A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c10.s1.8

c10.s1.8

Even within the frontier most of the exploration done until recently has been the work of amateurs, conducted in a haphazard fashion, without the formation or preservation of adequate detailed record.¹ Consequently, many buildings have been utterly destroyed, and the value of the large collections of sculptures found by many public institutions and private persons is seriously impaired by the lack of information concerning the provenance of the specimens. M. Foucher, the most learned and authoritative commentator on the sculptures, declares that it is impossible in the present state of knowledge to arrange them in chronological order. As a general rule, no doubt, the most Greek may be considered the oldest, and the most Indianized the latest, but the practical application of this principle presents many difficulties. Arrangement by localities is equally impracticable, because nobody knows where many of the best examples were found, and also because there is no distinct evidence of local variations in style. The general style over the whole region is fairly uniform. The result is that the only practicable arrangement is one by subjects. In this chapter it will not be possible to illustrate more than a few of the multifarious subjects treated by the artists, and students who wish to examine the whole field must be referred to special treatises. It is hoped, however, that the specimens reproduced will suffice to enable the reader to judge of the aesthetic qualities of the sculptures, and to place them in their due relation to Greek art on the one hand and to indigenous Indian art on the other, subject to a certain amount of vagueness in the chronology of the school.