A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s6.4

c15.s6.4

The second temple named is further adorned by paintings, probably modern, of the extraordinary 'mixed figures', specimens of which occur occasionally in albums of Indian drawings. One of the Conjeeveram pictures represents a male archer mounted on an elephant, of which the body, limbs, and trunk are made up of nine female musicians, whose forms are combined with much perverted ingenuity. The companion picture represents a female archer riding a horse similarly compounded of five figures. According to a book in the India Office Library (No. 309, 29 F. 8) the male rider is 'Manmadah', and the female is his consort, 'Kuthee Davee.' Such grotesque freaks of design are painfully vivid illustrations of the degradation suffered by art when an exuberant fancy is allowed to run riot unchecked by good taste; and unhappily such aberrations are the rule rather than the exception in the later Hindu art, especially of the South.