A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c10.s3.14

c10.s3.14

Most European critics, rightly convinced of the unapproachable excellence of the highest type of Greek art, the model of the less excellent Hellenistic art, see in the process of gradual Indianization a decadence. But the critics of the new 'nationalist' school are persuaded that this view is erroneous, and that the process of Indianization is in itself an artistic improvement. Mr. Havell, in general agreement with Dr. Coomaraswamy, teaches that the earliest Gandhāra sculptors were no better than mechanical craftsmen, hirelings following more or less impure Hellenistic traditions, engaged by the frontier kings in the manufacture of inferior objects of handicraft, which are mere 'soulless puppets, debased types of the Greek and Roman pantheon posing uncomfortably in the attitudes of Indian asceticism', and tarred with the vices of commercialism, insincerity, and want of spirituality, most conspicuous in the earliest examples. The indictment continues:—