A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c20.s1.29

c20.s1.29

The history of Indian painting between the close of the Ajantā series in A. D. 642 and the importation of Persian art by Akbar about A. D. 1570, a period of more than nine centuries, is almost a blank, as has been shown in Chapter IX of this work.² But the art cannot have been extinct on Indian soil at any time, although practically no specimens of it have survived from the ages referred to. The rapidity with which the teaching of Abdul Samad and his Musalman colleagues was assimilated and then modified by scores of Hindu artists of various castes is in itself sufficient proof that the foreign teachers must have found trained indigenous scholars with whom to work. Men accustomed to draw and paint could easily learn new methods and a foreign style, but not even the despotic power of Akbar would have been able to create a numerous school of Hindu artists out of nothing.