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Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c10: Chapter VII. Hindu Art in Java and Kambodia—Portraiture

Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c10

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English

Chapter VII. Hindu Art in Java and Kambodia—Portraiture

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THE Bôrôbudûr sculptures are in some respects unique, both in the perfection of their art and in the good fortune which has preserved them from wanton destruction. The obscurity into which the great monument has fallen has been, perhaps, its best protection, and saved it from the fate of so many other masterpieces of Indian art. No fanatics, either European or native, have laid sacrilegious hands upon it; no enterprising builders have made use of it for a quarry, or converted its stones into lime; no railway contractors or energetic public works officers have broken its splendid sculptures for ballast or for road-mending. What it has suffered has been from natural causes, the destructive influences of the tropical climate, from earthquake or from mere neglect.

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Just as it happened in India itself, when Buddhism was supplanted by Brahmanism as the state religion, the traditions of Buddhist art were carried on in the same way by orthodox Hindus in Java. It seems, indeed, as if all that is best in The scanned page is entirely blank (no text, page numbers, or other printed elements).

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RELIEF AT PRAMBÂNAM

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Hindu art, both in painting and in sculpture, is a direct inheritance from Buddhism. This at least is evident in the Hindu sculptures of the temples at Prambanam, the ancient capital of the island.

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From Buddhism the Hindus borrowed the custom of using the courtyards or the walls of the sacred shrines which the pilgrims or worshippers perambulated as national painting and sculpture galleries. The courtyard of one of the temples dedicated to Vishnu at Prambanam is decorated with a remarkable series of sculptures illustrating the great Hindu epic, the Râmâyana. Two of the finest passages taken from Dr. J. Groneman’s work are given in Plates XXXIX. and XL. The date of the sculptures is supposed to be about the eleventh century.

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The style of these Prambanam sculptures often lacks the splendid simplicity and restraint of those of Bôrôbudûr. The extravagant fables of the exploits of Râma’s monkey allies are told almost in the spirit of burlesque, and the imagination of the sculptors sometimes runs wild in trying to depict the horrors of the trackless jungles and their demon inhabitants. Nevertheless there are many striking passages showing splendid power of composition and an exquisite technique.

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Plate XXXIX. is the first of the series, and illustrates the beginning of the Râmâyana legend which tells how Dasaratha, King of Ayodhya, being childless, obtains from Vishnu by the aid of sacrifices a divine elixir, through drinking which his three wives conceive and bear him four godlike sons, Râma, Lakshman, Satrughna, and Bharat.

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On the left of the illustration the god Vishnu, whose head is unfortunately mutilated, reclines on the great serpent Ananta, symbolising Eternity, which floats upon the waters, here represented as teeming with varied forms of marine life. The grotesque figure on Vishnu’s right with a bird’s beak and claws is Garuda, the deity’s *vahan* or vehicle.

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The charming group of human figures on Vishnu’s left is supposed by Dr. Groneman to represent Dasaratha, surrounded by his barren wives, receiving from Vishnu the magic potion. If this is a correct interpretation, the Javanese version of the legend must give Dasaratha four wives instead of three. But the bearded figure taken by Dr. Groneman for Dasaratha seems more like one of the Hindu *rishis* who are shown in other scenes in these sculptures. Possibly then this group really represents Râma and his three brothers being brought to the presence of the deity by Vashishtha, or Vishwamitra, the great *rishis* who were Dasaratha’s counsellors and spiritual advisers.

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The rest of this panel appears to represent a scene in the court of Dasaratha; but though it is well composed and executed with great refinement and skill, it is difficult to determine the exact incident of the story which is intended, especially as the head of one of the principal figures is broken.

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The next Plate, XL., shows Râma and his devoted brother Lakshman in their forest retreat, after the fatal decree of banishment, obtained by the youngest queen’s jealous intrigue, had driven them from the court of Ayodhya. The weird but amiable figure in the cave or hut on the left is apparently one of the friendly hermits who afforded them shelter in the jungle.

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The subject of the two slabs on the right seems to be the first meeting of Râma with the vulture-king, Jatayau, who warned him of the demons of the forest and their vile enchantments, and of the perils which beset Râma’s wife, the lovely Sîtâ, when the brothers went hunting.

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Dr. Groneman says of some of the Prambanam sculptures that they approach near to Greek art in truth and beauty, and are far above what he has seen in other Hindu temples in Java, Ceylon, or India. Sir Stamford Raffles, the British governor of Java from 1811 to 1816, says of Prambanam : “In the whole course of my life I have never met with such stupendous and finished specimens of human labour, and of the science and taste of ‘ages long since forgot,’ crowded together in so small a compass as in this little spot.”¹ But the material for enabling those who have not visited the island to appreciate these splendid sculptures is at present very scanty. Java affords an almost unlimited field for artistic research. To describe adequately the sculptures of Bôrôbudûr and Prambanam would require many volumes, and my present purpose is fulfilled with the illustrations already given.¹

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¹ “History of Java,” vol. ii., p. 15.

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¹ Mr. E. A. von Saher's "De Versierende Kunsten in Nederlandsch Oost Indie" contains a fine series of illustrations of sculpture from Bôrôbudûr and Prambanam.

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I can only make a brief passing allusion to a remarkable series of sculptures which adorn another great monument of Indian art—the temple of Nakhon Vat, near Ankhor in Kambodia, a corner of the Far East which bears witness to the maritime enterprise of Indian races in former times.

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About the fourth century A.D., a band of adventurers from the country round Takshasîla, called then Kamboja, seems to have set off from the west coast of India, as the colonists of Java did a few centuries later, and eventually founded a kingdom in the south-eastern corner of Asia, which they named after their native country.

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They carried with them the art-traditions of the Kashmir school; and in the centuries which followed, down to the fourteenth, when the kingdom was annexed to that of Siam, their descendants built a series of temples which, according to Fergusson, are "as large and as richly ornamented as any to be found in any part of the world."

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One of the last of these, the temple of Nakhon Vat above mentioned, is a vast structure exceeding Bôrôbudûr in dimensions—the outer walled enclosure of it measuring two-thirds of a mile on each of the four sides. We are not, however, concerned with the magnificence of the architecture, the details of which are given by Fergusson, but with the sculptures illustrating the Râmâyana and the Mahâbhârata which decorate the walls of the temple. They are in very low relief, as they were not, like the Bôrôbudûr sculptures, intended for an open-air light, but for the reflected light of the magnificent colonnades under shelter of which they are placed. The whole of them, about six and a half feet in height and of an aggregate length of about two thousand feet, were originally gilt.

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Casts of these fine sculptures are in the Ethnographic Museum at Berlin, but from want of space they are not displayed to great advantage there. The most striking subject is the well-known Indian legend, told in the Râmâyana, of the churning of the ocean by the gods and *asuras* in order to procure *amrita*, the nectar of immortality. This is treated with immense imaginative power and sense of movement, but the sculptures as a rule do not possess the peculiar charm of Bôrôbudûr.

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Most of the other subjects are battle-scenes from the Mahâbhârata, which are described with extreme elaboration and wonderful vigour. In the treatment of the human figure these Kambodian reliefs are strongly suggestive of the Amarâvati sculptures, and retain much of the mannerisms of this school, which was also derived originally from Kashmir.

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There are many other sculptured monuments in India itself, especially those in Southern India and in Orissa, which deserve more than a passing notice; but in most of these the sculptures are intended more for architectural embellishment than for a didactic purpose, and hardly come within my present scope. The types already given illustrate the best that Indian sculptors have produced in the province of "fine art," as distinguished from architectural decoration.

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We have now only to discuss the question of portraiture in Indian sculpture. From numerous references to Sanskrit literature it appears that painted portraiture was quite common in India in pre-Mogul times, but allusions to sculptured portraits, as distinguished from images of the gods, are rare.

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There are several in the Râmâyana; one in which Râma had an image made of Sîtâ. This was, however, only to meet the dilemma in which he was placed when, after Sîtâ was exiled, he was advised to perform the great Horse-sacrifice, a ceremony which demanded the presence of his co-partner in religious rites, his wife. Râma had the golden image of his Queen made for the occasion, and it was carried in front of the procession by his brother Bharat (*Uttara Kanda*, 25).

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In two other instances Râma's demon adversaries had lifelike portraits made, but the context clearly shows that this branch of sculpture was considered to belong to the black rather than to the fine arts. The first was when Ravana wanted to beguile his unhappy captive Sîtâ into believing that Râma was dead. He ordered a skilful craftsman to make a lifelike model of Râma’s head, which was brought in to Sîtâ, who, “seeing the severed head, and finding in the complexion of the face, in the eyes, in the hair, and in the jewelled knot, a likeness to her husband, and recognising it by all these signs and marks, became exceeding sad, and crying like a *kurari*, denounced Kaikeyi bitterly” (*Lanka Kanda*, chap. 32).

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In the same book, chapter 81, Indrajit, the son of Ravana, had an image made of Sîtâ, and, bringing it on his chariot in front of the contending armies, cut it down with his sword. The trick was so successful that even the astute Hanuman, Râma’s faithful ally, was deceived, and brought to Râma the sad news of Sîtâ’s death.

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The word used in the text for a likeness—*Maya*, illusion or deception—is significant of the orthodox Hindu attitude towards portraiture. It was the whole object of Hindu endeavour to get rid of *Maya*, the illusive appearance of things, and to penetrate to the eternal Reality which stood behind it. For the artist to occupy himself with a simple imitation of nature was idle and impious. His aim must be to show the Divinity, which is the only reality. By the Hindu *Sastras*, as well as by the law of Islam, statues of human beings, as such, are distinctly forbidden. In the “Sukranitisara,” already alluded to, it is said: “Only the images of gods should be made, for they confer heaven and happiness; but the images of men and others shut the door of heaven and bring ill-fortune." And again: "A misshapen image of God is always better than an image of man, however well-made the latter may be."¹

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¹ See note, p. 54.

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¹ The same work after the most minute instructions as to the correct proportions of images, from the total height down to the circumference of the thumb and great toe, adds the following explanations: "In order that the form of an image may be brought out fully and clearly upon the mind, the image-maker must meditate, and his success will be in proportion to his meditation. No other way, not even seeing the object itself, will answer this purpose. "To every part of the image should be given that grace and ease which is most suitable for it... an image with a wrathful look should not have complacent eyes. Those images are handsome, the measurements of which are in accordance with the rules in the Sastras. Some, however, are of opinion that what pleases the heart is beautiful. But the measurements that do not agree with those given in the Sastras cannot be pleasing to the cultured."

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This sufficiently explains why on old Indian coins we rarely find effigies of Hindu rulers. It also explains why in Hindu sculpture the tendency has always been to make representations of human beings, even when intended as portraiture, to conform to the ideal type of Divinity. It was impious to glorify man in his common personality, but not so to explain him as one of the manifestations of the universal, divine nature. Europe says: "The noblest study of mankind is man;" India declares it to be not man, but God, and Hindu art is only concerned in showing the relationship between the human and the divine nature.

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In the Buddhist period, however, this prejudice against portraiture was not so strong, and at Bharhut and Sanchi there are sculptures of semi-divine beings showing a clearly-marked individuality, suggestive of true portraiture. One from Bharhut is illustrated in Plate XXVIII. Among the later Gandharan sculptures in the Lahore Museum and elsewhere, there are many strikingly characteristic heads which are so markedly individual that they are taken by some archæologists to represent portraits of the Gandharan kings; but others consider them to be intended for Bodhisattvas, or for guardian demi-gods.

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The early Indian coinage also shows the most obvious portraiture;¹ but this is pure Græco-Roman art, untouched by Indian influence. Evidently Græco-Roman artisans at one time had almost a monopoly of some of the mints of Northern India; and this was, perhaps, the only craft in which Indians of that time were inferior to foreigners.

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¹ See frontispiece to Vincent Smith’s “Early History of India.”

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When the canons of Indian art were finally fixed as part of a religious ritual, portraiture as a distinct branch of sculpture seems to have become almost extinct. In images of the gods the whole aim was to suggest a type of face as far as possible impersonal—that is, to suppress all the details indicative of human individuality, instead of creating a type of ideal human beauty, as in Greek art. But there is a great deal of Indian sculpture, especially in Java, in which a distinct ethnical type is taken for the head of a Buddha, Bodhisattva, or Hindu demi-god, just as in the mediæval art of Europe royal personages and dignitaries of the Church suggested the types of Christian saints.

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In this, what we may call uncanonical Indian sculpture, we can find types of physiognomy and character given with the highest art, and with as much variety and power of expression as Greek sculpture can show, though it is not, strictly speaking, portraiture. Here Indian art comes almost in the same plane of thought as Western, and we fairly draw a comparison between them. That Indian sculptors did not attempt to portray violent emotions and facial expression in the same way as Europeans must again be attributed to a difference of temperament and difference of thought, not to want of capacity. Their religion taught them that the way to spiritual advancement was by controlling human passions, and this teaching strongly influenced their art. But the common idea that Indian sculpture is lacking in power of expression is just as wrong as other uninformed opinions on Indian art. The best Indian sculpture touched a deeper note of feeling and finer sentiments than the best Greek.

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Two ethnical types of extraordinary beauty and character are given in Plates XLI. and XLII. The first two represent Bhima, one of the great heroes of the Mahâbhârata, famous for his strength and courage. They are taken from a temple dedi-

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TWO HEADS OF BHIMA

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cated to him on the plateau of Diëng, Central Java. The other is Buddha himself, also from Java.

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At first sight the suggestion they give of ancient Egyptian or Greek art is almost startling. There is the greatness of line, splendid generalisation, and profound abstraction of the best Egyptian sculpture, and all the refinement of Greek art. But the similarity comes only from the kinship which exists between all truly great works of art, for these types are wholly Indian.

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The contrast of the two characters is given with a depth of penetration which belongs only to the grandest portraiture. In Bhima's head the artist, with a few bold, clearly drawn forms, shows us the born fighter and leader of men. In the large, square forehead, the full, firm jaw, the eyes set wide apart, and the determined mouth—half-savage, even cruel when his blood is roused—we recognise a young Alexander, a fighter who knows his own strength and revels in it. All his desires and aims are human, yet there is nothing low or brutal in his nature. He is a great national hero, a war-lord fit to lead and command a noble, free-born race.

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Compare this with the head of the Buddha, Sakya-muni. There is an infinity of difference in the type, yet the art is the same in its greatness and its inwardness. It is a true portrait-type of high-bred, intellectual Indian, but all that is pure, spiritual, and holy in Indian thought and religion is summed up in this supremely lovely face. The perfect oval shape, the small, refined chin, and the finely chiselled features, speak of the god-like man who chose to leave all that was his—a royal throne, wealth, and earthly happiness—only to find the Way to help his suffering fellow-men.

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The nobly vaulted brow and exquisitely formed eyes, with half-fallen meditative lids, tell us of infinite spiritual strength. A touch of sadness seems to rest on the full and tender lips, yet we can almost see them wreathed with a consoling, loving smile, and hear them utter words of blessing and perfect peace.

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Compare it, if you will, with its assumed Gandharan prototype, or with the Grecian models which Gandhara had in its mind; but there is in this art a depth and spirituality which never entered into the soul of Greece.

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The method of treating the hair in formal curls which is characteristic of the Indian ideal of Buddha has given rise to much archæological speculation and condemnation. The general archæological conclusion, founded on the assumption of Indian artistic incapacity and bad taste, has been that Indian sculptors found the Grecian treatment, which is generally adopted in the Gandharan sculptures, too difficult to imitate, and that in consequence they fell back upon this, which Mr. Vincent Smith calls “the feeble conventionalism of ordinary Indian art.”¹

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¹ “Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,” vol. lviii., 1889, p. 128.

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If we adopt the alternative hypothesis, that Indian artists possessed quite as much artistic sense as others, the explanation is not very far to seek. In endeavouring to differentiate divine beauty from that of mortals they looked for those characteristics which are uncommon in human beings. To this day anything rare or abnormal is popularly regarded in India as a special manifestation of the divine nature. Among Indians of the highest castes, descended from the pure Aryan stock, short curly hair is unusual, and held as a sign of special distinction or good fortune. Naturally enough, it was adopted by Indian artists as one of the marks of divine beauty.

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A HEAD OF BUDDHA

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The formalism is only another Indian method of showing that the divine nature transcends that of common humanity. And when this conventionalism is thoroughly well carried out, and is a true expression of Indian thought, there is no justification for calling it "inartistic," or "depraved," except in the minds of those who are convinced beyond argument that there is nothing admirable in any art the ideals of which differ from those of Greece and Italy.

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Java is so rich in beautiful types of Indian sculpture of this class that volumes again might be filled with them. But we must now return to India, the fountain-head, where the traditions of it are not yet entirely extinct, though the art of Bôrôbudûr and Prambanam was practically extirpated in Java by the conversion of the islanders to Islam about the fifteenth century.

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The next illustration, one of the grandest examples of Indian sculpture extant, not only shows the versatility of Indian sculptors in the past, but points to one of the many potential opportunities which might be opened to their descendants in the present day, if Anglo-Indians, who persist in treating them as ignorant children, possessed the capacity of the Mogul craftsmen for understanding and utilising the extraordinary artistic resources of the land in which they live. For certainly, among all the commonplace statues of British Viceroys and Generals by European artists set up on the *maidans* of Calcutta and Bombay, there is not one to be placed in the same category as this. It would be as easy for us as it was for the Moguls if we, like them, had brought with us into India craftsmen practising a living tradition of art. But as our own national craftsmanship has been practically extirpated, we have only brought the bookman, the paper architect, and the eclectic or amateur artist, who find little beauty in Indian art and can do nothing with it but debase it.

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Again the thought occurs that, had it by chance been labelled "Roman," or "Greek," this magnificent work of art would now be the pride of some great metropolitan museum in Europe or America. It is one of two colossal war-horses placed outside the southern façade of the so-called Black Pagoda at Kanârak, in Orissa, a temple dedicated to Surya, the Sun-god, which is said to have been built by Narasimha I., about the middle of the thirteenth century.

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The companion statue is completely mutilated, but this one, apart from the broken ears of the horse and the missing head of the figure which leads it, is comparatively intact, or was so not many years ago. Its surface has, however, suffered considerably from the weather, and from its exposed position it is likely to suffer still more if it is not adequately protected.

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Visions of the Mahâbhârata, the clash of battle in heroic ages, and memories of the past triumphs of Indian chivalry must have inspired the sculptor of this noble figure and his prancing, war-harnessed steed, pacing grandly forward over their prostrate foes.

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Here Indian sculptors have shown that they can express with as much fire and passion as the greatest European art the pride of victory and the glory of triumphant warfare; for not even the Homeric grandeur of the Elgin marbles surpasses the magnificent movement and modelling of this Indian Achilles, and the superbly monumental war-horse in its massive strength and vigour is not unworthy of comparison with Verocchio's famous masterpiece at Venice.

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The art we see here is not the less great because it is not necessary to be a veterinary surgeon to see that there is a great deal in equine anatomy which this unknown sculptor has not cared to emphasise. As he had no modern *dilettante* critic to satisfy, he was free to make his statement of facts as simple and general as his artistic consciousness dictated, and to strike a note of epic grandeur hardly ever heard in any modern art.

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The next illustration, Plate XLIV., is of a very different type, and belongs to another school. It is a copper-gilt statuette from Nepal, now in the Calcutta Art Gallery, representing a demi-god, probably Kuvera, the god of worldly prosperity. Divested of his divine attributes, the crown and two supplementary arms, it is a most vivid and speaking portrait of a well-fed, self-indulgent Lama or Brahmin priest, fond of good living and of all things which make life pleasant and comfortable.

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The contrast between this very mundane deity and the idealised spiritual type we have seen before is very striking. Here the artist has only wanted to show the human body without the divine soul, and in this wonderfully animated and strongly modelled figure it is evident that he is as capable of doing this as any European sculptor.

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It is thoroughly modern and European in all its sentiment. There are no dreams, no religious ecstasy, no high spiritual ideals. It is a personification of materialism and of the worldly life. The movement of the fingers speaks of prayer, but the prayers are for worldly, not spiritual benefits. The coarse, strong features and very lively expression of the face indicate sensuality and intellectual power of a low, self-seeking kind, combined with an infinite capacity for the enjoyment of the pleasures of life. The body, well-fed and [Figure: KUVERA rounded in every limb, makes it clear that hard work or abstinence is not part of the gospel which he preaches.

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European artists who have neither the time nor the inclination to study Eastern art commonly assert that the oriental can neither draw nor model the human figure correctly. The criticism is as superficial as it is unjust. The Eastern artist, like the Western, draws what he wants to draw and models what he wants to model, and the failure of the European to appreciate oriental draughtsmanship comes either from his inability, or from his unwillingness, to understand the intention of it.

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I will conclude this brief study of Indian portrait sculpture with another example of the modern Nepalese school, a copper-gilt statuette of a Tibetan nun or abbess, holding the usual sacerdotal drum, made of human skulls, in the right hand, and a beggar's bowl in the left. The original, like the last example, is in the Calcutta Art Gallery.

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This is another delightfully conceived and admirably executed portrait study of an ordinary human being. The real type the artist knew was, perhaps, a frowsy, unkempt, ugly and awkward Tibetan woman, mumbling an empty formula, with a dull, monotonous drum-beat as accompaniment. But guided unconsciously by his inherited art-traditions, and without any desire to flatter or idealise, he has succeeded in expressing, in the whole attitude and in the treatment of the dress and all the accessories, that style and dignity which national feeling and respect for the spiritual calling of his subject demanded, even though individuals should be found unworthy of them.

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In all these portrait types, reflecting so sincerely and truthfully the soul of the people, we can feel the different outlook of a great national artistic tradition, and that of the petty individualistic art of modern Europe, with all its narrowness, self-consciousness, and provincialism.

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“Whole æras,” said Ruskin, “of mighty history are summed and the passions of dead myriads are concentrated in the existence of a noble (national) art; and if that art were among us we should feel it and rejoice.”

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We Europeans who live in India to-day have such an art still living amongst us; but the history is not our history, and the passions of those dead myriads do not move us. So we neither feel it nor rejoice, but rather trample it heedlessly under our feet.

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A TIBETAN NUN

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PAINTING

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RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS

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IT will be easily understood that, owing partly to the destructive influences of a tropical climate acting on materials ordinarily much less durable than stone or metal, and partly to the greater facilities which they offer to the destructive propensities of the vandal and Philistine, the existing records of pictorial art are much fewer than those of sculpture. As the motives and ideals of Indian religious art have been explained more or less fully in the chapters relating to sculpture, I shall not attempt to cover the whole of the same ground in painting, but confine myself chiefly to the secular art of the Mogul period. The Calcutta Art Gallery now possesses one of the finest collections of this remarkable school, and, owing to the facilities kindly afforded me by the Bengal Government, I am enabled to give reproductions of some of the masterpieces of the best Mogul artists.

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One of the oldest pictorial processes in India, as in Egypt, was fresco-painting, *i.e.* painting on a prepared surface of lime spread on a wall of wood, brick, or stone. The true process of fresco-painting—the *fresco buono*, as it is called in Italy, in which the painting is begun and finished piece by piece on a section of a wall (kept continually moist so that the colours are chemically united with the ground)—seems to have been practised in India from very early times, but tempera painting was more common, as it still is in the present day.

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Indian *fresco buono*, when the wall is a suitable one, is an exceedingly permanent process for interior decoration, and much more durable in a tropical climate than oil-painting. But as it was largely used in exposed situations, or in buildings which were not themselves of a permanent nature, very few of the early Indian fresco-paintings have survived except those in the Ajanta cave-temples, the earliest of which are said to date from the second or first centuries before Christ, and a few similar ones in Ceylon.

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Buried in the dry sands of Egypt, which are a wonderful preservative of antiquities, fresco-paintings have retained their freshness intact for many thousands of years. No paintings have yet been recovered from Indian deserts, but in recent years the ancient sand-buried cities of Turkestan have given up numerous fresco-paintings of extra-ordinary interest and almost as perfect in colour as when they were painted. These tell us a great deal of the pictorial art of the Indian Buddhist monasteries in the early centuries of the Christian era, and of its progress eastwards into China and Japan.¹ The description and illustration of them must, however, be left to their fortunate discoverers, Dr. von Lecoq, Professor Grünwedel, and Dr. Stein.

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¹ The most important of these are now in the Ethnographical Museum, Berlin.

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Hiuen Thsang, the Buddhist pilgrim from China who visited India in the seventh century, says that artists from Baktria were employed to paint the Buddhist monasteries during the time of Kanishka, King of Gandhara, about the first century of our era, and that the convent of Serika was famous for its mural paintings. But we must not conclude from this that the traditions of Indian painting were entirely foreign products. The universities of ancient India, like those of Taksashila, near the modern Peshawur, Nalanda in Bengal, and Sridhanya Kataka on the banks of the Krishna, comprised schools of religious painting and sculpture; and in these great culture-centres of India all foreign artistic ideas were gradually transformed by Indian thought, and nationalised.

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From them, also, the Indian art thus created radiated all over Asia in the great epoch dating from about the first century B.C. down to about the eighth century. No doubt it was to these schools that India owed the paintings of Ajanta as well as the sculptures of Amarâvati, Ellora, and Elephanta.

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The early Buddhist records contain many allusions to "picture halls," which were no doubt the halls of monasteries painted with sacred subjects, like those of the sculpture galleries already described; or paintings on the walls of garden quadrangles, protected by verandahs, such as are commonly attached to royal palaces and private dwellings in Northern India. These were used as picture galleries even in recent times, before Indian art fell into utter disrepute, and it became fashionable among Indian princes to import inferior European oil-paintings and English furniture.

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There are many allusions in Sanskrit literature to these picture galleries. For instance, in the description of Ravana's palace in Ceylon given in the Râmâyana:

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Gay, blooming creepers clothed the walls,
Green bowers were there and picture-halls,
And chambers made for soft delight.¹

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¹ "Sunda Kanda," Griffith's translation, Book V., canto vi., p. 297.

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But the most detailed and interesting description of these painted quadrangles is given by Bhabhabhuti, a celebrated Indian dramatist of the sixth century, in his *Uttara Rama Charita*, which is translated by Wilson. Here a whole scene in the first act is devoted to an animated description of a series of pictures illustrating the Râmâyana, painted on the walls of a quadrangle in the garden of Râma's palace at Ayodhya, just as we have seen such scenes sculptured in the quadrangle of the temple of Vishnu at Prambanam.

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The *dramatis personæ* are Râma, King of Ayodhya, Sîtâ, his Queen, and Lakshman, his brother and faithful companion in exile.

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Lakshman thus invites Râma to come and look at the paintings:

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Come, my most noble brother, on these walls

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Behold a skilful artist has portrayed Your story as he learnt it late from me.

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The next scene, called “the contemplation of the picture,” is laid in a pavilion in the garden of the palace. The walls on which the pictures were painted were those which enclosed the garden and pavilion.

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*Enter* LAKSHMANA, SÎTÂ, *and* RÂMA.

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LAKS. Behold the picture.

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SÎTÂ. What are these that crowd Around my lord, and seem to hymn his praises? LAKS. These are the heavenly arms,¹ that Vishwamitra, The holy sage from Kusa sprung, the friend Of all mankind, obtained from great Krisawa, And gave them to the prince to wage the fight With that malignant demon Taraka.

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¹ The arms with which Râma fought against his demon adversaries are represented as animated beings sent by the gods.

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The next panel of the painting showed Râma when as a youth he competed for the hand of Sîtâ at the court of her father, Janaka, King of Videha, breaking the famous bow of Siva, which no other suitor had been able to bend.

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Sîtâ herself describes the picture :

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Yes, I see my lord.
Dark as the deep blue lotus is his hue,
And strength and grace in every limb appear.
Paternal looks dwell wondering on his face,
Lovely with graceful curls, whilst high disdain
Swells every feature, as with force divine
He snaps asunder the celestial bow.

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The carved panel at Bôrôbudûr with the analogous Buddhist story of Prince Siddhartha and the bow of Sinhahânu (Plate XXXIV.) will give us a suggestion of this one.

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The next panel depicted the marriage of Râma and his three brothers with Sîtâ, her sister and cousins :

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Sîtâ. A solemn scene, where gifts of kine secure
Auspicious destiny, and four bright youths
Are knit in marriage bonds with four fair maids ;
I recognise you all—and there, and there
Am I.

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In another part of the painting Râma recognises his bride when he brought her back to his father's palace at Ayodhya, before the cruel decree of banishment drove them to the seclusion of the forest :

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Râma. Ah, too well,
Too well does memory bring back the time
When yet an honoured sire was alive,
Whilst yet a mother's love watched o'er our being ;
When all was joy. Ah me, those days are gone!
But here behold—see how the youthful bride,
Fair Sîtâ, wins maternal admiration ;

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Her smiling countenance resplendent shines
With youth and loveliness; her lips disclose
Teeth white as jasmine buds; her silky curls
Luxuriant shade her cheeks, and every limb
Of brightest texture moves with natural grace,
Like moonbeams gliding through the yielding air.

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The dramatist, with rare skill, goes on to indicate the varied emotions of the royal spectators, as they review all the different incidents of their past life depicted before them—their happiness in the jungle hut on the banks of the Godavery :

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RÂMA. Recall'st thou, love, our humble, happy dwelling
Upon the borders of the shining stream,
Where every hour in fond endearment wrapped,
Or in the sweet interchange of thought engaged,
We lived in transport, not a wish beyond
Each other, reckless of the flight of time?—

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their encounter with the demons, the abduction of Sîtâ and the distracted grief of Râma :

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LAKSHMAN: And here again,
The anguish which craft of wicked fiends
And violence inflicted is renewed,
And the rude stone and adamantine rock,
Dissolve in gentle pity, as they witness
The prince's sorrows in the lonely forest.

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The devotion of the great vulture-king, Jatayau, slain by Ravana while desperately struggling to defend Sîtâ; the valour of Râma's monkey-allies, and the heroic deeds by which the demon-king's stronghold in Ceylon was at last overthrown and the rescue of Sîtâ accomplished, were all described in successive pictures.

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The scene ends with Sîtâ’s happy thought:

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My dearest lord, this picture has inspired
A foolish fancy—may I give it utterance?
\ \ RÂMA. Fear not to speak it, love.
\ \ SÎTÂ. I long once more to wander through the shades
Of the brown woods, and plunge amidst the wave
Of Bhagirathi’s cool translucent stream.

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In the early Buddhist days painting would seem to have been an occupation deemed not unworthy of princes. Mr. R. C. Dutt, in his “History of Civilisation in India,” gives the following incident from the Nâgânanda, a Buddhist drama attributed to the King Sîlâditya II., but probably written by his court poet:

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Jîmûtavâhana, Prince of the Vidyâdharas, finds Malayâvatî, Princess of the Siddhas, engaged in the worship of the Hindu goddess Gauri and falls in love with her. He appears before her just as Dushyanta appeared before Sakuntala, and the maiden reciprocates his passion.

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Jîmûtavâhana wiles away his time by drawing a portrait of Malayâvatî. He asks for a piece of red arsenic to draw it with, and his companion picks up from the ground pieces of clay or stone of five different colours—blue, yellow, red, brown, and grey. Malayâvatî watches the Prince as he draws, but her lover is far from successful in his portrait, for, thinking it to be intended for some other love of the Prince, she faints away in a fit of jealousy.

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From numerous other references to painted portraits in Sanskrit literature it would appear that the rule against portraiture in the Hindu *Sastras* either applied only to sculpture or was not very strictly observed. But probably the prohibition was meant to apply only to the precincts of sacred buildings and not to the *chitrasâlâs*, or picture galleries, attached to royal palaces or to the villas of the court noblemen.

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In a play attributed to Kâlidâsa the heroine is the Queen Dhârinî's beautiful attendant named Mâlavikâ, who is a skilful musician and dancer. The Queen carefully kept her attractive handmaid from the presence of her royal husband, Agnimitra, but foolishly caused Mâlavikâ's portrait to be painted in the *chitrasâla* of the palace. The plot of this play, called *Mâlavikâgnimitra*, discloses the disastrous consequences of the King's next visit to the picture gallery.¹

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¹ R. C. Dutt's "History of Civilisation in India," vol. ii., p. 307.

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In Kâlidâsa's famous play, *Sakuntala*, a considerable part of Act VI. is taken up with a painted portrait of the Queen, with which the king Dushyanta, half demented with grief and remorse for his desertion of Sakuntala, attempts to console himself. In the text translated by Sir William Jones, this portrait is represented as painted by a lady of the Court, but the more recent version of Sir M. Monier-Williams makes the king himself the artist.

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The picture represented Sakuntala and her two attendants in the garden of the hermitage where Dushyanta first saw them. Sakuntala herself is leaning "apparently a little tired, against the stem of a mango-tree, the tender leaves of which glitter with the water she has poured upon them. Her arms are gracefully extended; her face is somewhat flushed with the heat, and a few flowers have escaped from her hair, which has become unfastened and hangs in loose tresses about her neck."

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The King, looking at the picture, declares that the background is only half-painted, and sends an attendant to fetch the painting implements. He will have the river Mâlinî portrayed in it:

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Its tranquil course by banks of sand impeded;
Upon the brink a pair of swans; beyond,
The hills adjacent to Himâlaya,
Studded with deer; and, near the spreading shade
Of some large tree, where 'mid the branches hang
The hermits' vests of bark, a tender doe,
Rubbing its downy forehead on the horn
Of a black antelope, should be depicted.

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Then he would add some ornaments to the figure of Sakuntala:

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A sweet Sirîsha blossom should be twined
Behind the ear; its perfumed crest depending
Towards her cheek; and, resting on her bosom,
A lotus fibre necklace, soft and bright
As an autumnal moonbeam."

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His companion, Mâthavya, notices that Sakuntala is covering her lips with one hand as if to prevent a bee, which "intent on thieving honey from the flowers seems to have mistaken her mouth for a rosebud," from settling on her lips.

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This was an incident which had actually occurred at the King’s first meeting with Sakuntala, as described in the first act of the play, and Dushyanta, led on by the vividness of the painting to imagine that the picture was reality, calls out:

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A bee! drive off the impudent insect, will you?

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The story will recall analogous ones told of the ancient Greek artists and their skill in imitative painting. A very similar one is told of the first Chinese painter known to history, Tsao Fuh-hing, employed in the court of the Emperor Sun K’uan in the third century a.d. In this case a fly was so skilfully imitated in a painting that the Emperor himself raised his hand to brush it off.¹

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¹ Anderson, “Pictorial Arts of Japan.”

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Both translators use the word “canvas” in describing the picture. Some of the ancient Central Asian paintings discovered by Dr. Von Lecoq are painted on cloth prepared with a ground of lime like modern Tibetan paintings; so it is not impossible that a canvas of this kind may have been used by Indian painters in the time of Kâlidâs. But from the Sanskrit text it would appear more probable that a wooden panel is intended.

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Of this secular art of the pre-Mogul times in India there are no examples extant, but from what we know of the religious sculpture of the same period and from the remarkable technical excellence of the best paintings of the Ajanta cave-temples we can fairly assume that the merit ascribed to it by Sanskrit writers was not overrated.

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The period covered by the religious paintings of Ajanta extends from about the second or first centuries before Christ to about the seventh century of our era, or over most of the great epoch of Indian art which has been reviewed in the previous chapters. Unfortunately, owing in a great measure to neglect and ill-treatment these beautiful paintings have lost all of their original charm of colour, and are so damaged otherwise as to be at present only pitiable wrecks of what they have been. A singular chapter of accidents, combined with the usual economical reasons, prevented Mr. John Griffiths from doing full justice to them in his work on Ajanta, and it is to be feared that interest in Indian art, apart from archæology, is not sufficiently strong to encourage any one to undertake the task of filling up the gaps before these almost unique records of early Indian art have entirely disappeared.

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We can see in the best Ajanta paintings, especially in those of the caves numbered 16 and 17, the same intense love of nature and spiritual devotion as are evident in the sculptures of Bôrôbudûr. I must content myself with reproducing from Mr. Griffiths' work the very precious fragment of "The Mother and Child before Buddha" from Cave 17, which is quite on a level with the best art of Bôrôbudûr and in its exquisite

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MOTHER AND CHILD BEFORE BUDDHA

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sentiment comparable with the wonderful Madonnas of Giovanni Bellini.

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Historically the most interesting of these paintings is a large one in the first cave, representing an incident in the reign of Pulikesin II., in whose kingdom of Mahârashtra Ajanta was situated. Mr. Vincent Smith says of this painting:

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"It is still easily recognisable as a vivid representation of the ceremonial attending the presentation of their credentials by the Persian envoys (from Khushru II., King of Persia, to Pulikesin, in the thirty-sixth year of his reign, A.D. 625–6). This picture, in addition to its interest as a contemporary record of unusual political relations between India and Persia, is of the highest value as a landmark in the history of art. It not only fixes the date of some of the most important paintings at Ajanta, and so establishes a standard by which the date of the others can be judged, but it also proves, or goes a long way towards proving, that the Ajanta school of pictorial art was derived directly from Persia and ultimately from Greece."¹

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¹ "Early History of India," p. 325.

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In the last sentence Mr. Vincent Smith shows the unconscious bias of the European archæologist. While it is perfectly true that the influence of Persian art can be seen at Ajanta, and in a great deal of the art of Northern India, it is obvious that in this case it can only be estimated at its proper value by a comparison of Ajanta paintings with Persian paintings of the same epoch, and not from the fact that a painting by Ajanta artists represents the reception of a Persian Embassy. The Ajanta school, according to archæologists, had been in existence for seven or eight hundred years before this particular painting was executed, a length of time which is surely sufficient to establish a right to be considered Indian. Professor Grünwedel's recent remarkable discoveries in the old Buddhist monasteries of Turkestan will no doubt throw light on the affinities of the art of Ajanta with that of Persia and Central Asia.

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In an essay on the Indian Schools of Painting Mr. Vincent Smith says that "whoever seriously undertakes the critical study of the paintings of Ajanta and Bagh will find, I have no doubt, that the artists drew their inspiration from the West, and I think he will also find that their style is a local development of the cosmopolitan art of the contemporary Roman empire."¹ Here again I venture to think that Mr. Vincent Smith, like Professor Grünwedel and others, confuses the assimilation of foreign technique by Indian traditional craftsmanship with artistic inspiration. The Buddhist monastic schools of Northern India, from which the art of Ajanta was derived, were sufficiently cosmopolitan in character to account for all the foreign details which are found in these paintings, but their title to be considered Indian is just as valid as that of the schools of Athens to An empty page with no printed text.

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¹ "Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal," vol. lviii., p. 177.

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FRESCO PAINTING FROM SIGIRIYA

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be called Greek, those of Italy to be called Italian, and perhaps stronger than that of the schools of Oxford to be considered English.

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The cosmopolitan character of these Indian philosophical schools, at the time when the foundations of Indian art were laid, was derived from the fact that they were rather schools of original research than schools of dogma and ritual. Every idea and every suggestion, whether foreign or Indian, would be weighed, considered, and, if found useful, thrown into one great crucible to form the synthesis which made up Indian philosophy, science, and art. It is a wholly misleading method of analysis to isolate details in these paintings which may be called Western and use them to prove that the inspiration of the art came from Greece or Rome. It is not the material used by an artist which shows his inspiration, but the way he uses it and the mode of his expression.

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If the Ajanta paintings are placed side by side with those of Pompeii, which are true Græco-Roman art of a period not very remote from their time, all the details to which archæologists attach so much significance will assume their proper value in relation to the whole, and I venture to say that no artist would maintain that there is in these two schools any reliable evidence of being inspired by common artistic ideas, or of being formed upon common methods of artistic expression. The Ajanta paintings, as a whole, appear to be as truthful an interpretation of Indian life and thought at the time when they were painted as the Græco-Roman paintings undoubtedly are of the life and thought of Pompeii. This must be taken as strong presumptive evidence of their artistic originality. Even assuming that Græco-Roman painters and sculptors may have sometimes been the technical teachers in Indian schools, they can no more claim on that account to have inspired Indian art than Shakespeare’s schoolmistress can be said to have inspired the tragedies of *Macbeth* and *King Lear*.

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Indian art was inspired by Indian nature, Indian philosophy and religious teaching, and no one, I imagine, would go so far as to say that all these were imported from the West. The little Greek, or Græco-Roman, art that came into India went there in the ordinary way of commercial and political intercourse, not as part of any intellectual or religious propaganda. It was assimilated by Indian art in much the same way as a great deal of oriental art became incorporated in Italian art, from the time of the building of St. Mark’s at Venice down to the palmy days of the Renaissance; but we do not say that Italian art was “inspired” by the East.

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When Indian art went into Ceylon, Java, Tibet, China, and the Far East, it went with Indian missionaries as part of their philosophy and religion, and so vital was the influence of Indian thought upon the art of those countries that it remains evident after the lapse of two thousand The image is a blank page; there is no text to transcribe.

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years. India truly inspired the art of the rest of Asia, but neither at Ajanta nor anywhere else in India can the influence of Western art be called inspiration.

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To form a just estimate of any national art we must consider, not what that art has borrowed, but what it has given to the world. Viewed in this light Indian art must be placed among the greatest of the great schools, either in Europe or in Asia. None of the great art-schools are entirely indigenous and self-contained, in the archæological sense; there are none which did not borrow material from other countries, and the schools of Greece and Italy are no exceptions to this rule. India was a borrower, like Greece and Italy, but what she borrowed from Persia was, so to speak, a draft on her own bank, a part of the common stock of Aryan culture. What India borrowed from outside her own world was repaid a hundred-fold by products of her own creative genius. If she took this from here, that from there, so did Greece, so did Italy; but out of what she took came higher ideals than Greece ever dreamt of, and things of beauty that Italy never realised. Let these constitute India’s claim to the respect and gratitude of humanity.

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