Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c8.17

c8.17

Their art was glowing with spontaneous warmth and fantasy, like the Nature which inspired it. Yet it was not based upon a sensual Nature-worship, like Hellenic art, but upon Nature regarded as the manifestation of one great Universal Law. It was less coldly reasoned than the art of Greece, but far more spiritual; for the poets and philosophers of a highly intellectual age joined in using this jungle-lore which clung round national history and popular beliefs as a framework for moral and spiritual instruction, inculcating by poetry, fable, and allegory the supreme law of life which Buddha preached, and the eternal truth of the Immanence of God.