Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c7: Illustrations

Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c7

Language: English

Illustrations

c7.1

A Portrait Group by one of Shah Jahan’s Court Painters (in colours) . . . . . . *Frontispiece* *From a painting in the Calcutta Art Gallery. Size of original.*

| PLATE | | FACING PAGE |
| I. | An Indian Yogi. (*a*) From a photograph; (*b*) a portrait statuette showing modern European influence in Indian art . . . . . . . . | 26 |
| II. | Statue of the Dhyâni Buddha, Amogha Siddha, from the North Side of Bôrôbudûr, Java . . . | 28 |
| III. | Colossal Statue of Gautama, the Earthly Buddha, from Anuradhapura, Ceylon . . . . . | 30 |
| IV. | Alto-relievo of Buddha preaching, from Sarnath . | 32 |
| V. | Copper-gilt Figure of the Bodhisattva, Padmapâni, or Avalokiteshvara . . . . . . | 34 |
| | *From the original in the Calcutta Art Gallery. Height, 22¾ in.* | |
| VI. | Copper-gilt Figure of Vajrapâni, or Dorje Chang . | 36 |
| | *From the original in the Calcutta Art Gallery. Height, 19 in.* | |
| VII. | Copper-gilt Figure of a Bodhisattva . . . . | 38 |
| | *From the original in the Calcutta Art Gallery.* | |
| VIII. | Buddha worshipped by Indra : a Relief from Loriyân Tangai . . . . . . . . | 42 |
| | *From a photograph in the India Office Library.* | |
| IX. | Buddha preaching at Benares: a Relief from Loriyân Tangai . . . . . . . | 44 |
| | *From a photograph in the India Office Library.* | |

c7.4

| PLATE | | FACING PAGE |
| X. | Statuette in Gilt Copper (Cast) of the Bodhisattva Maitreya . . . . . | 46 |
| | *From the original in the Calcutta Art Gallery. Total height, 23 in.* | |
| XI. | Statuette in Copper (Cast) of Maitreya preaching . . . . . . . | 46 |
| | *From the original in the possession of Dr. A. K. Coomaraswamy.* | |
| XII. | Statue at Anuradhapura, Ceylon . . . . | 48 |
| XIII. | Statuette in Gilt Copper of a Bodhisattva and His Two "Sâktis" . . . . | 48 |
| | *From the original in the Calcutta Art Gallery. Total height, 23 in.* | |
| XIV. | Alto-relievo of Prajnâparamitâ . . . | 51 |
| | *From a cast in the Colonial Museum, Haarlem.* | |
| XV. | Statuette in Gilt Copper of Târâ . . . | 52 |
| | *From the original in the Calcutta Art Gallery. Height, 15½ in.* | |
| XVI. | Statuette in Gilt Copper of Târâ . . . | 54 |
| | *From the original in the Calcutta Art Gallery. Height, 6 in.* | |
| XVII. | Bronze Statuette of Dharmapâla in the Batavian Museum . . . . . . . | 58 |
| XVIII. | Statuette in Gilt Copper of Manjusri . . | 60 |
| | *From the original in the Calcutta Art Gallery. Height, 11¼ in.* | |
| XIX. | Statuette in Gilt Copper of the Buddhist Trimûrti | 62 |
| | *From the original in the Calcutta Art Gallery. Height, 8½ in.* | |
| XX. | Alto-relievo of Durgâ slaying Mahisha . . | 62 |
| | *From the original in the Ethnographic Museum, Leyden.* | |
| XXI. | Siva as Bhairava: Fragment from the Caves of Elephanta . . . . . . | 64 |
| | *From a photograph in the India Office Library.* | |
| XXII. | Ravana under Kailâsa, from the Temple of Kailâsa at Ellora . . . . . | 66 |
| | *From a photograph in the India Office Library.* | |
| XXIII. | Ravana under Kailâsa, from the Caves of Elephanta . . . . . . . | 68 |
| | *From a photograph in the India Office Library.* | |

c7.5

c7.6

c7.7

PAINTING

c7.8

c7.9

c7.10

c7.11

SCULPTURE

c7.13

INTRODUCTORY

c7.14

“Quand on veut comprendre un art, il faut regarder l’âme du public auquel il s’adressait.”—H. TAINE, *Voyage en Italie.*

c7.15

NOTHING is more significant of the gulf which separates East from West than the general ignorance of Europe regarding the ideals of Indian art. India, unlike Europe, has a still living, traditional, and national art, intimately bound up with the social and religious life of the people; and this art, if we knew it better, might help both Europeans and Indians to a closer mutual sympathy and understanding. But the secularised and denationalised art of Europe has no affinity with the living art of India, and we, aliens in race, thought, and religion, have never taken anything but a *dilettante*, archæological, or commercial interest in it. Its deeper meanings are hidden from us, and those spiritual longings and desires, which come straight from the heart of a people, to find expression in their poetry, music, and their art, strike no chord of sympathy in ours.

c7.16

Indian art, to most of us, means only a pretty chintz, a rich brocade, or gorgeous carpet, fantastic carving, or curious inlay; and an ancient architecture, fascinating to the tourist and archæologist, with its reminiscences of bygone pomp and splendour, but generally regarded as an extinct art, useless for the needs of our prosaic and practical times.

c7.17

The appreciation of Indian sculpture and painting by the great majority of Europeans has not hitherto been carried further than one of these hypotheses:

c7.18

I. That the old Indian schools of sculpture and painting have never reached the higher planes of artistic expression, as sculpture and painting are understood in Europe, or as represented by Indian architecture, which is acknowledged to be sometimes of very high artistic merit.

c7.19

II. That, if they have reached such higher planes, all traces of the results they achieved, and of the traditions which produced them, have been irretrievably lost.

c7.20

The first of these hypotheses implies an intellectual anomaly almost unparalleled in the whole of art-history. If we except those countries and epochs in which Muhammadan rulers enforced the strict letter of their religious law which forbade the representation of animate nature in art, there is no instance of any nation producing great schools of architecture which has been without corresponding schools of sculpture or painting.

c7.21

It is *primâ facie* incredible that a highly developed civilisation, spreading over thousands of years and over a vast area like India, which has produced a splendid literature and expressed lofty ideals in building materials, should have lacked the capacity, or found no occasion for giving them expression in materials for painting or sculpture. Nevertheless, this remains the popular opinion of Europe with regard to Indian art, and it is the hypothesis which has governed our whole educational policy in India, since universities, museums, art galleries, and schools of art were established under British rule. To suggest that an Indian art student will find in Indian art all the higher inspiration which he has been taught to seek only in the great schools of Europe is a novel proposition, opposed to all the accepted theories of orientalists.

c7.22

Mr. Vincent Smith, whose "Early History of India" is one of the classics of oriental research, in the following words voices the usual Anglo-Indian view of Indian fine art, and the reasoned opinion of orientalists: "The Gandhara, or Peshawur sculptures . . . would be admitted, by most persons competent to form an opinion, to be the best specimens of the plastic art ever known to exist in India. Yet even these are only echoes of the second-rate Roman art of the third and fourth centuries. In the elaboration of minute, intricate, and often extremely pretty, ornamentation on stone, it is true, the Indian artists are second to none. The stone-cutters in Gandhara and at Amarâvati display the same skill in drawing elaborate patterns, and the same skill in executing them, which we now admire in the work of the modern carpet-weavers and vase-makers. But in the expression of human passions and emotions Indian art has completely failed, except during the time when it was held in Græco-Roman leading-strings, and it has scarcely, at any time, essayed an attempt to give visible form to any divine ideal.”¹

c7.23

¹ “Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,” vol. lviii., p. 172. In justice to Mr. Vincent Smith, it must be said that his more recent writings seemed to show a higher appreciation of Indian art than is here expressed, but the passage above quoted is still a faithful reflection of the official and unofficial views of Indian art which dominate our whole artistic policy.

c7.24

Many archæologists have devoted themselves to unravelling the historical, ethnological, and mythological problems connected with Indian art, but art, *quâ* art, rarely receives any attention from them. They have been contented with this assumption: that sculpture and painting, as fine arts, were introduced into India by the Greeks and Romans, and ceased to have any importance when that Western influence was withdrawn. We might say, with even greater justification, that all our English Gothic architecture is French or German, and describe the builders of St. Mark’s at Venice as the creators of later Italian art.

c7.25

It is of course true that every nationality, when it seeks to work out its artistic ideals, makes use of any agents, native or foreign, which happen to be within reach. But the Greeks no more created Indian sculpture and painting than they created Indian philosophy and religion. Their æsthetic ideals were essentially different from those of India, and they never at any time imposed them upon Indian art, which, in its distinctive and essential character, is entirely the product of Indian thought and Indian artistic genius.

c7.26

It is a well-established tradition among Anglo-Indians to take for granted that there has always been a peculiar intellectual hiatus in the Indian mind, which has at all times prevented any great development of the fine arts. And whenever any striking example, appealing to popular European sentiment, seems to prove the contrary, the suggestion that it is due to Western influence is sure to be accepted as sufficient and wholly satisfactory. A familiar instance of this is the attribution of the Mogul masterpiece, the Taj at Agra, to an Italian adventurer at the court of Shah Jahan. The evidence on which this story is based is, as I have endeavoured to show,¹ absurdly unsubstantial, and utterly unworthy of credence.

c7.27

¹ "The Taj and its Designers," *The Nineteenth Century and After*, June 1903.

c7.28

It was not until Sir William Jones translated *Sakuntala* that modern Europe began to give India the credit of any literature worth serious attention, except that of a philosophic or ritualistic character; and as literary interests are far more widespread and influential than those which are purely artistic, it is natural that they should take precedence in the progress of mutual understanding between the East and West. There are also many special reasons why Indian fine art should have remained so long a *terra incognita* to Europeans.

c7.29

In the first place, Indian artistic expression begins from a starting-point far removed from that of the European. Only an infinitesimal number of Europeans, even of those who pass the best part of their lives in India, make any attempt to understand the philosophic, religious, mythological, and historical ideas of which Indian art is the embodiment; and without some understanding of these even a trained artist will never be a competent or impartial critic of Indian art.

c7.30

Before we can hope to understand either Indian art or literature we must first of all come down from the pedestal of superiority from which we love to declare that the oriental mind is inscrutable. It is not really so incomprehensible as it seems to be at that elevation, and, as Sir M. Monier-Williams pertinently observes: “Unless we seek to understand the inhabitants, unless we think it worth while to study their ancient literatures, their religious ideas, and their time-honoured institutions, unless we find in them something to admire and respect, we can never look forward hopefully to the time when the present lamentable partition wall which obstructs the free intercourse of social relations between European and Asiatic races will be entirely removed.”¹

c7.31

¹ ^1 Preface to translation of *Sakuntala*, 7th edit.

c7.32

Art is, in one sense, a universal language, but the finer inflections of it are so intimately associated with national life and thought that no one can pretend to understand any distinctly national phase of it who stands entirely aloof from its national environment.

c7.33

Art, moreover, in Europe is made a subject of special study and exegesis by writers of the first rank. Every school of sculpture and painting, and every great artist, have their biographers and interpreters. Magnificent collections, both public and private, are open to students of works of art, so that it is easy for any educated person to have at least a superficial acquaintance with European art-history, and an intelligent understanding of artistic thought and expression. The profession of an artist is an honourable one, and there are organised associations of artists which can, and do to some extent, influence and direct public opinion in art matters.

c7.34

All these facilities and advantages are wanting in India. There is not yet a single Museum in the world in which Indian art can be properly appreciated or understood. An Indian museum, well organised on artistic, instead of archæological or commercial lines, would be as astonishing a revelation to artistic Europe as the discovery of the Hindu drama was to European *literati*. But Great Britain seems quite content to leave the discoverer of Indian fine art to France, or Germany, or to American millionaires. The British Museum shows the stolid British indifference to the spiritual ideals of our Empire in the East. The museums in India, generally speaking, are equally unconcerned with them. South Kensington hardly recognises Indian art, except in its commercial and industrial aspects. Standard books on Indian mythology, like Moor's "Indian Pantheon," and typical collections, like that of the Indian Institute at Oxford, give one the impression that all Indian sculpture is barbarous, obscene, or trivial, and that painting as a fine art is almost unknown in India. This is also the impression which the great majority of Anglo-Indians bring back with them to Europe.

c7.35

France shows a more intelligent and artistic appreciation of Indian æsthetic culture. In Germany many distinguished savants are keenly exploiting the artistic treasures of the East, with the active support and personal interest of the German Emperor. Berlin is now the only centre where the early schools of Asiatic painting, from which modern Chinese and Japanese painting were derived, can be studied. At Haarlem and Leyden one can gather some idea of the wonderful sculpture wrought by Indian artists in Java. But no collection exists which will give to an art-student a tolerably adequate conception of the masterpieces of Indian painting and sculpture, or of those higher ideals towards which the whole art of Asia has been for ever striving.

c7.36

It has hardly ever occurred to Indians of former times that the national art, which was the outward and visible expression of national culture and sentiment, required any written exegesis or history. Nor, indeed, does a truly national art require the aid of literature, for it is in itself a history and an explanation. In the present day what we call education in India stands so far aloof from all artistic culture that no Indian has ever come forward to expound the philosophy of Indian art, or to assert its rightful place by the side of the great æsthetic schools of the world. The name of Bôrôbudûr, where the story of the Light of Asia is told in one of the grandest epics man ever carved in stone, conveys no more meaning to an English-educated Indian than Athens or Rome would to an intelligent Eskimo or Laplander.

c7.37

CHAPTER II

c7.38

THE DEGRADATION OF INDIAN ART

c7.39

INDIAN art, moreover, has been for two and a half centuries under a political, social, and intellectual ban unparalleled in history. What would be the state of the fine arts in Europe at the present day, if, several centuries ago, an autocratic ruler had closed all the art-galleries, museums, academies, and schools of art which might have existed, ordered all pictures to be burnt and sculpture to be broken, and proscribed the profession of an artist as irreligious; if then, after a period of general anarchy, during which all national art-traditions had been nearly obliterated, a committee of the American Senate, or of graduates of the Calcutta University, were placed in authority and constituted by public opinion as the chief arbiters of artistic taste and fashion?

c7.40

To an artist unacquainted with Indian conditions the proposition may seem grotesque, but it does, in fact, give a not inaccurate representation of the position of the fine arts in India to-day. We have here a striking example of that overcentralisation which has grown to be such a serious political danger in India, and is at last attracting the attention of the highest authorities. No other parts of the official machinery have failed so miserably, or wrought so much serious mischief in Indian institutions as those which are concerned, directly or indirectly, with art and craft.

c7.41

From the latter half of the seventeenth century, during Aurangzîb's iconoclastic rule, the artist families, both Hindu and Muhammadan, which had enjoyed the enlightened patronage of the Mogul Court since the days of Babar, found themselves deprived of all State encouragement and denounced as infidels and heretics. The masterpieces of Indian sculpture and fresco-painting were mutilated and defaced on the ground that they offended against the precepts of the faith, and very few indeed have escaped the ruthless hands of Aurangzîb's fanatical followers. The painter and sculptor found their occupation gone, save in the few Hindu states which retained their independence; but even these were too much occupied in the struggle for liberty to devote much attention to the cultivation of the fine arts.

c7.42

After the death of Aurangzîb anarchy and misrule prevailed over the greater part of India. The images of gold, silver, gilded copper, and bronze—the precious substances in which, according to Hindu and Buddhist ritual, the sacred simulacra were fashioned—would always be tempting booty, and no doubt consigned to the melting-pot, to furnish cash or weapons, whenever the hordes of marauders, Indian and European, which ravaged the country from one end to the other, could lay their hands upon them. In the general insecurity of life and property, neither literary nor artistic culture found any protection or foothold.

c7.43

It might have been supposed that the restoration of law and order under British rule, would have revived conditions at least favourable to the material prosperity of the fine arts. But the interests of England in India at that time were purely commercial, and Europe was too convinced of the intellectual inferiority of oriental races to take much interest in anything Indian which was not a marketable commodity. The affectation of classic taste, which at the close of the eighteenth century was much stronger among cultured Englishmen than it is now, could not recognise art except in a mask borrowed from Greek or Roman antiquity.

c7.44

So Indian artists received even less recognition from their new masters than they had from Aurangzîb and his Muhammadan satraps. The wealthy Indians who wished to stand well with the British raj commenced to copy the fashions of their masters, building huge palaces in imitation of the English mansions of the period, and decorating the state apartments in which they received their European guests with oil-paintings and statuary imported from Europe. In this way not only was a great deal of patronage diverted from Indian artists into foreign channels, but a false standard of taste and an archæological prescription of art, entirely vicious and destructive to indigenous culture and artistic tradition, were created, making India at the present day the happy hunting-ground of every artistic charlatan, European or Indian.

c7.45

The owners of these pretentious palaces did not find in them any sense of superior comfort or convenience, for they seldom occupied more than a corner of them ; and the bad copies or counterfeits of European pictures, palmed off as originals by unscrupulous dealers, were not considered or treated as works of art, but only as a necessary part of the quasi-European upholstery.

c7.46

As British influence and power extended, the credit of Indian art fell lower and lower. The Indian public works system, by creating a monopoly in Government buildings and prescribing for them a pseudo-classic or Gothic style, has deprived the Indian master-builder of his employment, degraded the noblest of all the arts into a common trade, and gone far to extinguish the living traditions of some of the finest architecture the world has seen.

c7.47

Still more fatal to national culture and art has been the influence of European universities in India. Founded originally only to supply the demand of Government offices for English-speaking clerks, they have confined their scope to glorification of clerical accomplishments and utilitarian aims, at the expense of all the higher artistic faculties. Academic distinctions, as well as the honours and emoluments of Government service, are restricted to the scholastic, legal, engineering, and medical professions. The "failed" matriculate of the Calcutta University, with his new-found text-book wisdom, and perhaps some scraps of modern studio jargon picked up at second hand, looks down with scorn upon the hereditary artist who voices Indian national traditions—traditions which, even dimmed and tarnished as they are, still outshine in truth, sincerity, and spirituality, all that India knows of Western art.

c7.48

The artistic castes, fallen into discredit as exponents of national culture, either join in the general scramble for Government clerkships, or accept the choice offered them of becoming mechanical copyists of European commercial art, or of manufacturing the cheap bric-à-brac which passes for Indian art in the European market. In some of the native states, however, more especially in Rajputana and in Mysore, there is still some demand for their services as artists; and herein at present lies the best, if not the only, hope for Indian art.

c7.49

This is the situation which the Government Schools of Art, established in India for the last fifty years, have had to face. On the assumption that Indian painting and sculpture have never found a much higher degree of poetic expression than that represented by pure ornament—or the stage reached by all uncivilised and uncultivated races—it would seem that the usual European system of art-teaching is entirely reasonable and logical in India. On the other hand, if there really has been for 5,000 years this remarkable hiatus in the Indian intellect, which the European assumes and the English-educated Indian accepts without question, the work of English artists who may have charge of these schools will always be peculiarly dreary and unprofitable; for, though the technique of drawing, painting, and sculpture can be acquired by almost any average intelligence through diligence and perseverance, mere proficiency in technique will no more produce artists than practice in rhyming will create poets. When, therefore, in 1896 I took charge of the Calcutta Government Art Gallery, which up to that time had contained only a very mediocre and miscellaneous collection of European pictures, I began an attempt to place the study of Indian art upon a proper footing by arranging a collection of Indian ornament, architecture, painting, and sculpture in proper correlation as a connected whole, thus completing the curious truncated pyramid usually exhibited to the world as the art of India.

c7.50

The Gallery, in spite of many difficulties, now possesses some important materials for the study of Indian sculpture and painting. Among them are some fine examples from Nepal and Tibet of the Hindu-Buddhist art which was the art of Northern India in the early centuries of our era, an epoch of the greatest importance in the art-history of the world.

c7.51

At the beginning of the Christian era, and for some centuries previously, when the classic art of Europe had already passed its zenith, India was drawing in towards herself a great flood of artistic culture from Western Asia, derived originally from the far-distant sources of Babylon and Assyria, but strongly tinged with the subsidiary stream which was then flowing back into it from Greece and Rome. Out of these eclectic influences, joined with the old indigenous traditions, Indian religious thought quickly formulated a new synthesis of art, which in its turn became the source from which other great currents flowed north, south, east, and west.

c7.52

In these early centuries of the Christian era, and from this Indian source, came the inspiration of the great schools of Chinese painting which from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries stood first in the whole world. Successive hordes of Asiatic invaders, beginning with those which flocked like vultures to gather the spoils of the decaying Roman Empire, kept open the highways between East and West, and brought a reflex of the same traditions into Europe. The influence of India's artistic culture can be clearly traced, not only in Byzantine art, but in the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages. Europe is very apt to dwell upon the influence of Western art and culture upon Asiatic civilisation, but the far greater influence of Asiatic thought, religion, and culture upon the art and civilisation of Europe is rarely appraised at its proper value.

c7.53

From the seaports of her western and eastern coasts India at this time also sent streams of colonists, missionaries, and craftsmen all over Southern Asia, Ceylon, Siam, and far-distant Kambodia. Through China and Korea Indian art entered Japan about the middle of the sixth century. About a.d. 603 Indian colonists from Gujerat brought Indian art into Java, and at Bôrôbudûr in the eighth and ninth centuries Indian sculpture achieved its greatest triumphs. Some day, when European art criticism has widened its present narrow horizon, and learnt the foolishness of using the art-standards of Greece and Italy as a tape wherewith to measure and appraise the communings of Asia with the Universal and the Infinite, it will grant the nameless sculptors of Bôrôbudûr an honourable place among the greatest artists the world has ever known.

c7.54

Among the other great works which this age produced were the sculptures of Ellora and Elephanta, the frescoes of the Ajanta school, and the splendid paintings recently unearthed by Professor Grünwedel and Dr. von Lecoq, which will throw a new flood of light upon the art-history of Asia. It was the golden age of Indian literature, made famous by the noble Hindu epics, the Râmâyana and Mahâbhârata, by *Sakuntala* and other masterpieces of the Sanskrit drama. It reached its culminating point about the time when Sankaracharya, the great Hindu philosopher and religious reformer, lived, or about the eighth century; and the first Muhammadan invasions of India ushered in its close. From this period, though Indian art continued to grow and flourish on Indian soil, it ceased to have much influence on the outside world until the palmy days of the Mogul Empire.

c7.55

Nepal is almost the only part of India in which the traditions of this grand epoch of religious art, extending, roughly speaking, over the first millennium of the Christian era, has been continued down to modern times; for in India itself they have been either completely extirpated by the Muhammadans, or greatly modified under later Arab and Persian influences. Nepal was the refuge of the Buddhists and Hindu monks from the furious assaults of Islam in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and there many artistic treasures have escaped the Muhammadan iconoclasts of the time of Aurangzîb.

c7.56

The great period of the secular schools of Indian painting was under the Mogul emperors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At this time India again became the art-centre of Asia. The religious zeal of the Sunni sects of Muhammadans, and the partiality for whitewash as an artistic process affected by most Anglo- Indians, have destroyed nearly all traces of the fresco paintings which covered the walls of the Mogul palaces and villas. The best artistic records of this time now extant are the exquisite miniature paintings which were highly prized by the cultured *dilettanti* of the Mogul Court. With songs, music, and impromptu Persian sonnets, the odes of Sa‘di and Hafiz, or the effusions of the Court poets, they served to while away many an idle hour in the luxurious palaces of the Great Mogul, and in the elegant villas of his nobles.

c7.57

The Calcutta Art Gallery now possesses one of the finest collections of these Indian miniature paintings, dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the classic period of Mogul art in India, down to the present day; a few of them were transferred to the Victoria Memorial by Lord Curzon’s orders, to form the nucleus of an historical collection. The Khuda Bux Library at Bankipur has also a splendid collection, formed with great taste and discrimination. The Lahore Museum has an interesting collection of portraits. The Maharajah of Jaipur possesses some fine examples from Akbar’s collection; and the Maharajah of Alwar and some other Indian Princes have examples of great artistic value.

c7.58

In Europe there are several more or less important private collections, among which that belonging to Colonel H. B. Hanna, now in the Newcastle Art Gallery, is the most interesting. The British Museum; the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington; the Ethnographic Museum, Berlin; the Institute of France, and the National Library, Paris, have small collections, but that of the Calcutta Art Gallery is the only important one which has been formed on strictly artistic principles.

c7.59

CHAPTER III

c7.60

THE DIVINE IDEAL IN INDIAN ART

c7.61

BEFORE any one, be he artist or layman, attempts to draw any comparison between Indian and European art, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of the essential difference between the European and the Indian starting-points in the higher planes of artistic expression. The common philosophic basis of art in all countries assumes that art is not merely an imitation or record of facts and phenomena in Nature, but an interpretation—the effort of the human mind to grasp the inner beauty and meaning of the external facts of Nature.

c7.62

Nature, to the European, is always an obvious reality which must be studied, exploited, and analysed, so that the exact composition of every organic and inorganic element in it may be ascertained and explained. In the degenerate popular art of to-day, which exists only to amuse and distract an uncultivated and unthinking section of the public, an art which is also affected by those Indians who put on European culture as they put on a new suit of clothes, this scientific study of Nature's facts has led to the common view that imitation is the real and only end of all fine art.

c7.63

Realism to the Indian artist has a different meaning from what we attach to it; for Indian philosophy regards all we see in Nature as transitory, illusive phenomena, and declares that the only reality is the Divine Essence, or Spirit. So, while European art hardly concerns itself with the Unseen, but limits its mental range to the realm of Nature, and thus retains, even in its highest flights, the sense and form of its earthly environment, Indian art (like the Egyptian, of which it is the living representative) is always striving to realise something of the Universal, the Eternal, and the Infinite.

c7.64

European art has, as it were, its wings clipped: it knows only the beauty of earthly things. Indian art, soaring into the highest empyrean, is ever trying to bring down to earth something of the beauty of the things above.

c7.65

The Greeks, and the artists of the Renaissance who followed in their footsteps, attempted to arrive at the highest type of beauty by a selection of what appeared to them to be the most admirable in various types of humanity, and in natural forms and appearances. Physical beauty was to the Greeks a divine characteristic; the perfect human animal received divine honours from them, both before and after death.

c7.66

The Hindu artist has an entirely different starting-point. He believes that the highest type of beauty must be sought after, not in the imitation, or selection, of human or natural forms, but in the endeavour to suggest something finer and more subtle than ordinary physical beauty. Mere bodily strength and mundane perfections of form are rarely glorified in Indian art. When the Indian artist models a representation of the Deity with an attenuated waist and abdomen, and suppresses all the smaller anatomical details so as to obtain an extreme simplicity of contour, the European draws a mental comparison with the ideas of Phidias or Michelangelo, and declares that the Indian is sadly ignorant of anatomy and incapable of imitating the higher forms of Nature.

c7.67

But the Indian artist in the best period of Indian sculpture and painting was no more ignorant of anatomy than Phidias or Praxiteles. He would create a higher and more subtle type than a Grecian athlete or a Roman senator, and suggest that spiritual beauty which, according to his philosophy, can only be reached by the surrender of worldly attachments and the suppression of worldly desires.

c7.68

Indian art is essentially idealistic, mystic, symbolic, and transcendental. The artist is both priest and poet. In this respect Indian art is closely allied to the Gothic art of Europe—indeed, Gothic art is only the Eastern consciousness expressing itself in a Western environment. But while the Christian art of the Middle Ages is always emotional, rendering literally the pain of the mortification of the flesh, the bodily sufferings of the Man of Sorrows, Indian art appeals only to the imagination, and strives to realise the spirituality and abstraction of a supra-terrestrial sphere.

c7.69

There is, and always will be, a wide gulf between these ideas and the naturalistic, materialistic view of the Renaissance, or the eclectic, archæological art of modern Europe—the cult of the studio, the lay figure, and the nude model.

c7.70

The highest ideals of every national art have always centred themselves round the national conception of the Deity, and it is the Indian conception of divine beauty which gives the key to all Indian æsthetic thought, and shows most clearly the essential differences between Eastern ideals and Western. The Greek, when he attempted to realise a divine ideal, took for his model a type of physical beauty, such as the athlete or the warrior. The Indian always takes the *Yogi*, the religious devotee who, by a system of spiritual exercises, enjoined by the Yoga school of philosophy, aims at freeing himself from worldly attachments and placing himself in communion with the Universal Self, the Supreme Soul—Brahman. Yet it is not the physical form of the Yogi which he endeavours to represent. His ideal is not made of common human clay. He only strives to materialise the subtler, purer Soul within.

c7.71

It is remarkable that even Buddha himself, who renounced the ascetic life and whose philosophy was essentially human and full of the love of nature, always was regarded by Indian people as the Great Yogi. The Eastern ideal never was supplanted by the Western, even when Greek influence was strongest. Frequently in Indian art a Hellenistic detail, mythological idea, and technical characteristic can be identified. But the influence of Hellenism in India was transient and superficial, affecting more the technique than the ideals of Indian art. It was speedily absorbed and moulded to the character of Eastern artistic genius, just as foreign influences have always been assimilated by the national art of European countries.

c7.72

(*a*) AN INDIAN YOGI. (*From a photograph*)

c7.73

(*b*) DECADENT MODERN STATUETTE

c7.76

For the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with the appearance of an Indian Yogi in the flesh, I give the illustration of a celebrated Brahmin Yogi of Benares, Swami Bhaskarânanda Saraswati, who at the age of 17 abandoned a large fortune, and exchanged brilliant worldly prospects for the life of an ascetic, practising the principles of Yoga.¹ He lived to an advanced age and is still revered as a Hindu saint. The subject, according to European ideas, hardly seems one to lend itself to a high æsthetic ideal. Yet how beautiful it is when the spiritual, rather than the physical, becomes the type which the artist brings into view!

c7.77

¹ It must not be supposed that the practice of Yoga is confined to ignorant fanatics, or to those who push the doctrine to the extreme of inflicting upon themselves all kinds of excessive bodily penances and tortures. The idea of intense concentration of mind, leading to extraordinary powers of spiritual insight, which is at the root of Yoga philosophy, still has almost as much hold upon cultured Hindus as it had at the time of Buddha, even upon those who have added Western science to their own traditional culture. Buddha's enlightenment was attained by the practice of Yoga, which was prevalent in India long before his time, though it was not reduced to a regular system until afterwards. See Monier-Williams, "Indian Wisdom," p. 226 *et seq.*

c7.78

I will begin with the superb statue of Amogha-Siddha, a Dhyâni-Buddha,¹ which shows the Indian conception of the great heavenly Yogi. He is seated cross-legged in the Yogi attitude, with an expression of profound abstraction. The right hand, perfect in its technique, is lifted in making the mystic sign of blessing. This sculpture is from the north side of Bôrôbudûr, A DHYÂNI BUDDHA (From Bôrôbudûr, Java)

c7.79

¹ "The term Dhyāna (Jhāna) is a general expression for the four gradations of mystic meditation which have ethereal spaces or worlds corresponding to them, and a Dhyāni-Buddha is a Buddha who is supposed to exist as a kind of spiritual essence in these higher regions of abstract thought. That is to say, every Buddha who appears on earth in a temporal body—with the object of teaching men how to gain Nirvana—exists also in an ideal counterpart, or ethereal representation of himself in the formless worlds of meditation. These ideal Buddhas are as numerous as the human Buddhas, but as there are only five chief human Buddhas in the present age—Kraka-ććhanda, Kanaka-muni, Kāsyapa, Gautama, and the future Buddha, Maitreya—so there are only five corresponding Dhyāni Buddhas—Vairoćana, Akshobhya, Ratna-sambhava, Amitābha, and Amogha-siddha (sometimes represented in images as possessing a third eye). But this is not all. Each of them produces, by a process of evolution, a kind of emanation from himself called a Dhyāni-Bodhisattva, to act as the practical head and guardian of the Buddhist community between the death of each human Buddha and the advent of his successor. Hence there are the five Bodhisattvas—Samanta-bhadra, Vajrapāni, Ratnapāni, Padmapāni (Avalokiteshvara) and Visva-pāni—corresponding to the five Dhyāni-Buddhas, and the five earthly Buddhas respectively. In Nepal five corresponding female Sābetis or Tārā-devīs are named."—Sir M. Monier-Williams, "Buddhism," pp. 202, 203.

c7.81

in Java, but the art is Indian, of about the eighth century a.d.

c7.82

The next plate (No. III.) is from a magnificent colossal Buddhist statue, of the same idealised Yogi type, representing Indian art in Ceylon, where it was originally brought, together with the Buddhist religion, by the missionaries of Asoka, about 242 b.c. It probably is intended for the earthly Buddha, Gautama, as he sat in meditation under the bodhi-tree at Gaya. The age of this statue is uncertain, but I would suppose it to be somewhat earlier than the last. In the finished style of its technique it is fully equal to the Javanese example, and even surpasses the latter in its beautiful proportions. Indian Buddhist sculpture has perhaps never produced any finer single statue than this.

c7.83

The figure appears to be nude, but it is really, like the previous one, clad in a close-fitting, thin, diaphanous robe, which covers most of the figure except the right shoulder and arm. This peculiar drapery, which is very characteristic of the true Indian ideal of Buddha, as distinguished from the mixed type of China and Japan, is seen more clearly in the beautiful stone alto-relievo, Plate IV., of the earthly Buddha, Gautama, preaching to his first six converts after his enlightenment. This is probably somewhat later in date. It was recently discovered at Sarnath, near Benares, by Mr. F. O. Oertel, close to the spot where Buddha began to preach.

c7.84

Probably several centuries later is the copper-gilt figure of the Bodhisattva Padmapâni, or Avalokiteshvara, "The Lord who looks down with pity," and the guardian deity of Tibet, of whom the Dalai Lama is said to be an incarnation; on it the metal-worker and jeweller have lavished their utmost skill. The original is in the Calcutta Art Gallery. The figure is entirely built up of hammered copper; the tiara and ornaments are set with rubies, turquoise, lapis lazuli, and crystals. The beautiful modelling of the hands is especially noticeable. The expression of the face suggests Mongolian influence, but the whole inspiration of the art is Indian, brought by Nepalese artists into Tibet about the seventh or eighth centuries a.d.

c7.85

The next illustration, Plate VI., is from a Nepalese copper-gilt statuette, representing Dorje-chang, the Lamaist counterpart of the Bodhisattva Vajrapâni,¹ "the Wielder of the Thunderbolt," which is also in the Calcutta Art Gallery. It is, like the last, built up of hammered work, but is later in date, probably not much more than a century old, representing the traditions of the Buddhist art of India which have survived in Nepal and Tibet to the present day. It has all the spirituality and true religious sentiment of Italian fourteenth and fifteenth-century art.

c7.86

¹ See note, p. 28.

c7.87

Another statuette, cast in copper and gilt, Plate VII., shows the living, modern art of Nepal. Though inferior in execution, it has the same fine GAUTAMA, THE EARTHLY BUDDHA (From Anuradhapura, Ceylon)

c7.89

feeling as the earlier art. It is distinguished by the graceful conventionalisation of the bo-tree—the tree of wisdom—disposed as a wreath round the figure of the Bodhisattva, who holds in his left hand the *amrita*, or nectar of immortality. At the foot of the pedestal are the quaint figures of the three devotees who have dedicated this image to some Nepalese shrine.

c7.90

Historically, these six examples are of the highest interest, representing as they do the sequence of the purest Buddhist art-tradition for the last eleven hundred years in India, Ceylon, Java, Nepal, and Tibet.

c7.91

In all of them it is easy to recognise the human prototype, but the grim, shrivelled Yogi is here transformed into a spiritual being of a higher sphere—as an alchemist turns base metal into gold—a form more subtly made than human ever was, and wrapped in the ideal beauty of Divinity.

c7.92

The technical characteristics of all these examples are the same. The attenuated waist and a generalisation of the anatomy carried much further than the Greeks ever attempted, producing an extreme simplicity of form and contour, are part of a deliberate intention of suggesting a type of abstract, spiritual beauty, far removed from worldly passions and desires. At the same time the main anatomical structure relating to the mechanism of the human body is given with such perfect truth as to make it obvious that the artists were quite capable of imitating nature, when imitation was their only object.

First 87 of 279 passages. Read on

Linked texts (29)

Ṛgvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit
Abhidharmakośa — Vasubandhu, Sanskrit
Mahābhārata — Vyāsa, Sanskrit
Veda — Sanskrit
Vinayapiṭaka — Pāli
Indian Antiquary
Prajñāpāramitā — Sanskrit
Viṣṇupurāṇa — Vyāsa, Sanskrit
Vajrapāṇi (General) — Sanskrit
Vālmīkirāmāyaṇa — Vālmīki, Sanskrit
Bhagavadgītā — Vyāsa, Sanskrit
Gautama — Sanskrit
Abhijñānaśākuntala — Kālidāsa, Sanskrit
Vibhāṣāśāstra — Sanskrit
Yogaśāstra — Hemacandra, Sanskrit
Sārnāth
Sāñcī
Bharhut
Anurādhapura
Taj Mahal
Sigiriya
Avalokitesvara
Tara
Loriyan Tangai
Elephanta
Ajanta
Bhima temple
Kailasanatha Temple
Jawa