A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c10.s3.12

c10.s3.12

The sudden introduction of the Persian style of painting into India by order of Akbar in the sixteenth century, and the immediate development of a prolific Indo-Persian school, surpassing its prototype in certain respects, while inferior in others, offer an almost exact parallel to the events which happened, as I believe, in the kingdom of Gandhāra during the first century of the Christian era. The parallel fails in so far that the Persian style of painting, being congenial to Indian taste, readily admitted of certain modifications which may be reasonably regarded as improvements, whereas the ultimate models of the Gandhāra sculptors having been the masterpieces of Attic and Ionic art, alien in spirit to the art of India, were usually susceptible of modification by Indian craftsmen only in the direction of degradation.