The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c9.186

v1.c9.186

**Libels against Indian Art:** Nor is it necessary here to notice at length the libel published by Müller, in which he sees art in India, “roaming about with inconstancy amid abundance of forms, and if it almost by accident lights on the simple and grand, is incapable of using and carrying it out as an established and recurring form of art; so that it is difficult to get rid of the idea that the architectonic and plastic sense in India was only awakened by impulses and communications of various kinds from without (probably from the Greeks or Javans), and that a nourishment was presented to it, which, however, it could not rightly digest”⁷⁹; nor that of his translator, who describes “the enormous pantheon at Ellora, in the Ghaut Mountains, destined at the same time for the reception of hundred thousand pilgrims,” (!) and notices in it “inverted acanthus capitals.” In the absence of information and accurate drawings such mistakes, perhaps, could not be prevented, and the writers, therefore, were to a great extent helpless. Mr. Gwilt, comparing the essential differences beween Indian and Egyptian architecture, quotes a passage from the *Encyclopédie methodique* which says: “In Egypt, the principal forms of the building and its parts preponderate, inasmuch as the hieroglyphics with which they are covered never interfere with the general forms, nor injure the effect of the whole; in India the principal form is lost in the ornaments which divide and decompose it. In Egypt, that which is essential predominates; in India you are lost in a multitude of accessories. In the Egyptain architecture, even the smallest edifices are grand; in that of India, infinite subdivision into parts gives an air of littleness to the largest buildings. In Egypt, solidity is carried to the extreme; in India, there is not the slightest appearance of it.”⁸⁰ Replies to most of these objections have already been given above; but for the sake of convenience, and to show how utterly unfounded and unfair this comparison is, I shall recapitulate some of the principal points touched upon in this chapter. Without at all subscribing to the accuraey of Mr. Ruskin's canon in which he lays down seven fundamental principles—“the seven lamps” according to his fanciful style of expression—as controlling the architect, I shall examine how far they have been attended to in Orissa. The first of his seven is “Sacrifice.” It refers primarily to Biblical atonement, and secondarily to the “value of the appearance of labour upon architecture.” The latter alone can concern the people of this country; and it may be unhesitatingly stated that no competent, honest judge, who has beheld the temples of Orissa, can for a moment deny that the principle has been one of cardinal agencies which governed the action of their builders. There is no sign whatever of labour having been anywhere shirked, but ample evidence is everywhere most prominent to show that the most stupendous labour has been courted with a view to manifest “the spirit which offers for (devotional) work precious things, simply because they are precious;—not as being necessary to the building, but as an offering, surrendering, and sacrifice of what is to ourselves desirable.” 81