A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c7.46

c7.46

Indian art, on the whole, is the slave of religious tradition, and it is this undeniable fact which gives plausibility to the thesis that India is destitute of fine art. Works of fine art in that country may be considered as by-products of religious emotion, the creations of men whose genius was strong enough to mould traditional forms into an expression of itself. Art for its own sake did not, and does not now, interest the Hindu. The enormous mass of Indian literature, whether in Sanskrit or any other language, does not contain, I believe, a single treatise on the aesthetics of plastic and pictorial art, and thus presents a marked contrast to the literature of China, which is rich in ancient works dealing with aesthetic criticism. A few pages written by Abūl Fazl, a Muhammadan author of the sixteenth century, dealing with the introduction of Indo-Persian painting by Akbar, and some confused notes on Buddhist image-makers by Tāranāth, a Tibetan historian of the seventeenth century, constitute the whole of India's contributions to the literature of art. The Hindu *Śilpa-śāstras* are primarily codes of ritual rules, supposed to be revelations from heaven, designed to ensure the construction of buildings with due regard to religious and astrological requirements, and to prevent irreverent representations of the gods. Their use as guides to aesthetically correct construction and composition is secondary and incidental. The Hindus always present an aesthetic principle in the guise of a religious precept.