vedic thought. Sometimes there are distinct indications of meanings firmly grasped; at others there is something which eludes from expression; at others there are only dim intimations of thought and part glimpses of reality.