The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c9.76.1

v1.c9.76.1

Looking to these facts, the only conclusion that can be arrived at is, that however great the influence of religion on the plastic art, and great it certainly was at one time, it never was sufficient to destroy her separate existence, or even to control to any material extent her independent progress. When in alliance with religion, she served religion faithfully, by producing forms which it demanded, without any rcference to taste, but she never lost her yearning to advance to perfection, and that irrespective, and even in defiance, of the checks, which religion tried to impose on her. The yearning was strong enough even in the very early times of the ancient Egyptians, who had to lay down rules to prevent the statues of gods from being carved in other than the old conventional self-same way which their forefathers had approved duting the infancy of the art. The Hindus did the same; and yet the Egyptians and the Hindus failed to prevent the delineation of simple objects of nature and scenes of everyday life, so as to make the attempt at imitation more and mor faithful, and quite different from what the rules insisted upon. In the same way, when serving as a hand-maid to poetry, plastic [ 54 ] art, without forgetting her own true end, tried her best to give shape and form to poetical ideas and allegories, and did so without reference to the extent to which she conformed to natural laws.