Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c11.10

c11.10

The important part which craftsmen, more especially oriental craftsmen, have always played in the world’s history as missionaries of civilisation, culture, and religion, is not generally recognised by bookmen. Even at the present day the Indian craftsman, deeply versed in his *silpa-Sastras*, learned in folk-lore and in national epic literature, is, though excluded from Indian universities—or rather, on that account—far more highly cultured, intellectually and spiritually, than the average Indian graduate. In medieval times the craftsman’s intellectual influence, being creative and not merely assimilative, was at least as great as that of the priest and bookman. The Founder of Christianity was Himself a craftsman, and in those noblest monuments of the Christian faith—the Gothic cathedrals of medieval Europe—we can see that the splendid craftsmen of the Middle Ages preached and practised a religion like their Master’s, pure and undefiled before God, while a self-indulgent and contentious priesthood wrangled over its dogmas.