Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c8.19

c8.19

It is not, however, my purpose to attempt a history of Indian fine art, but rather to show the highest development of it at a time when the monasteries and sacred shrines had become great national sculpture and picture galleries ; and when, after many centuries, the traditions of Indian art-practice had become perfected into a science which was afterwards reduced to writing, and recorded in the literature of Indian ritual and religion. Modern "educated" Indians, to their shame be it said, are profoundly ignorant of and indifferent to this great science, the traditions of which are kept alive by the artistic castes of the present day ; though they are fast being crushed under the vandal heel of what we mis-call civilisation, just as the traditions of the mediæval artists and craftsmen have been extinguished in Europe by a barbarous and godless commercialism.