The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.s2.125

v2.c16.s2.125

In treating of sculptural representations of natural objects, it is necessary to bear in mind the common humanity of man in every part of the world. Even as poets dealing with the same subjects—the life and mind of man—produce similar images whether tuning their lyre under the heat of the tropics, the general climate of the temperate zone, or the biting cold of the north, so must artists in their attempt to reproduce natural objects in stone, yield similar results ; and as in the former case differences must arise from unequal capacity and local colouring, so must they result in the latter. Thus when a Vālmīki and a Homer sing of the same subject, local similies aside, the result must be closely alike, without any interchange of ideas taking place between them ; and similarly a Phidias of Greece and one of India, (had such a being ever existed) would have produced the beau-ideal of perfection in either country without borrowing from each other. Where the intellectual and artistic capacities are different, the results must necessarily be unequal; but the tendency everywhere must be to the same goal, and more or less similarity must be manifest according to circumstances, owing to the fact of the human mind being the same everywhere, and it being directed to the same end. It must follow that the mere partial similitude in the general appearance of two statues is no more a proof of the one having been formed on the model of the other, than the similarity of two love songs from two distant countries is an evidence of one of them having been copied from the other.