A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c17.3

c17.3

Long before the dawn of history traders from distant lands had brought their wares to the ports of India, and in all probability introduced the alphabet and art of writing. But in those ancient days the sea, although open to the passage of adventurous merchants, was not the bond of union between distant lands which it has become in these latter times for a great naval power, and the influence exercised upon the art of the interior by small bodies of traders at the ports must have been comparatively trifling. The constant invasions and immigrations from the continent of Asia through the north-western passes had more effect. They appear to have introduced the elements of Babylonian civilization into the north at a very early date¹; and one prehistoric immigration, or series of immigrations, which brought the Vedic Aryans, ultimately settled the future of all India for all time by laying the foundations of the complex, exclusive, religious, and social system known as Hinduism. When history opens in the sixth century B.C., Northern India, at all events, was already largely Hinduized, and in the third century, when the earliest extant monuments came into existence, the Hindu system stood firmly established. In attempting to estimate the nature and extent of foreign influence on Indian art, as conveyed by sea and through the north-western passes, we must assume the existence of Hinduism as an accomplished fact, and acknowledge that nothing positive is known about Hindu art before the age of Asoka.