Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c8.4

c8.4

The ideal of manly beauty he set before himself was not represented by a Rajput warrior, but by the divine Buddha, Krishna, or Siva. His ideal of female beauty was not seen in the fairest of Indian women, but in Parvati, or in the heavenly Apsarases. Before, then, we begin to assume that Indian sculptors never realised the same degree of technical achievement as Praxiteles or Michelangelo, we must always clearly understand how far it is possible to draw any comparison between them; and, except in their mutual reverence for the beauties of Nature, and in the important part which art took in national life and education, there are not many points of analogy in the spirit of classic art and Indian.