A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.1

c15.1

Within the limits of India proper the history of the art of painting comes to an abrupt stop at the close of the Ajaṇṭā series in A. D. 642. Between that date and the introduction of the foreign Persian style by order of Akbar, more than nine hundred years later, in or about A. D. 1570, we possess practically no direct knowledge of Indian painting, and are largely dependent for indirect knowledge on the recent discoveries in Chinese Turkistan, still accessible only in part. It is clear, as will be explained more fully in Chapter XIV, that the Hindu artists of the sixteenth century who so quickly mastered the Persian technique and made the foreign style their own, with Indian modifications, must have been prepared by training in indigenous methods. Indeed, concerning one artist of that time, Daswanth, the fact is on record that he had been painting all his life. But hardly a scrap of the work of the mediaeval Hindu schools, within the limits of India, prior to the reign of Akbar, has survived, and any opinion that we may form concerning its character must be based mainly upon more or less probable conjectures and inferences.¹