South Indian Bronzes: A Historical Survey of South Indian Sculpture with Iconographical Notes Based on Original Sources c10.5

c10.5

Effect of the Canons. It may be urged on the other hand that the patterns furnished and the rules laid down have for ever reduced the art of the Indian sculptor to a formula, and whatever precedents and traditions these canons succeeded in carrying and transmitting to the later generations of artists, the real effect of these canons was to stifle the true spirit of art by subjecting it to as dogmatic a rigour in design as in heiratic doctrine.