The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c9.97

v1.c9.97

**Orissan school:** In all these there are peculiarities which may be more or less predicated of Orissan art; but at the same time there are points of excellence in it which are not to be met with in the ancient schools named. The conventionality of form, which is so marked in them, prevails to some extent everywhere in India. It resulted from indolence, combined with a desire to imitate art instead of nature, under circumstances which were particularly favourable to such mannerism. Untouched by extraneous influences, art in Orissa successively rose, became stationary, and declined with the civilization of the people, very much in the same way which marked its course in Egypt and elsewhere; and its characteristics must to a certain extent be alike. The manner in which this conventionality takes the place of nature, has been most forcibly pointed out by Mr. Layard in his remarks on the decline of Assyrian art. “A certain proficiency”, he says, “had been attained, and no violent changes took place to shake the established order of things, the artist, instead of endeavouring to imitate that which he saw in nature, received as correct delineations the works of his predecessors, and made them his types and his models. In some countries, as in Egypt, religion may have contributed to this result. Whilst the imagination, as well as the hand, was fettered by prejudices, and even by law, or whilst indolence or ignorance led to the mere servile copying of what had been done before, it may easily be conceived how rapidly a deviation from correctness of form would take place. As each transmitted the errors of those who preceded him, and added to them, himself, it is not wonderful, if, ere long, the whole became one great error. It is to be feared that this prescriptive love of imitation has exercised no less influence on modern art, than it did upon the arts of the ancients”.³⁸ •