Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c7.109

c7.109

But I venture to think that any one with experience in art-teaching who studies this question will find all these suggestions very wide of the mark. It is impossible to believe that artists, who showed such a beautiful feeling for line and form, and such remarkable executive powers as are evident in the best Indian sculpture, always failed, by some curious lapse of artistic perception, in the very ordinary imitative qualities necessary for a completely accurate modelling of the muscular system of the human body. Indian art, in every other branch, has solved the highest technical difficulties. Why, then, should we assume incompetence in this one respect, for the very inadequate reasons given by archæologists? It is surely much more logical—since we discover Indian artists beginning to produce sculpture of Indian saints in attitudes suggestive of Yoga philosophy just at the time when the Yoga doctrine had established itself as one of the fundamental theories of Hinduism—to conclude that they purposely suppressed the details of the physical body with the intention of suggesting the inner Self, purified and exalted by communion with the Universal Soul.