Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c7.5

c7.5

The discovery of the Indus Valley culture has done a miracle for both art and history of ancient India. It has pushed back at one stroke the beginning of civilised life in India by 20 centuries, i. e. from 600 B.C. to 2500 B.C. It has placed the Indian civilisation in a world-context making it as one of the other great civilisations of the ancient world like Crete, Egypt, Mesopotamia and Western Asia. It has further established the central position which India occupied within an extended geographical orbit with alround lines of communication to feed her economic life. The character of this civilisation shows it to be essentially urban, comprising a community of merchants and rulers devoted to many fine arts and dependent for their economy on the labours of a toiling peasantry. They were entrenched within fortified citadels having rampart and gateways, most probably ruled by a central authority or political power vested in the king. A community of priests catering to the religious needs of the people is also indicated by the finds. The people excelled in methods of architectural planning of their capital cities, houses and roads, and an unusually developed sanitary system of bath-rooms and drains to which there is no parallel in the ancient world. The discovery of baked bricks in millions from kilns fired by forests of timber was the strongest point of the Indus Valley culture by which their architects built well planned cities the like of which are not seen anywhere else in Iran, Egypt or Western Asia. The beginnings of this civilisation are a little obscure and its end also seems to have come suddenly. The amazing fact about it is the uniformity of life, art and culture made visible to us by innumerable relics. About nine structural phases were exposed at Mohenjo-daro extending over a thousand years and the seals and other objects that came from the earliest levels (circa 2500 B. C.) do not seem to differ from those of the final phase (circa 1500 B. C.), although a certain degree of evolution inevitably exists. Such stolid conservatism was a quality ingrained in the soul of the people and had immense effect in building up a civilization which became so deeply rooted in the soil as to leave its lasting influence on the life and beliefs of the succeeding generations. The Harappa culture flourished for many centuries along with that of the Aryans and both co-existed in amity until the final clash ousted the Indus people from the field. It implied only the extinction of their political power, the people stuck to their homes, left to fight with a climate gradually turning inclement until deserts and waterless tracts overcame them. In its hey-day the culture of the Harappans was a blooming flower of divine fragrance or a ray of serene lustre. A flush of beauty permeates their life as seen in the religious cleanliness of their cities, homes and bodies. The ornaments of gold and silver, beads of elongated bright carnelian, agate, quartz etc. and gold-tipped beads, faience ornaments, miniature pottery as well as designs on pottery and the variety of steatite seals with vigorous animal figures and bold pictographic script—these are radiant with the creative genius of an inventive race. Taken together they leave a deep impression on the mind of every serious student of art and culture. The people knew the arts of agriculture, weaving, statuary, goldsmithy, bead-making, ivory-carving, shell-inlay, metal casting, writing, toy-making, pottery turned on wheel, painting designs in black and polychrome, using weights and measures, building, firing bricks, shaving, using wheeled conveyances, etc.