A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c10.s1.40

c10.s1.40

Considered as pictures of human life, they present as in a mirror a vivid image of almost every phase of the life of Northern India, lay and clerical, during several centuries. The artists cause to pass before our eyes landscapes, towns, domestic interiors, streets, fields, trees, and animals, with unlimited realistic detail. All the material objects of the civilization of the times—furniture, vehicles, arms, tools, and the rest, are depicted as they were used by the ancients, and numberless illustrations of the manners and customs of the times bring clearly before our imagination the way in which those ancients passed their days. Every class of the population from prince to pariah is represented, and, in short, no subject of human interest was regarded as material unsuitable for the sculptor's chisel. There can be no question concerning Plate XXV. Modified Corinthian capitals from Gandhāra.