The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c18.40

c18.40

And it is impossible to doubt that these great artists, though their names were consigned to oblivion through the contempt of Islam for the sculptor's art, were in their day held in as high honour as the poets and dramatists of Vikramâditya's court, and as the miniature painters whom Akbar and Jahângîr counted among their intimate friends. Great art like this could hardly have been created under the social stigma which now attaches to the master-craftsmen of India. The blindness of Anglo-Indian critics has not allowed them to perceive the wide gulf which separates the fine sculpture of the Indian temple images from the popular art of ordinary architectural decoration—a gulf fully as wide as that which separated the great masters of Europe from the apprentices or common craftsmen of their guilds.