A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c17.65

c17.65

The marked pictorial character of the ancient Indian bas-relief sculpture, which it shares with the related Alexandrian work, suggests that in India painting may be an older art than sculpture. The earliest extant paintings, those in Orissa (*ante*, p. 273), apparently are indigenous. The history of Indian painting is necessarily so fragmentary that it is impossible, at present at all events, to trace the genesis of the highly developed art of Ajaṇṭā and Sigiriya. The hypothesis of a Persian origin for the Ajaṇṭā paintings is supported by the facts that they occur in a region known to have been in communication with Persia and include Persian scenes. But proof that Persia in the fifth and sixth centuries was in a position to teach art to India is lacking. The key to the origins of both Persian and Indian painting, if there be a key, should, perhaps, be sought in Turkistan, and the truth may be that the Indian schools of painting are only branches of a very ancient and widely diffused Asiatic school. But more exact knowledge is needed before any definite theory can be formulated. No connexion seems to be traceable between the Indian paintings and those of Greece or Rome. So far as appears the pictorial art of India may be considered original, and related to the schools of Asia rather than to those of Europe. But the Ajaṇṭā paintings are far superior to any work from Turkistan yet published, and attain a pre-eminently high standard of achievement in their delineation of plant and animal life.