A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c16.s8: Section VIII. Ivories
A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c16.s8
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Section VIII. Ivories
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There can be no doubt that the art of carving ivory has been practised in India, the home of the elephant, for uncounted ages. For instance, the ancient drama, ‘The Little Clay Cart,’ composed, perhaps, in the fifth century of the Christian era, Plate LXXXII. Sandalwood carvings, Mysore and Travancore.
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Fig. A. Krishna and the Gopīs; a panel in the new palace at Mysore. (From a negative lent by Sir G. Watt, K.C.I.E.)
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Fig. B. Forest scene, Travancore. (From Pl. LXI of *Industrial Arts of India*, by permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.)
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describes the entrance to Vasantasenā's mansion as shining 'with its high ivory portal'.¹ But I am not in a position to mention a single extant ancient object in ivory of any importance. In modern times many localities are famous for their ivory carvings.
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¹ Act iv, Ryder's transl. (Harvard Or. Series), p. 67. Much earlier is the record at Sānchī of *circa* 200 to 150 B.C., which informs us that one of the piers of the southern gate was not only dedicated, but executed by the ivory carvers of Bhilsā. 'The workers in ivory of Vedisa have done the carving' (**वेदिसकेहि दंतकारेहि रूपकम्मं कतं**). This implies that even at a date so early the carvers of ivory were organized as a guild (*śreṇī*) (*Ep. Ind.*, ii, pp. 92, 378; Tope I, inscr. No. 200 = C. 189). The record further shows that workers in ivory were prepared to carve in stone.
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The productions of Travancore and Mysore are adjudged by Sir George Watt to hold 'the very foremost position among the ivories of India'—an honour partly due to the excellence of the material used, but mainly the result of the fine artistic quality of the designs and execution, which have been sufficiently illustrated by the similar examples of sandalwood carving discussed in Section 7 of this chapter. The motives of the patterns are closely related to those of the stone carvings on the temples of the Deccan, or so-called Chalukya style (*ante*, p. 45, Fig. 16), and are quite distinct from the grotesque extravagance of the Tamil *swāmi* designs. In Travancore the old conventional designs are still favoured, but the Mysore artists prefer the more modern 'jungle patterns'.
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The subject not being of sufficient importance to require exhaustive treatment in this work, my illustrations will be restricted to two excellent examples produced about 1830 by Gobind Ratan of Nayagarh in Orissa. The tortoise (Plate LXXXIII, Fig. A) is described by Sir George Watt as 'a wonderful creation', which raises the artist who produced it to a position of 'equality with the ivory carvers of Europe, Japan, or China'. The statuette of Krishna (Plate LXXXIII, Fig. B) is characterized by the same expert critic as an 'exquisite piece of work'.
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The ivories in the Colombo Museum, Ceylon, include contemporary portrait figures of the last king of Kandy (1798–1815), with the chief priest, and two ministers, or Adikārs. Mr. Joseph has shown me photographs of statuettes of kings and queens in the Kandy Museum, which are very quaint and neatly executed, but of little account as works of art.²
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² For a good summary account of Indian ivories of all kinds, see Watt and P. Brown, *Indian Art at Delhi*, especially pp. 172–93. Several official monographs treat the subject provincially, and describe the art of ivory carving as practised in Bombay, Bengal, Assam, Burma, Southern India, the Panjāb, and the N. W. P. and Oudh (now the U. P. of Agra and Oudh). They are printed separately, and also in vol. ix of *J. I. A. I.* An account of the Ceylon ivories will be found in Dr. Coomaraswamy's work on *Mediaeval Art*. The Kandy statuettes are reproduced by Codrington, *Notes on some of the Principal Kandyan Chiefs and Headmen, and their Dresses* (Colombo, Government Printer, 1910).