The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c33.47

v1.c33.47

In following step by step the history of Indian indigenous art during this early period we have seen that much extraneous influence was exerted upon it, and that this influence was a prominent factor in its evolution. Yet, if we examine this art in its most mature form, as illustrated for example in the gateways of Sānchī, we can detect in it nothing really mimetic, nothing which degrades it to the rank of a servile school. Many of its motifs and ideas it took from Persia, but there is no trace in it of the icy composure, the monotonous reiteration, or the dignified spaciousness which characterise Irānian art. It owed a debt to the older civilisations of Assyria, but it knows nothing of the stately and pompous grandeur or the grotesque exaggerations in which the Assyrian fancy delighted. Most of all, it was indebted to the Hellenistic culture of Western Asia, but the service which it exacted from the genius of Hellas served to develop its own virile character, not to enfeeble or obscure it. The artists of early India were quick, with the versatility of all great artists, to profit by the lessons which others had to teach them; but there is no more reason in calling their creations Persian or Greek than there would be in designating the modern fabric of St Paul’s Italian. The art which they practised was essentially a national art, having its root in the heart and in the faith of the people, and giving eloquent expression to their spiritual beliefs and to their deep and intuitive sympathy with nature. Free alike from artificiality and idealism, its purpose was to glorify religion, not by seeking to embody spiritual ideas in terms of form, as the medieval art of India did, but by telling the story of Buddhism or Jainism in the simplest and most expressive language which the chisel of the sculptor could command, and it was just because of its sympathy and transparent sincerity that it voiced so truthfully the soul of the people, and still continues to make an instant and deep appeal to our feelings.