{"id":2930,"date":"2013-07-13T01:44:41","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:44:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2930"},"modified":"2013-11-29T15:42:07","modified_gmt":"2013-11-29T23:42:07","slug":"20-indian-art-vol-20-the-renaissance-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/20-the-renaissance-in-india\/20-indian-art-vol-20-the-renaissance-in-india","title":{"rendered":"-20_Indian Art.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nXII <\/b>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nIndian Art <\/font><\/b>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nA<\/font> GOOD<\/b> deal of hostile or unsympathetic Western criticism of
\nIndian civilisation has been directed in the past against its aesthetic side and
\ntaken the form of a disdainful or violent depreciation of its fine arts,
\narchitecture, sculpture and painting. Mr. Archer would not find much support in
\nhis wholesale and undiscriminating depreciation of a great literature, but here
\ntoo there has been, if not positive attack, much failure of understanding; but
\nin the attack on Indian art, his is the last and shrillest of many hostile
\nvoices. This aesthetic side of a people's culture is of the highest importance
\nand demands almost as much scrutiny and carefulness of appreciation as the
\nphilosophy, religion and central formative ideas which have been the foundation
\nof Indian life and of which much of the art and literature is a conscious
\nexpression in significant aesthetic forms. Fortunately, a considerable amount of
\nwork has been already done in the clearing away of misconceptions about Indian
\nsculpture and painting and, if that were all, I might be content to refer to the
\nworks of Mr. Havell and Dr. Coomaraswamy or to the sufficiently understanding
\nthough less deeply informed and penetrating criticisms of others who cannot be
\ncharged with a prepossession in favour of oriental work. But a more general and
\nsearching consideration of first principles is called for in any complete view
\nof the essential motives of Indian culture. I am appealing mainly to that new
\nmind of India which long misled by an alien education, view and influence is
\nreturning to a sound and true idea of its past and future; but in this field the
\nreturn is far from being as pervading, complete or luminous as it should be. I
\nshall confine myself therefore first to a consideration of the sources of
\nmisunderstanding and pass from that to the true cultural significance of Indian
\naesthetic creation. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMr. Archer pursuing his policy of Thorough devotes a whole  
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 255<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nchapter to the subject. This chapter is one long torrent of sweeping
\n\t\t\tdenunciation. But it would be a waste of time to take his attack as
\n\t\t\tserious criticism and answer all in detail. His reply to defenders
\n\t\t\tand eulogists is amazing in its shallowness and triviality, made up
\n\t\t\tmostly of small, feeble and sometimes irrelevant points, big glaring
\n\t\t\tepithets and forcibly senseless phrases, based for the rest on a
\n\t\t\tmisunderstanding or a sheer inability to conceive the meaning of
\n\t\t\tspiritual experiences and metaphysical ideas, which betrays an
\n\t\t\tentire absence of the religious sense and the philosophic mind. Mr.
\n\t\t\tArcher is of course a rationalist and contemner of philosophy and
\n\t\t\tentitled to his deficiencies; but why then try to judge things into
\n\t\t\tthe sense of which one is unable to enter and exhibit the spectacle
\n\t\t\tof a blind man discoursing on colours? I will cite one or two
\n\t\t\tinstances which will show the quality of his criticism and amply
\n\t\t\tjustify a refusal to attach any positive value to the actual points
\n\t\t\the labours to make, except for the light they throw on the
\n\t\t\tpsychology of the objectors. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI will give first an instance amazing in its ineptitude. The Indian
\n\t\t\tideal figure of the masculine body insists on two features among
\n\t\t\tmany, a characteristic width at the shoulders and slenderness in the
\n\t\t\tmiddle. Well, an objection to broadness of girth and largeness of
\n\t\t\tbelly \u2014 allowed only where they are appropriate as in sculptures of
\n\t\t\tGanesha or the Yakshas \u2014 is not peculiar to the Indian aesthetic
\n\t\t\tsense; an emphasis, even a pronounced emphasis on their opposites is
\n\t\t\tsurely intelligible enough as an aesthetic tradition, however some
\n\t\t\tmay prefer a more realistic and prosperous presentation of the human
\n\t\t\tfigure. But Indian poets and authorities on art have given in this
\n\t\t\tconnection the simile of the lion, and lo and behold Mr. Archer
\n\t\t\tsolemnly discoursing on this image as a plain proof that the Indian
\n\t\t\tpeople were only just out of the semi-savage state! It is only too
\n\t\t\tclear that they drew the ideal of heroic manhood from their native
\n\t\t\tjungle, from theriolatry, that is to say, from a worship of wild
\n\t\t\tbeasts! I presume, on the same principle and with the same
\n\t\t\tstupefying ingenuity he would find in Kamban's image of the sea for
\n\t\t\tthe colour and depth of Sita's eyes clear evidence of a still more
\n\t\t\tprimitive savagery and barbaric worship of inanimate  
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 256<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t1.
\n\t\t\tCave Cathedral, Ajanta <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe secular buildings of ancient India, her
\n\t\t\tpalaces and places of assembly and civic edifices have not outlived
\n\t\t\tthe ravage of time; what remains to us is mostly something of the
\n\t\t\tgreat mountain and cave temples, something too of the temples of her
\n\t\t\tancient cities of the plains….(p. 272)  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t2. Kalahastishwara Temple, Andhra Pradesh
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe straight way here is not
\n\t\t\tto detach the temple from its surroundings, but to see it in unity
\n\t\t\twith the sky and low-lying landscape or with the sky and hills
\n\t\t\taround and feel the thing common to both, the construction and its
\n\t\t\tenvironment, the reality in Nature, the reality expressed in the
\n\t\t\twork of art. (p. 277)  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t3. Sinhachalam Temple, Andhra
\n\t\t\tPradesh <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tOne of these buildings climbs up bold, massive in
\n\t\t\tprojection, up-piled in the greatness of a forceful but sure ascent,
\n\t\t\tpreserving its range and line to the last, the other soars from the
\n\t\t\tstrength of its base, in the grace and emotion of a curving mass to
\n\t\t\ta rounded summit and crowning symbol. (p. 277)  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t4. Kandarya Mahadeo Temple, Khajuraho <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe great temples of the north
\n\t\t\thave often … a singular grace in their power, a luminous lightness
\n\t\t\trelieving their mass and strength, a rich delicacy of beauty in
\n\t\t\ttheir ornate fullness. (p. 280)  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t5. Humayun’s Tomb, New
\n\t\t\tDelhi <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tIt seems to me that here the Indian mind has taken in much
\n\t\t\tfrom the Arab and Persian imagination and in certain mosques and
\n\t\t\ttombs I seem to find an impress of the robust and bold Afghan and
\n\t\t\tMogul temperament; but it remains clear enough that it is still on
\n\t\t\tthe whole a typically Indian creation with the peculiar Indian gift.
\n\t\t\t(p. 282)  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t6. Taj Mahal, Agra
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Taj is not merely a
\n\t\t\tsensuous reminiscence of an imperial amour or a fairy enchantment
\n\t\t\thewn from the moon's lucent quarries, but the eternal dream of a
\n\t\t\tlove that survives death. (p. 284)  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t7. Itimad-ud-Daulah's
\n\t\t\tTomb, Agra <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNot rational but magical beauty satisfying and enchanting
\n\t\t\tto some deeper quite suprarational aesthetic soul in us is the
\n\t\t\tinexpressible charm of these creations. (p. 283)  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t8. Panch Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe buildings of Fatehpur-Sikri are not
\n\t\t\tmonuments of an effeminate luxurious decadence, \u2014 an absurd
\n\t\t\tdescription for the mind of the time of Akbar, \u2014 but give form to a
\n\t\t\tnobility, power and beauty which lay hold upon but do not wallow on
\n\t\t\tthe earth. (p. 284)   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tnature, or in Valmiki's description of his heroine's "eyes like
\n\t\t\twine", madireksanā<\/i>, evidence of a chronic inebriety and the
\n\t\t\tsemi-drunken inspiration of the Indian poetic mind. This is one
\n\t\t\texample of Mr. Archer's most telling points. It is by no means an
\n\t\t\tisolated though it is an extreme specimen, and the absurdity of that
\n\t\t\tparticular argument only brings out the triviality of this manner of
\n\t\t\tcriticism. It is on a par with the common objection to the slim
\n\t\t\thands and feet loved of the Bengal painters which one hears
\n\t\t\tsometimes advanced as a solid condemnation of their work. And that
\n\t\t\tcan be pardoned in the average man who under the high dispensation
\n\t\t\tof modern culture is not expected to have any intelligent conception
\n\t\t\tabout art, \u2014 the instinctive appreciation has been already safely
\n\t\t\tkilled and buried. But what are we to say of a professed critic who
\n\t\t\tignores the deeper motives and fastens on details in order to give
\n\t\t\tthem this kind of significance?
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nBut there are more grave and important objections in this criticism; for Mr.
\nArcher turns also to deal with philosophy in art. The whole basis of Indian
\nartistic creation, perfectly conscious and recognised in the canons, is directly
\nspiritual and intuitive. Mr. Havell rightly lays stress on this essential
\ndistinction and speaks in passing of the infinite superiority of the method of
\ndirect perception over intellect, an assertion naturally offensive to the
\nrationalistic mind, though it is now increasingly affirmed by leading Western
\nthinkers. Mr. Archer at once starts out to hack at it with a very blunt
\ntomahawk. How does he deal with this crucial matter? In a way which misses the
\nwhole real point and has nothing whatever to do with the philosophy of art. He
\nfastens on Mr. Havell's coupling of the master intuition of Buddha with the
\ngreat intuition of Newton and objects to the parallel because the two
\ndiscoveries deal with two different orders of knowledge, one scientific and
\nphysical, the other mental or psychic, spiritual or philosophic in nature. He
\ntrots out from its stable the old objection that Newton's intuition was only the
\nlast step in a long intellectual process, while according to this positive
\npsychologist and philosophic critic the intuitions of Buddha and other Indian
\nsages had no basis in any intellectual process of any kind or any verifiable
\nexperience. It is on the   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 257<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ncontrary the simple fact, well-known to all who know anything of the subject,
\nthat the conclusions of Buddha and other Indian philosophers (I am not now
\nspeaking of the inspired thought of the Upanishads which was pure spiritual
\nexperience enlightened by intuition and gnosis,) were preceded by a very acute
\nscrutiny of relevant psychological phenomena and a process of reasoning which,
\nthough certainly not rationalistic, was as rational as any other method of
\nthinking. He clinches his refutation by the sage remark that these intuitions
\nwhich he chooses to call fantasies contradict one another and therefore, it
\nseems, have no sort of value except their vain metaphysical subtlety. Are we to
\nconclude that the patient study of phenomena, the scrupulous and rigidly
\nverifiable intellectual reasonings and conclusions of Western scientists have
\nled to no conflicting or contradictory results? One could never imagine at this
\nrate that the science of heredity is torn by conflicting "fantasies" or that
\nNewton's "fantasies" about space and gravitational effect on space are at this
\nday in danger of being upset by Einstein's "fantasies" in the same field. It is
\na minor matter that Mr. Archer happens to be wrong in his idea of Buddha's
\nintuition when he says that he would have rejected a certain Vedantic intuition,
\nsince Buddha neither accepted nor rejected, but simply refused at all to
\nspeculate on the supreme cause. His intuition was confined to the cause of
\nsorrow and the impermanence of things and the release by extinction of ego,
\ndesire and Sanskara, and so far as he chose to go, his intuition of this
\nextinction, Nirvana, and the Vedantic intuition of the supreme unity were the
\nseeing of one truth of spiritual experience, seen no doubt from different angles
\nof vision and couched in different intellectual forms, but with a common
\nintuitive substance. The rest was foreign to Buddha's rigidly practical purpose.
\nAll this leads us far afield from our subject, but our critic has a remarkably
\nconfused mind and to follow him is to be condemned to divagate. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThus far Mr. Archer on intuition. This is the character of his
\n\t\t\texcursions on first principles in art. Is it really necessary to
\n\t\t\tpoint out that a power of mind or spirit may be the same and yet act
\n\t\t\tdifferently in different fields? or that a certain kind of intuition  
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 258<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tmay be prepared by a long intellectual training, but that does not
\n\t\t\tmake it a last step in an intellectual process, any more than the
\n\t\t\tprecedence of sense activity makes intellectual reasoning a last
\n\t\t\tstep of sense-perception? The reason overtops sense and admits us to
\n\t\t\tother and subtler ranges of truth; the intuition similarly overtops
\n\t\t\treason and admits us to a more direct and luminous power of truth.
\n\t\t\tBut very obviously in the use of the intuition the poet and artist
\n\t\t\tcannot proceed precisely in the same way as the scientist or
\n\t\t\tphilosopher. Leonardo da Vinci's remarkable intuitions in science
\n\t\t\tand his creative intuitions in art started from the same power, but
\n\t\t\tthe surrounding or subordinate mental operations were of a different
\n\t\t\tcharacter and colour. And in art itself there are different kinds of
\n\t\t\tintuition. Shakespeare's seeing of life differs in its character and
\n\t\t\taims from Balzac's or Ibsen's, but the essential part of the
\n\t\t\tprocess, that which makes it intuitive, is the same. The Buddhistic,
\n\t\t\tthe Vedantic seeing of things may be equally powerful
\n\t\t\tstarting-points for artistic creation, may lead one to the calm of a
\n\t\t\tBuddha or the other to the rapture dance or majestic stillness of
\n\t\t\tShiva, and it is quite indifferent to the purposes of art to which
\n\t\t\tof them the metaphysician may be inclined to give a logical
\n\t\t\tpreference. These are elementary notions and it is not surprising
\n\t\t\tthat one who ignores them should misunderstand the strong and subtle
\n\t\t\tartistic creations of India.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe weakness of Mr. Archer's attack, its empty noise and violence and exiguity
\nof substance must not blind us to the very real importance of the mental outlook
\nfrom which his dislike of Indian art proceeds. For the outlook and the dislike
\nit generates are rooted in something deeper than themselves, a whole cultural
\ntraining, natural or acquired temperament and fundamental attitude towards
\nexistence, and it measures, if the immeasurable can be measured, the width of
\nthe gulf which till recently separated the oriental and the Western mind and
\nmost of all the European and the Indian way of seeing things. An inability to
\nunderstand the motives and methods of Indian art and a contempt of or repulsion
\nfrom it was almost universal till yesterday in the mind of Europe. There was
\nlittle   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 259<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ndifference in this regard between the average man bound by his customary first
\nnotions and the competent critic trained to appreciate different forms of
\nculture. The gulf was too wide for any bridge of culture then built to span. To
\nthe European mind Indian art was a thing barbarous, immature, monstrous, an
\narrested growth from humanity's primitive savagery and incompetent childhood. If
\nthere has been now some change, it is due to the remarkably sudden widening of
\nthe horizon and view of European culture, a partial shifting even of the
\nstandpoint from which it was accustomed to see and judge all that it saw. In
\nmatters of art the Western mind was long bound up as in a prison in the Greek
\nand Renascence tradition modified by a later mentality with only two side rooms
\nof escape, the romantic and the realistic motives, but these were only wings of
\nthe same building; for the base was the same and a common essential canon united
\ntheir variations. The conventional superstition of the imitation of Nature as
\nthe first law or the limiting rule of art governed even the freest work and gave
\nits tone to the artistic and critical intelligence. The canons of Western
\nartistic creation were held to be the sole valid criteria and everything else
\nwas regarded as primitive and half-developed or else strange and fantastic and
\ninteresting only by its curiosity. But a remarkable change has begun to set in,
\neven though the old ideas still largely rule. The prison, if not broken, has at
\nleast had a wide breach made in it; a more flexible vision and a more profound
\nimagination have begun to superimpose themselves on the old ingrained attitude.
\nAs a result, and as a contributing influence towards this change, oriental or at
\nany rate Chinese and Japanese art has begun to command something like adequate
\nrecognition.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nBut the change has not yet gone far enough for a thorough appreciation of the
\ndeepest and most characteristic spirit and inspiration of Indian work. An eye or
\nan effort like Mr. Havell's is still rare. For the most part even the most
\nsympathetic criticism stops short at a technical appreciation and imaginative
\nsympathy which tries to understand from outside and penetrates into so much only
\nof the artistic suggestion  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 260<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nas can be at once seized by the new wider view of a more accomplished and
\nflexible critical mentality. But there is little sign of the understanding of
\nthe very well-spring and spiritual fountain of Indian artistic creation. There
\nis therefore still a utility in fathoming the depths and causes of the
\ndivergence. That is especially necessary for the Indian mind itself, for by the
\nappreciation excited by an opposing view it will be better able to understand
\nitself and especially to seize what is essential in Indian art and must be clung
\nto in the future and what is an incident or a phase of growth and can be shed in
\nthe advance to a new creation. This is properly a task for those who have
\nthemselves at once the creative insight, the technical competence and the seeing
\ncritical eye. But everyone who has at all the Indian spirit and feeling, can at
\nleast give some account of the main, the central things which constitute for him
\nthe appeal of Indian painting, sculpture and architecture. This is all that I
\nshall attempt, for it will be in itself the best defence and justification of
\nIndian culture on its side of aesthetic significance. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe criticism of art is a vain and dead thing when it ignores the
\n\t\t\tspirit, aim, essential motive from which a type of artistic creation
\n\t\t\tstarts and judges by the external details only in the light of a
\n\t\t\tquite different spirit, aim and motive. Once we understand the
\n\t\t\tessential things, enter into the characteristic way and spirit, are
\n\t\t\table to interpret the form and execution from that inner centre, we
\n\t\t\tcan then see how it looks in the light of other standpoints, in the
\n\t\t\tlight of the comparative mind. A comparative criticism has its use,
\n\t\t\tbut the essential understanding must precede it if it is to have any
\n\t\t\treal value. But while this is comparatively easy in the wider and
\n\t\t\tmore flexible turn of literature, it is, I think, more difficult in
\n\t\t\tthe other arts, when the difference of spirit is deep, because there
\n\t\t\tthe absence of the mediating word, the necessity of proceeding
\n\t\t\tdirect from spirit to line and form brings about a special intensity
\n\t\t\tand exclusive concentration of aim and stress of execution. The
\n\t\t\tintensity of the thing that moves the work is brought out with a
\n\t\t\tmore distinct power, but by its very stress and directness allows of  
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 261<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nfew accommodations and combined variations of appeal. The thing
\n\t\t\tmeant and the thing done strike deep home into the soul or the
\n\t\t\timaginative mind, but touch it over a smaller surface and with a
\n\t\t\tlesser multitude of points of contact. But whatever the reason, it
\n\t\t\tis less easy for a different kind of mind to appreciate.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe Indian mind in its natural poise finds it almost or quite as difficult
\nreally, that is to say, spiritually to understand the arts of Europe, as the
\nordinary European mind to enter into the spirit of Indian painting and
\nsculpture. I have seen a comparison made between a feminine Indian figure and a
\nGreek Aphrodite which illustrates the difficulty in an extreme form. The critic
\ntells me that the Indian figure is full of a strong spiritual sense \u2014 here of
\nthe very breath and being of devotion, an ineffable devotion, and that is true,
\nit is a suggestion or even a revelation which breaks through or overflows the
\nform rather than depends on the external work, \u2014 but the Greek creation can only
\nawaken a sublimated carnal or sensuous delight. Now having entered somewhat into
\nthe heart of meaning of Greek sculpture, I can see that this is a wrong account
\nof the matter. The critic has got into the real spirit of the Indian, but not
\ninto the real spirit of the Greek work; his criticism from that moment, as a
\ncomparative appreciation, loses all value. The Greek figure stresses no doubt
\nthe body, but appeals through it to an imaginative seeing inspiration which aims
\nat expressing a certain divine power of beauty and gives us therefore something
\nwhich is much more than a merely sensuous aesthetic pleasure. If the artist has
\ndone this with perfection, the work has accomplished its aim and ranks as a
\nmasterpiece. The Indian sculptor stresses something behind, something more
\nremote to the surface imagination, but nearer to the soul, and subordinates to
\nit the physical form. If he has only partially succeeded or done it with power
\nbut with something faulty in the execution, his work is less great, even though
\nit may have a greater spirit in the intention: but when he wholly succeeds, then
\nhis work too is a masterpiece, and we may prefer it with a good conscience, if
\nthe spiritual, the higher intuitive vision is what we most demand from art. This
\nhowever  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 262<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nneed not interfere with an appreciation of both kinds in their own order.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nBut in viewing much of other European work of the very greatest repute, I am
\nmyself aware of a failure of spiritual sympathy. I look for instance on some of
\nthe most famed pieces of Tintoretto, \u2014 not the portraits, for those give the
\nsoul, if only the active or character soul in the man, but say, the Adam and
\nEve, the St. George slaying the dragon, the Christ appearing to Venetian
\nSenators, and I am aware of standing baffled and stopped by an irresponsive
\nblankness somewhere in my being. I can see the magnificence and power of
\ncolouring and design, I can see the force of externalised imagination or the
\nspirited dramatic rendering of action, but I strive in vain to get out any
\nsignificance below the surface or equivalent to the greatness of the form,
\nexcept perhaps an incidental minor suggestion here and there and that is not
\nsufficient for me. When I try to analyse my failure, I find at first certain
\nconceptions which conflict with my expectation or my own way of seeing. This
\nmuscular Adam, the sensuous beauty of this Eve do not bring home to me the
\nmother or the father of the race, this dragon seems to me only a surly
\nportentous beast in great danger of being killed, not a creative embodiment of
\nmonstrous evil, this Christ with his massive body and benevolent philosophic
\nvisage almost offends me, is not at any rate the Christ whom I know. But these
\nare after all incidental things; what is really the matter is that I come to
\nthis art with a previous demand for a kind of vision, imagination, emotion,
\nsignificance which it cannot give me. And not being so self-confident as to
\nthink that what commands the admiration of the greatest critics and artists is
\nnot admirable, I can see this and pause on the verge of applying Mr. Archer's
\ncriticism of certain Indian work and saying that the mere execution is beautiful
\nor marvellous but there is no imagination, nothing beyond what is on the
\nsurface. I can understand that what is wanting is really the kind of imagination
\nI personally demand; but though my acquired cultured mind explains this to me
\nand may intellectually catch at the something more, my natural being will not be
\nsatisfied,   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 263<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nI am oppressed, not uplifted by this triumph of life and the flesh and of the
\npower and stir of life, \u2014 not that I object to these things in themselves or to
\nthe greatest emphasis on the sensuous or even the sensual, elements not at all
\nabsent from Indian creation, if I can get something at least of the deeper thing
\nI want behind it, \u2014 and I find myself turning away from the work of one of the
\ngreatest Italian masters to satisfy myself with some "barbaric" Indian painting
\nor statue, some calm unfathomable Buddha, bronze Shiva or eighteen-armed Durga
\nslaying the Asuras. But the cause of my failure is there, that I am seeking for
\nsomething which was not meant in the spirit of this art and which I ought not to
\nexpect from its characteristic creation. And if I had steeped myself in this
\nRenascence mind as in the original Hellenic spirit, I could have added something
\nto my inner experience and acquired a more catholic and universal aesthesis.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nI lay stress on this psychological misunderstanding or want of understanding,
\nbecause it explains the attitude of the natural European mind to the great works
\nof Indian art and puts on it its right value. This mind catches only what is kin
\nto European effort and regards that too as inferior, naturally and quite rightly
\nsince the same thing is more sincerely and perfectly done from a more native
\nfountain of power in Western work. That explains the amazing preference of
\nbetter informed critics than Mr. Archer for the bastard Gandharan sculpture to
\ngreat and sincere work original and true in its unity, \u2014 Gandharan sculpture
\nwhich is an unsatisfying, almost an impotent junction of two incompatible
\nmotives, incompatible at least if one is not fused into the other as here
\ncertainly it is not fused, \u2014 or its praise otherwise incomprehensible of certain
\nsecond-rate or third-rate creations and its turning away from others noble and
\nprofound but strange to its conceptions. Or else it seizes with appreciation \u2014
\nbut is it really a total and a deeply understanding appreciation? \u2014 on work like
\nthe Indo-Saracenic which though in no way akin to Western types has yet the
\npower at certain points to get within the outskirts of its circle of aesthetic
\nconceptions. It is even so much struck by the Taj as to   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 264<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ntry to believe that it is the work of an Italian sculptor, some astonishing
\ngenius, no doubt, who Indianised himself miraculously in this one hour of
\nsolitary achievement, for India is a land of miracles, \u2014 and probably died of
\nthe effort, for he has left us no other work to admire. Again it admires, at
\nleast in Mr. Archer, Javanese work because of its humanity and even concludes
\nfrom that that it is not Indian. Its essential unity with Indian work behind the
\nvariation of manner is invisible to this mind because the spirit and inner
\nmeaning of Indian work is a blank to its vision and it sees only a form, a
\nnotation of the meaning, which, therefore, it does not understand and dislikes.
\nOne might just as well say that the Gita written in the Devanagari is a
\nbarbaric, monstrous or meaningless thing, but put into some cursive character at
\nonce becomes not Indian, because human and intelligible! <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut, ordinarily, place this mind before anything ancient, Hindu,
\n\t\t\tBuddhistic or Vedantic in art and it looks at it with a blank or an
\n\t\t\tangry incomprehension. It looks for the sense and does not find any,
\n\t\t\tbecause either it has not in itself the experience and finds it
\n\t\t\tdifficult to have the imagination, much more the realisation of what
\n\t\t\tthis art does really mean and express, or because it insists on
\n\t\t\tlooking for what it is accustomed to see at home and, not finding
\n\t\t\tthat, is convinced that there is nothing to see or nothing of any
\n\t\t\tvalue. Or else if there is something which it could have understood,
\n\t\t\tit does not understand because it is expressed in the Indian form
\n\t\t\tand the Indian way. It looks at the method and form and finds it
\n\t\t\tunfamiliar, contrary to its own canons, is revolted, contemptuous,
\n\t\t\trepelled, speaks of the thing as monstrous, barbarous, ugly or null,
\n\t\t\tpasses on in a high dislike or disdain. Or if it is overborne by
\n\t\t\tsome sense of unanalysable beauty of greatness or power it still
\n\t\t\tspeaks of a splendid barbarism. Do you want an illuminating instance
\n\t\t\tof this blankness of comprehension? Mr. Archer sees the Dhyani
\n\t\t\tBuddha with its supreme, its unfathomable, its infinite spiritual
\n\t\t\tcalm which every cultured oriental mind can at once feel and respond
\n\t\t\tto in the depths of his being, and he denies that there is anything,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 only drooped eyelids, an   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 265<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nimmobile pose and an insipid, by which I suppose he means a calm
\n\t\t\tpassionless face.1<\/font><\/sup> He turns for comfort to the Hellenic nobility of
\n\t\t\texpression of the Gandharan Buddha, or to the living Rabindranath
\n\t\t\tTagore more spiritual than any Buddha from Peshawar to Kamakura, an
\n\t\t\tinept misuse of comparison against which I imagine the great poet
\n\t\t\thimself would be the first to protest. There we have the total
\n\t\t\tincomprehension, the blind window, the blocked door in the mind, and
\n\t\t\tthere too the reason why the natural Western mentality comes to
\n\t\t\tIndian art with a demand for something other than what its
\n\t\t\tcharacteristic spirit and motive intend to give, and, demanding
\n\t\t\tthat, is not prepared to enter into another kind of spiritual
\n\t\t\texperience and another range of creative sight, imaginative power
\n\t\t\tand mode of self-expression.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThis once understood, we can turn to the difference in the spirit and method of
\nartistic creation which has given rise to the mutual incomprehension; for that
\nwill bring us to the positive side of the matter. All great artistic work
\nproceeds from an act of intuition, not really an intellectual idea or a splendid
\nimagination, \u2014 these are only mental translations, \u2014 but a direct intuition of
\nsome truth of life or being, some significant form of that truth, some
\ndevelopment of it in the mind of man. And so far there is no difference between
\ngreat European and great Indian work. Where then begins the immense divergence?
\nIt is there in everything else, in the object and field of the intuitive vision,
\nin the method of working out the sight or suggestion, in the part taken in the
\nrendering by the external form and technique, in the whole way of the rendering
\nto the human mind, even in the centre of our being to which the work appeals.
\nThe European artist gets his intuition by a suggestion from an appearance in
\nlife and Nature or, if it starts from something
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t1 In a note Mr. Archer mentions and very rightly discounts an absurd
\n\t\t\tapology for these Buddhas, viz., that the greatness and spirituality
\n\t\t\tare not at all in the work, but in the devotion of the artist! If
\n\t\t\tthe artist cannot put into his work what was in him \u2014 and here it is
\n\t\t\tnot devotion that is expressed, \u2014 his work is a futile abortion. But
\n\t\t\tif he has expressed what he has felt, the capacity to feel it must
\n\t\t\talso be there in the mind that looks at his work.   <\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 266<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tin his own soul, relates it at once to an external support. He
\n\t\t\tbrings down that intuition into his normal mind and sets the
\n\t\t\tintellectual idea and the imagination in the intelligence to clothe
\n\t\t\tit with a mental stuff which will render its form to the moved
\n\t\t\treason, emotion, aesthesis. Then he missions his eye and hand to
\n\t\t\texecute it in terms which start from a colourable "imitation" of
\n\t\t\tlife and Nature \u2014 and in ordinary hands too often end there \u2014 to get
\n\t\t\tat an interpretation that really changes it into the image of
\n\t\t\tsomething not outward in our own being or in universal being which
\n\t\t\twas the real thing seen. And to that in looking at the work we have
\n\t\t\tto get back through colour and line and disposition or whatever else
\n\t\t\tmay be part of the external means, to their mental suggestions and
\n\t\t\tthrough them to the soul of the whole matter. The appeal is not
\n\t\t\tdirect to the eye of the deepest self and spirit within, but to the
\n\t\t\toutward soul by a strong awakening of the sensuous, the vital, the
\n\t\t\temotional, the intellectual and imaginative being, and of the
\n\t\t\tspiritual we get as much or as little as can suit itself to and
\n\t\t\texpress itself through the outward man. Life, action, passion,
\n\t\t\temotion, idea, Nature seen for their own sake and for an aesthetic
\n\t\t\tdelight in them, these are the object and field of this creative
\n\t\t\tintuition. The something more which the Indian mind knows to be
\n\t\t\tbehind these things looks out, if at all, from behind many veils.
\n\t\t\tThe direct and unveiled presence of the Infinite and its godheads is
\n\t\t\tnot evoked or thought necessary to the greater greatness and the
\n\t\t\thighest perfection. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe theory of ancient Indian art at its greatest \u2014 and the greatest
\n\t\t\tgives its character to the rest and throws on it something of its
\n\t\t\tstamp and influence \u2014 is of another kind. Its highest business is to
\n\t\t\tdisclose something of the Self, the Infinite, the Divine to the
\n\t\t\tregard of the soul, the Self through its expressions, the Infinite
\n\t\t\tthrough its living finite symbols, the Divine through his powers. Or
\n\t\t\tthe Godheads are to be revealed, luminously interpreted or in some
\n\t\t\tway suggested to the soul's understanding or to its devotion or at
\n\t\t\tthe very least to a spiritually or religiously aesthetic emotion.
\n\t\t\tWhen this hieratic art comes down from these altitudes to the
\n\t\t\tintermediate worlds behind ours, to the lesser godheads or genii, it
\n\t\t\tstill carries into them some power or some   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 267<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nhint from above. And when it comes quite down to the material world
\n\t\t\tand the life of man and the things of external Nature, it does not
\n\t\t\taltogether get rid of the greater vision, the hieratic stamp, the
\n\t\t\tspiritual seeing, and in most good work \u2014 except in moments of
\n\t\t\trelaxation and a humorous or vivid play with the obvious \u2014 there is
\n\t\t\talways something more in which the seeing presentation of life
\n\t\t\tfloats as in an immaterial atmosphere. Life is seen in the self or
\n\t\t\tin some suggestion of the infinite or of something beyond or there
\n\t\t\tis at least a touch and influence of these which helps to shape the
\n\t\t\tpresentation. It is not that all Indian work realises this ideal;
\n\t\t\tthere is plenty no doubt that falls short, is lowered, ineffective
\n\t\t\tor even debased, but it is the best and the most characteristic
\n\t\t\tinfluence and execution which gives its tone to an art and by which
\n\t\t\twe must judge. Indian art in fact is identical in its spiritual aim
\n\t\t\tand principle with the rest of Indian culture.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nA seeing in the self accordingly becomes the characteristic method of the Indian
\nartist and it is directly enjoined on him by the canon. He has to see first in
\nhis spiritual being the truth of the thing he must express and to create its
\nform in his intuitive mind; he is not bound to look out first on outward life
\nand Nature for his model, his authority, his rule, his teacher or his fountain
\nof suggestions. Why should he when it is something quite inward he has to bring
\nout into expression? It is not an idea in the intellect, a mental imagination,
\nan outward emotion on which he has to depend for his stimulants, but an idea,
\nimage, emotion of the spirit, and the mental equivalents are subordinate things
\nfor help in the transmission and give only a part of the colouring and the
\nshape. A material form, colour, line and design are his physical means of the
\nexpression, but in using them he is not bound to an imitation of Nature, but has
\nto make the form and all else significant of his vision, and if that can only be
\ndone or can best be done by some modification, some pose, some touch or symbolic
\nvariation which is not found in physical Nature, he is at perfect liberty to use
\nit, since truth to his vision, the unity of the thing he is seeing and
\nexpressing is his only business. The line, colour and the rest are not his
\nfirst, but his  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 268<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nlast preoccupation, because they have to carry on them a world of things which
\nhave already taken spiritual form in his mind. He has not for instance to
\nre-create for us the human face and body of the Buddha or some one passion or
\nincident of his life, but to reveal the calm of Nirvana through a figure of the
\nBuddha, and every detail and accessory must be turned into a means or an aid of
\nhis purpose. And even when it is some human passion or incident he has to
\nportray, it is not usually that alone, but also or more something else in the
\nsoul to which it points or from which it starts or some power behind the action
\nthat has to enter into the spirit of his design and is often really the main
\nthing. And through the eye that looks on his work he has to appeal not merely to
\nan excitement of the outward soul, but  <\/i>
\nto the inner self, antarātman<\/i>. One may well say that beyond the ordinary
\ncultivation of the aesthetic instinct necessary to all artistic appreciation
\nthere is a spiritual insight or culture needed if we are to enter into the whole
\nmeaning of Indian artistic creation, otherwise we get only at the surface
\nexternal things or at the most at things only just below the surface. It is an
\nintuitive and spiritual art and must be seen with the intuitive and spiritual
\neye.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThis is the distinctive character of Indian art and to ignore it is to fall into
\ntotal incomprehension or into much misunderstanding. Indian architecture,
\npainting, sculpture are not only intimately one in inspiration with the central
\nthings in Indian philosophy, religion, Yoga, culture, but a specially intense
\nexpression of their significance. There is much in the literature which can be
\nwell enough appreciated without any very deep entry into these things, but it is
\ncomparatively a very small part of what is left of the other arts, Hindu or
\nBuddhistic, of which this can be said. They have been very largely a hieratic
\naesthetic script of India's spiritual, contemplative and religious experience.  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 269<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nXIII <\/b>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nA<\/font>RCHITECTURE<\/b>, sculpture and painting, because they are the
\nthree great arts which appeal to the spirit through the eye, are those too in
\nwhich the sensible and the invisible meet with the strongest emphasis on
\nthemselves and yet the greatest necessity of each other. The form with its
\ninsistent masses, proportions, lines, colours, can here only justify them by
\ntheir service for the something intangible it has to express; the spirit needs
\nall the possible help of the material body to interpret itself to itself through
\nthe eye, yet asks of it that it shall be as transparent a veil as possible of
\nits own greater significance. The art of the East and the art of the West \u2014 each
\nin its characteristic or mean, for there are always exceptions, \u2014 deal with the
\nproblem of these two interlocking powers in a quite different way. The Western
\nmind is arrested and attracted by the form, lingers on it and cannot get away
\nfrom its charm, loves it for its own beauty, rests on the emotional,
\nintellectual, aesthetic suggestions that arise directly from its most visible
\nlanguage, confines the soul in the body; it might almost be said that for this
\nmind form creates the spirit, the spirit depends for its existence and for
\neverything it has to say on the form. The Indian attitude to the matter is at
\nthe opposite pole to this view. For the Indian mind form does not exist except
\nas a creation of the spirit and draws all its meaning and value from the spirit.
\nEvery line, arrangement of mass, colour, shape, posture, every physical
\nsuggestion, however many, crowded, opulent they may be, is first and last a
\nsuggestion, a hint, very often a symbol which is in its main function a support
\nfor a spiritual emotion, idea, image that again goes beyond itself to the less
\ndefinable, but more powerfully sensible reality of the spirit which has excited
\nthese movements in the aesthetic mind and passed through them into significant
\nshapes.   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 270<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nThis characteristic attitude of the Indian reflective and creative mind
\nnecessitates in our view of its creations an effort to get beyond at once to the
\ninner spirit of the reality it expresses and see from it and not from outside.
\nAnd in fact to start from the physical details and their synthesis appears to me
\nquite the wrong way to look at an Indian work of art. The orthodox style of
\nWestern criticism seems to be to dwell scrutinisingly on the technique, on form,
\non the obvious story of the form, and then pass to some appreciation of
\nbeautiful or impressive emotion and idea. It is only in some deeper and more
\nsensitive minds that we get beyond that depth into profounder things. A
\ncriticism of that kind applied to Indian art leaves it barren or poor of
\nsignificance. Here the only right way is to get at once through a total
\nintuitive or revelatory impression or by
\n <\/i> some meditative dwelling on the whole, dhyāna <\/i>in the technical
\nIndian term, to the spiritual meaning and atmosphere, make ourselves one with
\nthat as completely as possible, and then only the helpful meaning and value of
\nall the rest comes out with a complete and revealing force. For here it is the
\nspirit that carries the form, while in most Western art it is the form that
\ncarries whatever there may be of spirit. The striking phrase of Epictetus recurs
\nto the mind in which he describes man as a little soul carrying a corpse,
\npsucharion ei bastazon nekron<\/i>. The more ordinary Western outlook is upon
\nanimate matter carrying in its life a modicum of soul. But the seeing of the
\nIndian mind and
\n <\/i> of Indian art is that of a great, a limitless self and spirit,
\nmahān<\/i> ātmā<\/i>, which carries to us in the sea of its presence a living
\nshape of itself, small in comparison to its own infinity, but yet sufficient by
\nthe power that informs this symbol to support some aspect of that infinite's
\nself-expression. It is therefore essential that we should look here not solely
\nwith the physical eye informed by the reason and the aesthetic imagination, but
\nmake the physical seeing a passage to the opening of the inner spiritual eye and
\na moved communion in the soul. A great oriental work of art does not easily
\nreveal its secret to one who comes to it solely in a mood of aesthetic curiosity
\nor with a considering critical objective mind, still less as the cultivated and
\ninterested tourist   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 271<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\npassing among strange and foreign things; but it has to be seen in loneliness,
\nin the solitude of one's self, in moments when one is capable of long and deep
\nmeditation and as little weighted as possible with the conventions of material
\nlife. That is why the Japanese with their fine sense in these things, \u2014 a sense
\nwhich modern Europe with her assault of crowded art galleries and over-pictured
\nwalls seems to have quite lost, though perhaps I am wrong, and those are the
\nright conditions for display of European art, \u2014 have put their temples and their
\nBuddhas as often as possible away on mountains and in distant or secluded scenes
\nof Nature and avoid living with great paintings in the crude hours of daily
\nlife, but keep them by preference in such a way that their undisputed suggestion
\ncan sink into the mind in its finer moments or apart where they can go and look
\nat them in a treasured secrecy when the soul is at leisure from life. That is an
\nindication of the utmost value pointing to the nature of the appeal made by
\nEastern art and the right way and mood for looking at its creations.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIndian architecture especially demands this kind of inner study and this
\nspiritual self-identification with its deepest meaning and will not otherwise
\nreveal itself to us. The secular buildings of ancient India, her palaces and
\nplaces of assembly and civic edifices have not outlived the ravage of time; what
\nremains to us is mostly something of the great mountain and cave temples,
\nsomething too of the temples of her ancient cities of the plains, and for the
\nrest we have the fanes and shrines of her later times, whether situated in
\ntemple cities and places of pilgrimage like Srirangam and Rameshwaram or in her
\ngreat once regal towns like Madura, when the temple was the centre of life. It
\nis then the most hieratic side of a hieratic art that remains to us. These
\nsacred buildings are the signs, the architectural self-expression of an ancient
\nspiritual and religious culture. Ignore the spiritual suggestion, the religious
\nsignificance, the meaning of the symbols and indications, look only with the
\nrational and secular aesthetic mind, and it is vain to expect that we shall get
\nto any true and discerning appreciation of this art. And it has to be remembered
\ntoo that the religious spirit here is something   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 272<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n9. Dhyani Buddha,
\nAjanta <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe figure of the Buddha achieves the expression of the infinite in a
\nfinite image,… the illimitable calm of Nirvana in a human form and visage. (p.
\n291)  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n10. Maheshwara Murti, Elephanta Caves
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe inspiration, the way
\nof seeing is frankly not naturalistic, not, that is to say, the vivid,
\nconvincing and accurate, the graceful, beautiful or strong, or even the idealised or imaginative imitation of surface or terrestrial nature. (p. 293)  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n11. Durga Mahishasuramardini, Mamallapuram
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe gods of Indian sculpture are
\ncosmic beings, embodiments of some great spiritual power, spiritual idea and
\naction, inmost psychic significance, the human form a vehicle of this soul
\nmeaning, its outward means of self-expression; everything in the figure, every
\nopportunity it gives, the face, the hands, the posture of the limbs, the poise
\nand turn of the body, every accessory, has to be made instinct with the inner
\nmeaning, help it to emerge, carry out the rhythm of the total suggestion…. (p.
\n290)  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n12. Nagaraja and Queen, Ajanta
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe sculptor must express always
\nin static form; the idea of the spirit is cut out for him in mass and line,
\nsignificant in the stability of its insistence…;  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n13. Buddha,
\nMathura Museum
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nfor him eternity seizes hold of time in its shapes and arrests it
\nin the monumental spirit of stone or bronze. (p. 302)  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n14. Princely
\nDoorkeeper, Mamallapuram
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe material in which we work makes its own peculiar
\ndemand on the creative spirit, lays down its own natural conditions, …  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n15. Vrikshaka, Gwalior Museum
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nand the art of making in stone or bronze calls for
\na cast of mind which the ancients had and the moderns have not or have had only
\nin rare individuals…. (p. 287)  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n<\/span><\/sub><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n16. Buddha, Sarnath <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nAn assured
\nhistory of two millenniums of accomplished sculptural creation is a rare and
\nsignificant fact in the life of a people. (p. 288)  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

\nquite different from the sense of European religions; and even mediaeval
\nChristianity, especially as now looked at by the modern European mind which has
\ngone through the two great crises of the Renascence and recent secularism, will
\nnot in spite of its oriental origin and affinities be of much real help. To
\nbring in into the artistic look on an Indian temple occidental memories or a
\ncomparison with Greek Parthenon or Italian church or Duomo or Campanile or even
\nthe great Gothic cathedrals of mediaeval France, though these have in them
\nsomething much nearer to the Indian mentality, is to intrude a fatally foreign
\nand disturbing element or standard in the mind. But this consciously or else
\nsubconsciously is what almost every European mind does to a greater or less
\ndegree, \u2014 and it is here a pernicious immixture, for it subjects the work of a
\nvision that saw the immeasurable to the tests of an eye that dwells only on
\nmeasure. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIndian sacred architecture of whatever date, style or dedication
\n\t\t\tgoes back to something timelessly ancient and now outside India
\n\t\t\talmost wholly lost, something which belongs to the past, and yet it
\n\t\t\tgoes forward too, though this the rationalistic mind will not easily
\n\t\t\tadmit, to something which will return upon us and is already
\n\t\t\tbeginning to return, something which belongs to the future. An
\n\t\t\tIndian temple, to whatever godhead it may be built, is in its inmost
\n\t\t\treality an altar raised to the divine Self, a house of the Cosmic
\n\t\t\tSpirit, an appeal and aspiration to the Infinite. As that and in the
\n\t\t\tlight of that seeing and conception it must in the first place be
\n\t\t\tunderstood, and everything else must be seen in that setting and
\n\t\t\tthat light, and then only can there be any real understanding. No
\n\t\t\tartistic eye however alert and sensible and no aesthetic mind
\n\t\t\thowever full and sensitive can arrive at that understanding, if it
\n\t\t\tis attached to a Hellenised conception of rational beauty or shuts
\n\t\t\titself up in a materialised or intellectual interpretation and fails
\n\t\t\tto open itself to the great things here meant by a kindred close
\n\t\t\tresponse to some touch of the cosmic consciousness, some revelation
\n\t\t\tof the greater spiritual self, some suggestion of the Infinite.
\n\t\t\tThese things, the spiritual self, the cosmic spirit, the Infinite,
\n\t\t\tare not rational, but suprarational, eternal presences, but to the
\n\t\t\tintellect only words, and visible, sensible,   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 273<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nnear only to an intuition and revelation in our inmost selves. An
\n\t\t\tart which starts from them as a first conception can only give us
\n\t\t\twhat it has to give, their touch, their nearness, their
\n\t\t\tself-disclosure, through some responding intuition and revelation in
\n\t\t\tus, in our own soul, our own self. It is this which one must come to
\n\t\t\tit to find and not demand from it the satisfaction of some quite
\n\t\t\tother seeking or some very different turn of imagination and more
\n\t\t\tlimited superficial significance. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThis is the first truth of Indian architecture and its significance which
\ndemands emphasis and it leads at once to the answer to certain very common
\nmisapprehensions and objections. All art reposes on some unity and all its
\ndetails, whether few and sparing or lavish and crowded and full, must go back to
\nthat unity and help its significance; otherwise it is not art. Now we find our
\nWestern critic telling us with an assurance which would be stupefying if one did
\nnot see how naturally it arose, that in Indian architecture there is no unity,
\nwhich is as much as to say that there is here no great art at all, but only a
\nskill in the execution of crowded and unrelated details. We are told even by
\notherwise sympathetic judges that there is an overloading of ornament and detail
\nwhich, however beautiful or splendid in itself, stands in the way of unity, an
\nattempt to load every rift with ore, an absence of calm, no unfilled spaces, no
\nrelief to the eye. Mr. Archer as usual carries up the adverse criticism to its
\nextreme clamorous top notes; his heavily shotted phrases are all a continuous
\ninsistence on this one theme. The great temples of the South of India are, he
\nallows, marvels of massive construction. He seems by the way to have a rooted
\nobjection to massiveness in architecture or great massed effects in sculpture,
\nregardless of their appropriateness or need, although he admits them in
\nliterature. Still this much there is and with it a sort of titanic
\nimpressiveness, but of unity, clarity, nobility there is no trace. This
\nobservation seems to my judgment sufficiently contradictory, since I do not
\nunderstand how there can be a marvel of construction, whether light or massive,
\nwithout any unity, \u2014 but here is not even, it seems, a trace of it \u2014 or a mighty
\nimpressiveness without any greatness or nobility whatever, even allowing this to
\nbe a Titanic and not  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 274<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nan Olympian nobleness. He tells us that everything is ponderous, everything here
\noverwrought and the most prominent features swarming, writhing with contorted
\nsemi-human figures are as senseless as anything in architecture. How, one might
\nask, does he know that they are senseless, when he practically admits that he
\nhas made no attempt to find what is their sense, but has simply assumed from the
\nself-satisfied sufficiency of his own admitted ignorance and failure to
\nunderstand that there cannot be any meaning? And the whole thing he
\ncharacterises as a monstrosity built by Rakshasas, ogres, demons, a gigantesque
\nbarbarism. The northern buildings find a little less disfavour in his eyes, but
\nthe difference in the end is small or none. There is the same ponderousness,
\nabsence of lightness and grace, an even greater profusion of incised ornament;
\nthese too are barbaric creations. Alone the Mahomedan architecture, called
\nIndo-Saracenic, is exempted from this otherwise universal condemnation.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIt is a little surprising after all, however natural the first blindness here,
\nthat even assailants of this extreme kind, since they must certainly know that
\nthere can be no art, no effective construction without unity, should not have
\npaused even once to ask themselves whether after all there must not be here some
\nprinciple of oneness which they had missed because they came with alien
\nconceptions and looked at things from the wrong end, and before pronouncing this
\nmagisterial judgment should not have had patience to wait in a more detached and
\nreceptive way upon the thing under their eye and seen whether then some secret
\nof unity did not emerge. But it is the more sympathetic and less violent critic
\nwho deserves a direct answer. Now it may readily be admitted that the failure to
\nsee at once the unity of this architecture is perfectly natural to a European
\neye, because unity in the sense demanded by the Western conception, the Greek
\nunity gained by much suppression and a sparing use of detail and circumstance or
\neven the Gothic unity got by casting everything into the mould of a single
\nspiritual aspiration, is not there. And the greater unity that really is there
\ncan never be arrived at at all, if the eye begins and ends by dwelling on form
\nand detail and ornament, because it will then be obsessed by   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 275<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nthese things and find it difficult to go beyond to the unity which all this in
\nits totality serves not so much to express in itself, but to fill it with that
\nwhich comes out of it and relieve its oneness by multitude. An original oneness,
\nnot a combined or synthetic or an effected unity, is that from which this art
\nbegins and to which its work when finished returns or rather lives in it as in
\nits self and natural atmosphere. Indian sacred architecture constantly
\nrepresents the greatest oneness of the self, the cosmic, the infinite in the
\nimmensity of its world-design, the multitude of its features of self-expression,
\nlaksana<\/i>, (yet the oneness is greater than and
\nindependent of their totality and in itself indefinable), and all its
\nstarting-point of unity in conception, its mass of design and immensity of
\nmaterial, its crowding abundance of significant ornament and detail and its
\nreturn towards oneness are only intelligible as necessary circumstances of this
\npoem, this epic or this lyric \u2014 for there are smaller structures which are such
\nlyrics \u2014 of the Infinite. The Western mentality, except in those who are coming
\nor returning, since Europe had once something of this cult in her own way, to
\nthis vision, may find it difficult to appreciate the truth and meaning of such
\nan art, which tries to figure existence as a whole and not in its pieces; but I
\nwould invite those Indian minds who are troubled by these criticisms or partly
\nor temporarily overpowered by the Western way of seeing things, to look at our
\narchitecture in the light of this conception and see whether all but minor
\nobjections do not vanish as soon as the real meaning makes itself felt and gives
\nbody to the first indefinable impression and emotion which we experience before
\nthe greater constructions of the Indian builders. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo appreciate this spiritual-aesthetic truth of Indian architecture,
\n\t\t\tit will be best to look first at some work where there is not the
\n\t\t\tcomplication of surroundings now often out of harmony with the
\n\t\t\tbuilding, outside even those temple towns which still retain their
\n\t\t\tdependence on the sacred motive, and rather in some place where
\n\t\t\tthere is room for a free background of Nature. I have before me two
\n\t\t\tprints which can well serve the purpose, a temple at Kalahasti, a
\n\t\t\ttemple at Sinhachalam, two buildings entirely different in treatment
\n\t\t\tand yet one in the ground and <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 276<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe universal motive. The straight way here is not to detach the
\ntemple from its surroundings, but to see it in unity with the sky and low-lying landscape or with the sky and hills around and feel
\nthe thing common to both, the construction and its environment, the reality in Nature, the reality expressed in the work of art.
\nThe oneness to which this Nature aspires in her inconscient self-creation and in which she lives, the oneness to which the soul of
\nman uplifts itself in his conscious spiritual upbuilding, his labour of aspiration here expressed in stone, and in which so upbuilt he
\nand his work live, are the same and the soul-motive is one. Thus seen this work of man seems to be something which has started
\nout and detached itself against the power of the natural world, something of the one common aspiration in both to the same
\ninfinite spirit of itself, \u2014 the inconscient uplook and against it the strong single relief of the self-conscient effort and success of
\nfinding. One of these buildings climbs up bold, massive in projection, up-piled in the greatness of a forceful but sure ascent,
\npreserving its range and line to the last, the other soars from the strength of its base, in the grace and emotion of a curving
\nmass to a rounded summit and crowning symbol. There is in both a constant, subtle yet pronounced lessening from the base
\ntowards the top, but at each stage a repetition of the same form, the same multiplicity of insistence, the same crowded fullness
\nand indented relief, but one maintains its multiple endeavour and indication to the last, the other ends in a single sign. To find
\nthe significance we have first to feel the oneness of the infinity in which this nature and this art live, then see this thronged
\nexpression as the sign of the infinite multiplicity which fills this oneness, see in the regular lessening ascent of the edifice the
\nsubtler and subtler return from the base on earth to the original unity and seize on the symbolic indication of its close at the
\ntop. Not absence of unity, but a tremendous unity is revealed. Reinterpret intimately what this representation means in the
\nterms of our own spiritual self-existence and cosmic being, and we have what these great builders saw in themselves and reared
\nin stone. All objections, once we have got at this identity in spiritual experience, fall away and show themselves to be what
\n   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 277<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nthey really are, the utterance and cavil of an impotent misunderstanding, an insufficient apprehension or a complete failure to
\nsee. To appreciate the detail of Indian architecture is easy when the whole is thus seen and known; otherwise, it is impossible.
\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\nThis method of interpretation applies, however different the construction and the nature of the rendering, to all Dravidian
\narchitecture, not only to the mighty temples of far-spread fame, but to unknown roadside shrines in small towns, which are only
\na slighter execution of the same theme, a satisfied suggestion here, but the greater buildings a grandiose fulfilled aspiration.
\nThe architectural language of the north is of a different kind, there is another basic style; but here too the same spiritual, meditative, intuitive method has to be used and we get at the same result, an aesthetic interpretation or suggestion of the one spiritual experience, one in all its complexity and diversity, which founds the unity of the infinite variations of Indian spirituality
\nand religious feeling and the realised union of the human self with the Divine. This is the unity too of all the creations of this
\nhieratic art. The different styles and motives arrive at or express that unity in different ways. The objection that an excess of
\nthronging detail and ornament hides, impairs or breaks up the unity, is advanced only because the eye has made the mistake
\nof dwelling on the detail first without relation to this original spiritual oneness, which has first to be fixed in an intimate spiritual seeing and union and then all else seen in that vision and experience. When we look on the multiplicity of the world, it is
\nonly a crowded plurality that we can find and to arrive at unity we have to reduce, to suppress what we have seen or sparingly
\nselect a few indications or to be satisfied with the unity of this or that separate idea, experience or imagination; but when we
\nhave realised the self, the infinite unity and look back on the multiplicity of the world, then we find that oneness able to bear
\nall the infinity of variation and circumstance we can crowd into it and its unity remains unabridged by even the most endless
\nself-multiplication of its informing creation. We find the same thing in looking at this architecture. The wealth of ornament, detail,
\ncircumstance in Indian temples represents the infinite variety and   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 278<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nrepetition of the worlds, \u2014 not our world only, but all the planes, \u2014 suggests the infinite multiplicity in the infinite oneness. It is a
\nmatter of our own experience and fullness of vision how much we leave out or bring in, whether we express so much or so little
\nor attempt as in the Dravidian style to give the impression of a teeming inexhaustible plenitude. The largeness of this unity is
\nbase and continent enough for any superstructure or content of multitude.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nTo condemn this abundance as barbarous is to apply a foreign standard. Where after all are we bound to draw the
\nline? To the pure classical taste Shakespeare’s art once appeared great but barbarous for a similar reason,
\n\u2014 one remembers the
\nGallic description of him as a drunken barbarian of genius, \u2014 his artistic unity non-existent or spoilt by crowding tropical vegetation of incident and character, his teeming imaginations violent, exaggerated, sometimes bizarre, monstrous, without symmetry,
\nproportion and all the other lucid unities, lightnesses, graces loved by the classic mind. That mind might say of his work in
\nlanguage like Mr. Archer’s that here there is indeed a Titanic genius, a mass of power, but of unity, clarity, classic nobility no
\ntrace, but rather an entire absence of lucid grace and lightness and restraint, a profusion of wild ornament and an imaginative
\nriot without law or measure, strained figures, distorted positions and gestures, no dignity, no fine, just, rationally natural
\nand beautiful classic movement and pose. But even the strictest Latin mind has now got over its objections to the “splendid
\nbarbarism” of Shakespeare and can understand that here is a fuller, less sparing and exiguous vision of life, a greater intuitive
\nunity than the formal unities of the classic aesthesis. But the Indian vision of the world and existence was vaster and fuller
\nthan Shakespeare’s, because it embraced not merely life, but all being, not merely humanity, but all the worlds and all Nature
\nand cosmos. The European mind not having arrived except in individuals at any close, direct, insistent realisation of the unity
\nof the infinite self or the cosmic consciousness peopled with its infinite multiplicity, is not driven to express these things, cannot
\nunderstand or put up with them when they are expressed in this   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 279<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\noriental art, speech and style and object to it as the Latin mind once objected to Shakespeare. Perhaps the day is not distant
\nwhen it will see and understand and perhaps even itself try to express the same things in another language.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe objection that the crowding detail allows no calm, gives no relief or space to the eye, falls under the same heading, springs
\nfrom the same root, is urged from a different experience and has no validity for the Indian experience. For this unity on which
\nall is upborne, carries in itself the infinite space and calm of the spiritual realisation, and there is no need for other unfilled spaces
\nor tracts of calm of a lesser more superficial kind. The eye is here only a way of access to the soul, it is to that that there is the
\nappeal, and if the soul living in this realisation or dwelling under the influence of this aesthetic impression needs any relief, it is
\nnot from the incidence of life and form, but from the immense incidence of that vastness of infinity and tranquil silence, and
\nthat can only be given by its opposite, by an abundance of form and detail and life. As for the objection in regard to Dravidian
\narchitecture to its massiveness and its Titanic construction, the precise spiritual effect intended could not be given otherwise;
\nfor the infinite, the cosmic seen as a whole in its vast manifestation is Titanic, is mighty in material and power. It is other and
\nquite different things also, but none of these are absent from Indian construction. The great temples of the north have often
\nin spite of Mr. Archer’s dictum, a singular grace in their power, a luminous lightness relieving their mass and strength, a rich
\ndelicacy of beauty in their ornate fullness. It is not indeed the Greek lightness, clarity or naked nobleness, nor is it exclusive,
\nbut comes in in a fine blending of opposites which is in the very spirit of the Indian religious, philosophical and aesthetic mind.
\nNor are these things absent from many Dravidian buildings, though in certain styles they are boldly sacrificed or only put
\ninto minor incidents, \u2014 one instance of the kind Mr. Archer rejoices in as an oasis in the desert of this to him unintelligible
\nmass of might and greatness, \u2014 but in either case suppressed so that the fullness of solemn and grandiose effect may have a
\ncomplete, an undiminished expression.  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 280<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nI need not deal with adverse strictures of a more insignificant kind, \u2014 such as the dislike of the Indian form of the arch and
\ndome, because they are not the radiating arch and dome of other styles. That is only an intolerant refusal to admit the beauty of
\nunaccustomed forms. It is legitimate to prefer one’s own things, those to which our mind and nature have been trained, but to
\ncondemn other art and effort because it also prefers its own way of arriving at beauty, greatness, self-expression, is a narrowness
\nwhich with the growth of a more catholic culture ought to disappear. But there is one comment on Dravidian temple architecture
\nwhich is worth noting because it is made by others than Mr. Archer and his kind. Even a sympathetic mind like Professor
\nGeddes is impressed by some sense of a monstrous effect of terror and gloom in these mighty buildings. Such expressions
\nare astonishing to an Indian mind because terror and gloom are conspicuously absent from the feelings aroused in it by its
\nreligion, art or literature. In the religion they are rarely awakened and only in order to be immediately healed and, even when they
\ncome, are always sustained by the sense of a supporting and helping presence, an eternal greatness and calm or love or Delight behind; the very goddess of destruction is at the same time the compassionate and loving Mother; the austere Maheshwara,
\nRudra, is also Shiva, the auspicious, Ashutosha, the refuge of men. The Indian thinking and religious mind looks with calm,
\nwithout shrinking or repulsion, with an understanding born of its agelong effort at identity and oneness, at all that meets it in
\nthe stupendous spectacle of the cosmos. And even its asceticism, its turning from the world, which begins not in terror and gloom,
\nbut in a sense of vanity and fatigue, or of something higher, truer, happier than life, soon passes beyond any element of pessimistic
\nsadness into the rapture of the eternal peace and bliss. Indian secular poetry and drama is throughout rich, vital and joyous
\nand there is more tragedy, terror, sorrow and gloom packed into any few pages of European work than we can find in the whole
\nmass of Indian literature. It does not seem to me that Indian art is at all different in this respect from the religion and literature.
\nThe Western mind is here thrusting in its own habitual reactions   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 281<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nupon things in the indigenous conception in which they have no proper place. Mark the curious misreading of the dance of Shiva
\nas a dance of Death or Destruction, whereas, as anybody ought to be able to see who looks upon the Nataraja, it expresses on the
\ncontrary the rapture of the cosmic dance with the profundities behind of the unmoved eternal and infinite bliss. So too the figure
\nof Kali which is so terrible to European eyes is, as we know, the Mother of the universe accepting this fierce aspect of destruction
\nin order to slay the Asuras, the powers of evil in man and the world. There are other strands in this feeling in the Western
\nmind which seem to spring from a dislike of anything uplifted far beyond the human measure and others again in which we
\nsee a subtle survival of the Greek limitation, the fear, gloom and aversion with which the sunny terrestrial Hellenic mind commonly met the idea of the beyond, the limitless, the unknown; but that reaction has no place in Indian mentality. And as for the
\nstrangeness or formidable aspect of certain unhuman figures or the conception of demons or Rakshasas, it must be remembered
\nthat the Indian aesthetic mind deals not only with the earth but with psychic planes in which these things exist and ranges
\nfreely among them without being overpowered because it carries everywhere the stamp of a large confidence in the strength and
\nthe omnipresence of the Self or the Divine. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nI have dwelt on Hindu and especially on Dravidian architecture because the latter is the most fiercely attacked as the most uncompromisingly foreign to European taste. But a word
\ntoo may be said about Indo-Moslem architecture. I am not concerned to defend any claim for the purely indigenous origin of
\nits features. It seems to me that here the Indian mind has taken in much from the Arab and Persian imagination and in certain
\nmosques and tombs I seem to find an impress of the robust and bold Afghan and Mogul temperament; but it remains clear
\nenough that it is still on the whole a typically Indian creation with the peculiar Indian gift. The richness of decorative skill and
\nimagination has been turned to the uses of another style, but it is the same skill which we find in the northern Hindu temples, and
\nin the ground we see, however toned down, something some 
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 282<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ntimes of the old epic mass and power, but more often that lyric grace which we see developing before the Mahomedan advent in
\nthe indigenous sculpture, \u2014 as in the schools of the North-East and of Java, \u2014 and sometimes a blending of the two motives.
\nThe modification, the toning down sets the average European mind at ease and secures its suffrage. But what is it that it so
\nmuch admires? Mr. Archer tells us at first that it is its rational beauty, refinement and grace, normal, fair, refreshing after the
\nmonstrous riot of Hindu Yogic hallucination and nightmare. That description which might have been written of Greek art,
\nseems to me grotesquely inapplicable. Immediately afterwards he harps on quite another and an incompatible phrase, and
\ncalls it a fairy-land of exquisite architecture. A rational fairyland is a wonder which may perhaps be hereafter discovered
\nby some strange intertwining of the nineteenth and twentieth century minds, but I do not think it has yet existed on earth or
\nin the heavens. Not rational but magical beauty satisfying and enchanting to some deeper quite suprarational aesthetic soul in
\nus is the inexpressible charm of these creations. But still where does the magic touch our critic? He tells us in a rapt journalistic
\nstyle. It is the exquisite marble traceries, the beautiful domes and minarets, the stately halls of sepulture, the marvellous loggias
\nand arcades, the magnificent plinths and platforms, the majestic gateways, et cetera. And is this then all? Only the charm of
\nan outward material luxury and magnificence? Yes; Mr. Archer again tells us that we must be content here with a visual sensuous beauty without any moral suggestion. And that helps him to bring in the sentence of destructive condemnation without
\nwhich he could not feel happy in dealing with Indian things: this Moslem architecture suggests not only unbridled luxury, but
\neffeminacy and decadence! But in that case, whatever its beauty, it belongs entirely to a secondary plane of artistic creation and
\ncannot rank with the great spiritual aspirations in stone of the Hindu builders.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nI do not demand “moral suggestions” from architecture, but is it true that there is nothing but a sensuous outward grace and
\nbeauty and luxury in these Indo-Moslem buildings? It is not at   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 283<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nall true of the characteristic greater work. The Taj is not merely a sensuous reminiscence of an imperial amour or a fairy enchantment hewn from the moon’s lucent quarries, but the eternal dream of a love that survives death. The great mosques embody
\noften a religious aspiration lifted to a noble austerity which supports and is not lessened by the subordinated ornament and
\ngrace. The tombs reach beyond death to the beauty and joy of Paradise. The buildings of Fatehpur-Sikri are not monuments
\nof an effeminate luxurious decadence, \u2014 an absurd description for the mind of the time of Akbar,
\n\u2014 but give form to a nobility,
\npower and beauty which lay hold upon but do not wallow on the earth. There is not here indeed the vast spiritual content of the
\nearlier Indian mind, but it is still an Indian mind which in these delicate creations absorbs the West Asian influence, and lays
\nstress on the sensuous as before in the poetry of Kalidasa, but uplifts it to a certain immaterial charm, rises often from the earth
\nwithout quite leaving it into the magical beauty of the middle world and in the religious mood touches with a devout hand the
\nskirts of the Divine. The all-pervading spiritual obsession is not there, but other elements of life not ignored by Indian culture
\nand gaining on it since the classical times are here brought out under a new influence and are still penetrated with some radiant
\nglow of a superior lustre.   <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 284<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nXIV <\/b>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nT<\/font>HE SCULPTURE<\/b> and painting of ancient India have recently been rehabilitated with a surprising suddenness in the eyes of a more cultivated European criticism in
\nthe course of that rapid opening of the Western mind to the value of oriental thought and creation which is one of the most
\nsignificant signs of a change that is yet only in its beginning. There have even been here and there minds of a fine perception and profound originality who have seen in a return to the ancient and persistent freedom of oriental art, its refusal to be
\nshackled or debased by an imitative realism, its fidelity to the true theory of art as an inspired interpretation of the deeper
\nsoul values of existence lifted beyond servitude to the outsides of Nature, the right way to the regeneration and liberation of the
\naesthetic and creative mind of Europe. And actually, although much of Western art runs still along the old grooves, much too
\nof its most original recent creation has elements or a guiding direction which brings it nearer to the Eastern mentality and
\nunderstanding. It might then be possible for us to leave it at that and wait for time to deepen this new vision and vindicate more
\nfully the truth and greatness of the art of India. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nBut we are concerned not only with the critical estimation of
\nour art by Europe, but much more nearly with the evil effect of the earlier depreciation on the Indian mind which has been for a
\nlong time side-tracked off its true road by a foreign, an anglicised education and, as a result, vulgarised and falsified by the loss of
\nits own true centre, because this hampers and retards a sound and living revival of artistic taste and culture and stands in the
\nway of a new age of creation. It was only a few years ago that the mind of educated India
\n\u2014 “educated” without an atom of
\nreal culture \u2014 accepted contentedly the vulgar English estimate of our sculpture and painting as undeveloped inferior art or even
\n   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 285<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\na mass of monstrous and abortive miscreation, and though that has passed and there is a great change, there is still very common
\na heavy weight of secondhand occidental notions, a bluntness or absolute lacking of aesthetic taste,1<\/font><\/sup> a failure to appreciate, and
\none still comes sometimes across a strain of blatantly anglicised criticism which depreciates all that is in the Indian manner and
\npraises only what is consistent with Western canons. And the old style of European criticism continues to have some weight with
\nus, because the lack of aesthetic or indeed of any real cultural training in our present system of education makes us ignorant
\nand undiscriminating receptacles, so that we are ready to take the considered opinions of competent critics like Okakura or
\nMr. Laurence Binyon and the rash scribblings of journalists of the type of Mr. Archer, who write without authority because
\nin these things they have neither taste nor knowledge, as of equal importance and the latter even attract a greater attention.
\nIt is still necessary therefore to reiterate things which, however obvious to a trained or sensitive aesthetic intelligence, are not
\nyet familiar to the average mind still untutored or habituated to a system of false weights and values. The work of recovering a true and inward understanding of ourselves \u2014 our past and our present self and from that our future
\n\u2014 is only in its
\ncommencement for the majority of our people. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nTo appreciate our own artistic past at its right value we
\nhave to free ourselves from all subjection to a foreign outlook and see our sculpture and painting, as I have already suggested
\nabout our architecture, in the light of its own profound intention and greatness of spirit. When we so look at it, we shall be able
\nto see that the sculpture of ancient and mediaeval India claims its place on the very highest levels of artistic achievement. I
\ndo not know where we shall find a sculptural art of a more profound intention, a greater spirit, a more consistent skill of
\nachievement. Inferior work there is, work that fails or succeeds <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n1
\nFor example, one still reads with a sense of despairing stupefaction “criticism” that speaks of Ravi Varma and Abanindranath Tagore as artistic creators of different styles,
\nbut an equal power and genius!   <\/font>
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 286<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nonly partially, but take it in its whole, in the long persistence of its excellence, in the number of its masterpieces, in the power
\nwith which it renders the soul and the mind of a people, and we shall be tempted to go further and claim for it a first place. The
\nart of sculpture has indeed flourished supremely only in ancient countries where it was conceived against its natural background
\nand support, a great architecture. Egypt, Greece, India take the premier rank in this kind of creation. Mediaeval and modern
\nEurope produced nothing of the same mastery, abundance and amplitude, while on the contrary in painting later Europe has
\ndone much and richly and with a prolonged and constantly renewed inspiration. The difference arises from the different kind
\nof mentality required by the two arts. The material in which we work makes its own peculiar demand on the creative spirit, lays
\ndown its own natural conditions, as Ruskin has pointed out in a different connection, and the art of making in stone or bronze
\ncalls for a cast of mind which the ancients had and the moderns have not or have had only in rare individuals, an artistic mind not
\ntoo rapidly mobile and self-indulgent, not too much mastered by its own personality and emotion and the touches that excite and
\npass, but founded rather on some great basis of assured thought and vision, stable in temperament, fixed in its imagination on
\nthings that are firm and enduring. One cannot trifle with ease in these sterner materials, one cannot even for long or with safety
\nindulge in them in mere grace and external beauty or the more superficial, mobile and lightly attractive motives. The aesthetic
\nself-indulgence which the soul of colour permits and even invites, the attraction of the mobile play of life to which line of brush,
\npen or pencil gives latitude, are here forbidden or, if to some extent achieved, only within a line of restraint to cross which
\nis perilous and soon fatal. Here grand or profound motives are called for, a more or less penetrating spiritual vision or some
\nsense of things eternal to base the creation. The sculptural art is static, self-contained, necessarily firm, noble or severe and
\ndemands an aesthetic spirit capable of these qualities. A certain mobility of life and mastering grace of line can come in upon
\nthis basis, but if it entirely replaces the original dharma of the   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 287<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nmaterial, that means that the spirit of the statuette has come into the statue and we may be sure of an approaching decadence.
\nHellenic sculpture following this line passed from the greatness of Phidias through the soft self-indulgence of Praxiteles to its
\ndecline. A later Europe has failed for the most part in sculpture, in spite of some great work by individuals, an Angelo or
\na Rodin, because it played externally with stone and bronze, took them as a medium for the representation of life and could
\nnot find a sufficient basis of profound vision or spiritual motive. In Egypt and in India, on the contrary, sculpture preserved its
\npower of successful creation through several great ages. The earliest recently discovered work in India dates back to the fifth
\ncentury B.C. and is already fully evolved with an evident history of consummate previous creation behind it, and the latest work
\nof some high value comes down to within a few centuries from our own time. An assured history of two millenniums of accomplished sculptural creation is a rare and significant fact in the life of a people.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThis greatness and continuity of Indian sculpture is due to the close connection between the religious and philosophical and
\nthe aesthetic mind of the people. Its survival into times not far from us was possible because of the survival of the cast of the
\nantique mind in that philosophy and religion, a mind familiar with eternal things, capable of cosmic vision, having its roots
\nof thought and seeing in the profundities of the soul, in the most intimate, pregnant and abiding experiences of the human
\nspirit. The spirit of this greatness is indeed at the opposite pole to the perfection within limits, the lucid nobility or the vital
\nfineness and physical grace of Hellenic creation in stone. And since the favourite trick of Mr. Archer and his kind is to throw
\nthe Hellenic ideal constantly in our face, as if sculpture must be either governed by the Greek standard or worthless, it is as well
\nto take note of the meaning of the difference. The earlier and more archaic Greek style had indeed something in it which looks
\nlike a reminiscent touch of a first creative origin from Egypt and the Orient, but there is already there the governing conception
\nwhich determined the Greek aesthesis and has dominated the   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 288<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n17. Nataraja, Kuram, Tamil Nadu
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nOr what of the marvellous genius and skill in the treatment of
\nthe cosmic movement and delight of the dance of Shiva…? (p. 292)
\n   <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n18. Sundaramurti Swami, Colombo Museum
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe dignity and beauty of the human figure in the best Indian
\nstatues cannot be excelled, but what was sought and what was achieved was not an outward naturalistic, but a spiritual
\nand a psychic beauty…. (p. 296)  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n19. Avalokiteshwara, Nepal<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n … gracious imaginations of Bengal, Nepal and Java…(p. 297)
\n  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n20. Nataraja, Tanjore <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe Buddhistic, the Vedantic seeing of things may be equally
\npowerful starting-points for artistic creation, may lead one to the calm of a Buddha or the other to the rapture dance or
\nmajestic stillness of Shiva…. (p. 259)  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n21. Bodhisattwa Padmapani, Ajanta<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n … the unique character of Indian painting, the peculiar
\nappeal of the art of Ajanta springs from the remarkably inward, spiritual and psychic turn which was given to the
\nartistic conception and method by the pervading genius of Indian culture. (p. 303)
\n   <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n22. Apsaras, Sigiriya, Sri Lanka <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe rest of all that vivid contemporaneous creation which
\nmust at one time have covered the whole country in the temples and viharas and the houses of the cultured and the
\ncourts and pleasure-houses of nobles and kings, has perished, and we have only, more or less similar to the work at Ajanta,
\nsome crumbling fragments of rich and profuse decoration in the caves of Bagh and a few paintings of female figures in two
\nrock-cut chambers at Sigiriya. (p. 299)   <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n23. Painting in Bagh Caves, Madhya Pradesh  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n24. Krishna and Radha, Rajput School
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPainting is naturally the most sensuous of the arts, and the
\nhighest greatness open to the painter is to spiritualise this sensuous appeal by making the most vivid outward beauty a
\nrevelation of subtle spiritual emotion…. (p. 302)   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

\nlater mind of Europe, the will to combine some kind of expression of an inner truth with an idealising imitation of external
\nNature. The brilliance, beauty and nobility of the work which was accomplished, was a very great and perfect thing, but it is
\nidle to maintain that that is the sole possible method or the one permanent and natural law of artistic creation. Its highest greatness subsisted only so long \u2014 and it was not for very long \u2014 as a certain satisfying balance was struck and constantly maintained
\nbetween a fine, but not very subtle, opulent or profound spiritual suggestion and an outward physical harmony of nobility and
\ngrace. A later work achieved a brief miracle of vital suggestion and sensuous physical grace with a certain power of expressing
\nthe spirit of beauty in the mould of the senses; but this once done, there was no more to see or create. For the curious turn which
\nimpels at the present day the modern mind to return to spiritual vision through a fiction of exaggerated realism which is really a
\npressure upon the form of things to yield the secret of the spirit in life and matter, was not open to the classic temperament and
\nintelligence. And it is surely time for us to see, as is now by many admitted, that an acknowledgment of the greatness of Greek art
\nin its own province ought not to prevent the plain perception of the rather strait and narrow bounds of that province. What
\nGreek sculpture expressed was fine, gracious and noble, but what it did not express and could not by the limitations of its
\ncanon hope to attempt, was considerable, was immense in possibility, was that spiritual depth and extension which the human
\nmind needs for its larger and deeper self-experience. And just this is the greatness of Indian sculpture that it expresses in stone
\nand bronze what the Greek aesthetic mind could not conceive or express and embodies it with a profound understanding of
\nits right conditions and a native perfection. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe more ancient sculptural art of India embodies in visible
\nform what the Upanishads threw out into inspired thought and the Mahabharata and Ramayana portrayed by the word in life.
\nThis sculpture like the architecture springs from spiritual realisation, and what it creates and expresses at its greatest is the
\nspirit in form, the soul in body, this or that living soul power   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 289<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nin the divine or the human, the universal and cosmic individualised in suggestion but not lost in individuality, the impersonal
\nsupporting a not too insistent play of personality, the abiding moments of the eternal, the presence, the idea, the power, the
\ncalm or potent delight of the spirit in its actions and creations. And over all the art something of this intention broods and
\npersists and is suggested even where it does not dominate the mind of the sculptor. And therefore as in the architecture so in
\nthe sculpture, we have to bring a different mind to this work, a different capacity of vision and response, we have to go deeper
\ninto ourselves to see than in the more outwardly imaginative art of Europe. The Olympian gods of Phidias are magnified and
\nuplifted human beings saved from a too human limitation by a certain divine calm of impersonality or universalised quality,
\ndivine type, guna; in other work we see heroes, athletes, feminine incarnations of beauty, calm and restrained embodiments
\nof idea, action or emotion in the idealised beauty of the human figure. The gods of Indian sculpture are cosmic beings, embodiments of some great spiritual power, spiritual idea and action, inmost psychic significance, the human form a vehicle of this
\nsoul meaning, its outward means of self-expression; everything in the figure, every opportunity it gives, the face, the hands,
\nthe posture of the limbs, the poise and turn of the body, every accessory, has to be made instinct with the inner meaning, help
\nit to emerge, carry out the rhythm of the total suggestion, and on the other hand everything is suppressed which would defeat
\nthis end, especially all that would mean an insistence on the merely vital or physical, outward or obvious suggestions of the
\nhuman figure. Not the ideal physical or emotional beauty, but the utmost spiritual beauty or significance of which the human
\nform is capable, is the aim of this kind of creation. The divine self in us is its theme, the body made a form of the soul is
\nits idea and its secret. And therefore in front of this art it is not enough to look at it and respond with the aesthetic eye
\nand the imagination, but we must look also into the form for what it carries and even through and behind it to pursue the
\nprofound suggestion it gives into its own infinite. The religious   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 290<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nor hieratic side of Indian sculpture is intimately connected with the spiritual experiences of Indian meditation and adoration,
\n\u2014 those deep things of our self-discovery which our critic calls contemptuously Yogic hallucinations,
\n\u2014 soul realisation is its
\nmethod of creation and soul realisation must be the way of our response and understanding. And even with the figures of
\nhuman beings or groups it is still a like inner aim and vision which governs the labour of the sculptor. The statue of a king or
\na saint is not meant merely to give the idea of a king or saint or to portray some dramatic action or to be a character portrait in
\nstone, but to embody rather a soul state or experience or deeper soul quality, as for instance, not the outward emotion, but the
\ninner soul-side of rapt ecstasy of adoration and God-vision in the saint or the devotee before the presence of the worshipped
\ndeity. This is the character of the task the Indian sculptor set before his effort and it is according to his success in that and not
\nby the absence of something else, some quality or some intention foreign to his mind and contrary to his design, that we have to
\njudge of his achievement and his labour. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nOnce we admit this standard, it is impossible to speak too
\nhighly of the profound intelligence of its conditions which was developed in Indian sculpture, of the skill with which its task
\nwas treated or of the consummate grandeur and beauty of its masterpieces. Take
\nthe great Buddhas \u2014 not the Gandharan, but
\nthe divine figures or groups in cave cathedral or temple, the best of the later southern bronzes of which there is a remarkable
\ncollection of plates in Mr. Gangoly’s book on that subject, the Kalasanhara image, the Natarajas. No greater or finer work,
\nwhether in conception or execution, has been done by the human hand and its greatness is increased by obeying a spiritualised aesthetic vision. The figure of the Buddha achieves the expression of the infinite in a finite image, and that is surely no mean or
\nbarbaric achievement, to embody the illimitable calm of Nirvana in a human form and visage. The Kalasanhara Shiva is supreme
\nnot only by the majesty, power, calmly forceful control, dignity and kingship of existence which the whole spirit and pose of
\nthe figure visibly incarnates, \u2014 that is only half or less than half  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 291<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nits achievement, \u2014 but much more by the concentrated divine passion of the spiritual overcoming of time and existence which
\nthe artist has succeeded in putting into eye and brow and mouth and every feature and has subtly supported by the contained
\nsuggestion, not emotional, but spiritual, of every part of the body of the godhead and the rhythm of his meaning which he
\nhas poured through the whole unity of this creation. Or what of the marvellous genius and skill in the treatment of the cosmic
\nmovement and delight of the dance of Shiva, the success with which the posture of every limb is made to bring out the rhythm
\nof the significance, the rapturous intensity and abandon of the movement itself and yet the just restraint in the intensity of
\nmotion, the subtle variation of each element of the single theme in the seizing idea of these master sculptors? Image after image
\nin the great temples or saved from the wreck of time shows the same grand traditional art and the genius which worked
\nin that tradition and its many styles, the profound and firmly grasped spiritual idea, the consistent expression of it in every
\ncurve, line and mass, in hand and limb, in suggestive pose, in expressive rhythm,
\n\u2014 it is an art which, understood in its own
\nspirit, need fear no comparison with any other, ancient or modern, Hellenic or Egyptian, of the near or the far East or of the
\nWest in any of its creative ages. This sculpture passed through many changes, a more ancient art of extraordinary grandeur and
\nepic power uplifted by the same spirit as reigned in the Vedic and Vedantic seers and in the epic poets, a later Puranic turn
\ntowards grace and beauty and rapture and an outburst of lyric ecstasy and movement, and last a rapid and vacant decadence;
\nbut throughout all the second period too the depth and greatness of sculptural motive supports and vivifies the work and in the
\nvery turn towards decadence something of it often remains to redeem from complete debasement, emptiness or insignificance.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nLet us see then what is the value of the objections made to the spirit and style of Indian sculpture. This is the burden
\nof the objurgations of the devil’s advocate that his self-bound European mind finds the whole thing barbaric, meaningless,
\nuncouth, strange, bizarre, the work of a distorted imagination   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 292<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nlabouring mid a nightmare of unlovely unrealities. Now there is in the total of what survives to us work that is less inspired
\nor even work that is bad, exaggerated, forced or clumsy, the production of mechanic artificers mingled with the creation of
\ngreat nameless artists, and an eye that does not understand the sense, the first conditions of the work, the mind of the race
\nor its type of aesthesis, may well fail to distinguish between good and inferior execution, decadent work and the work of
\nthe great hands and the great eras. But applied as a general description the criticism is itself grotesque and distorted and it
\nmeans only that here are conceptions and a figuring imagination strange to the Western intelligence. The line and run and turn
\ndemanded by the Indian aesthetic sense are not the same as those demanded by the European. It would take too long to
\nexamine the detail of the difference which we find not only in sculpture, but in the other plastic arts and in music and even to a
\ncertain extent in literature, but on the whole we may say that the Indian mind moves on the spur of a spiritual sensitiveness and
\npsychic curiosity, while the aesthetic curiosity of the European temperament is intellectual, vital, emotional and imaginative in
\nthat sense, and almost the whole strangeness of the Indian use of line and mass, ornament and proportion and rhythm arises from
\nthis difference. The two minds live almost in different worlds, are either not looking at the same things or, even where they
\nmeet in the object, see it from a different level or surrounded by a different atmosphere, and we know what power the point
\nof view or the medium of vision has to transform the object. And undoubtedly there is very ample ground for Mr. Archer’s
\ncomplaint of the want of naturalism in most Indian sculpture. The inspiration, the way of seeing is frankly not naturalistic, not,
\nthat is to say, the vivid, convincing and accurate, the graceful, beautiful or strong, or even the idealised or imaginative imitation
\nof surface or terrestrial nature. The Indian sculptor is concerned with embodying spiritual experiences and impressions, not with
\nrecording or glorifying what is received by the physical senses. He may start with suggestions from earthly and physical things,
\nbut he produces his work only after he has closed his eyes to the   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 294<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ninsistence of the physical circumstances, seen them in the psychic memory and transformed them within himself so as to bring out
\nsomething other than their physical reality or their vital and intellectual significance. His eye sees the psychic line and turn
\nof things and he replaces by them the material contours. It is not surprising that such a method should produce results which
\nare strange to the average Western mind and eye when these are not liberated by a broad and sympathetic culture. And what
\nis strange to us, is naturally repugnant to our habitual mind and uncouth to our habitual sense, bizarre to our imaginative
\ntradition and aesthetic training. We want what is familiar to the eye and obvious to the imagination and will not readily admit
\nthat there may be here another and perhaps greater beauty than that in the circle of which we are accustomed to live and take
\npleasure. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIt seems to be especially the application of this psychic vision to the human form which offends these critics of Indian sculpture. There is the familiar objection to such features as the
\nmultiplication of the arms in the figures of gods and goddesses, the four, six, eight or ten arms of Shiva, the eighteen arms of
\nDurga, because they are a monstrosity, a thing not in nature. Now certainly a play of imagination of this kind would be out
\nof place in the representation of a man or woman, because it would have no artistic or other meaning, but I cannot see why
\nthis freedom should be denied in the representation of cosmic beings like the Indian godheads. The whole question is, first,
\nwhether it is an appropriate means of conveying a significance not otherwise to be represented with an equal power and force
\nand, secondly, whether it is capable of artistic representation, a rhythm of artistic truth and unity which need not be that of
\nphysical nature. If not, then it is an ugliness and violence, but if these conditions are satisfied, the means are justified and I do
\nnot see that we have any right, faced with the perfection of the work, to raise a discordant clamour. Mr. Archer himself is struck
\nwith the perfection of skill and mastery with which these to him superfluous limbs are disposed in the figures of the dancing
\nShiva, and indeed it would need an eye of impossible blindness  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 294<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nnot to see that much, but what is still more important is the artistic significance which this skill is used to serve, and, if that
\nis understood, we can at once see that the spiritual emotion and suggestions of the cosmic dance are brought out by this device in
\na way which would not be as possible with a two-armed figure. The same truth holds as to the Durga with her eighteen arms
\nslaying the Asuras or the Shivas of the great Pallava creations where the lyrical beauty of the Natarajas is absent, but there is
\ninstead a great epical rhythm and grandeur. Art justifies its own means and here it does it with a supreme perfection. And as for
\nthe “contorted” postures of some figures, the same law holds. There is often a departure in this respect from the anatomical
\nnorm of the physical body or else \u2014 and that is a rather different thing \u2014 an emphasis more or less pronounced on an unusual
\npose of limbs or body, and the question then is whether it is done without sense or purpose, a mere clumsiness or an ugly
\nexaggeration, or whether it rather serves some significance and establishes in the place of the normal physical metric of Nature
\nanother purposeful and successful artistic rhythm. Art after all is not forbidden to deal with the unusual or to alter and overpass
\nNature, and it might almost be said that it has been doing little else since it began to serve the human imagination from its first
\ngrand epic exaggerations to the violences of modern romanticism and realism, from the high ages of Valmiki and Homer to
\nthe day of Hugo and Ibsen. The means matter, but less than the significance and the thing done and the power and beauty with
\nwhich it expresses the dreams and truths of the human spirit. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe whole question of the Indian artistic treatment of the
\nhuman figure has to be understood in the light of its aesthetic purpose. It works with a certain intention and ideal, a general
\nnorm and standard which permits of a good many variations and from which too there are appropriate departures. The epithets
\nwith which Mr. Archer tries to damn its features are absurd, captious, exaggerated, the forced phrases of a journalist trying to
\ndepreciate a perfectly sensible, beautiful and aesthetic norm with which he does not sympathise. There are other things here than
\na repetition of hawk faces, wasp waists, thin legs and the rest of   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 295<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe ill-tempered caricature. He doubts Mr. Havell’s suggestion that these old Indian artists knew the anatomy of the body well
\nenough, as Indian science knew it, but chose to depart from it for their own purpose. It does not seem to me to matter much,
\nsince art is not anatomy, nor an artistic masterpiece necessarily a reproduction of physical fact or a lesson in natural science. I see
\nno reason to regret the absence of telling studies in muscles, torsos, etc., for I cannot regard these things as having in themselves
\nany essential artistic value. The one important point is that the Indian artist had a perfect idea of proportion and rhythm and
\nused them in certain styles with nobility and power, in others like the Javan, the Gauda or the southern bronzes with that or with a
\nperfect grace added and often an intense and a lyrical sweetness. The dignity and beauty of the human figure in the best Indian
\nstatues cannot be excelled, but what was sought and what was achieved was not an outward naturalistic, but a spiritual and a
\npsychic beauty, and to achieve it the sculptor suppressed, and was entirely right in suppressing, the obtrusive material detail
\nand aimed instead at purity of outline and fineness of feature. And into that outline, into that purity and fineness he was able
\nto work whatever he chose, mass of force or delicacy of grace, a static dignity or a mighty strength or a restrained violence of
\nmovement or whatever served or helped his meaning. A divine and subtle body was his ideal; and to a taste and imagination
\ntoo blunt or realistic to conceive the truth and beauty of his idea, the ideal itself may well be a stumbling-block, a thing of
\noffence. But the triumphs of art are not to be limited by the narrow prejudices of the natural realistic man; that triumphs and endures which appeals to the best,
\nsādhu-sammatam<\/i>, that
\nis deepest and greatest which satisfies the profoundest souls and the most sensitive psychic imaginations.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nEach manner of art has its own ideals, traditions, agreed conventions; for the ideas and forms of the creative spirit are
\nmany, though there is one ultimate basis. The perspective, the psychic vision of the Chinese and Japanese painters are not the
\nsame as those of European artists; but who can ignore the beauty and the wonder of their work? I dare say Mr. Archer would set
\n  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 296<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\na Constable or a Turner above the whole mass of Far Eastern work, as I myself, if I had to make a choice, would take a
\nChinese or Japanese landscape or other magic transmutation of Nature in preference to all others; but these are matters of
\nindividual, national or continental temperament and preference. The essence of the question lies in the rendering of the truth
\nand beauty seized by the spirit. Indian sculpture, Indian art in general follows its own ideal and traditions and these are unique
\nin their character and quality. It is the expression great as a whole through many centuries and ages of creation, supreme at
\nits best, whether in rare early pre-Asokan, in Asokan or later work of the first heroic age or in the magnificent statues of the
\ncave-cathedrals and Pallava and other southern temples or the noble, accomplished or gracious imaginations of Bengal, Nepal
\nand Java through the after centuries or in the singular skill and delicacy of the bronze work of the southern religions, a
\nself-expression of the spirit and ideals of a great nation and a great culture which stands apart in the cast of its mind and qualities
\namong the earth’s peoples, famed for its spiritual achievement, its deep philosophies and its religious spirit, its artistic taste,
\nthe richness of its poetic imagination, and not inferior once in its dealings with life and its social endeavour and political
\ninstitutions. This sculpture is a singularly powerful, a seizing and profound interpretation in stone and bronze of the inner
\nsoul of that people. The nation, the culture failed for a time in life after a long greatness, as others failed before it and others
\nwill yet fail that now flourish; the creations of its mind have been arrested, this art like others has ceased or fallen into decay, but
\nthe thing from which it rose, the spiritual fire within still burns and in the renascence that is coming it may be that this great art
\ntoo will revive, not saddled with the grave limitations of modern Western work in the kind, but vivified by the nobility of a new
\nimpulse and power of the ancient spiritual motive. Let it recover, not limited by old forms, but undeterred by the cavillings of an
\nalien mind, the sense of the grandeur and beauty and the inner significance of its past achievement; for in the continuity of its
\nspiritual endeavour lies its best hope for the future.   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 297<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nXV <\/b>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nT<\/font>HE ART<\/b> of painting in ancient and later India, owing
\nto the comparative scantiness of its surviving creations, does not create quite so great an impression as her architecture and sculpture and it has even been supposed that this art flourished only at intervals, finally ceased for a period of several
\ncenturies and was revived later on by the Moguls and by Hindu artists who underwent the Mogul influence. This however is a
\nhasty view that does not outlast a more careful research and consideration of the available evidence. It appears, on the contrary,
\nthat Indian culture was able to arrive at a well developed and an understanding aesthetic use of colour and line from very early
\ntimes and, allowing for the successive fluctuations, periods of decline and fresh outbursts of originality and vigour, which the
\ncollective human mind undergoes in all countries, used this form of self-expression very persistently through the long centuries of
\nits growth and greatness. And especially it is apparent now that there was a persistent tradition, a fundamental spirit and turn of
\nthe aesthetic sense native to the mind of India which links even the latest Rajput art to the earliest surviving work still preserved
\nat its highest summit of achievement in the rock-cut retreats of Ajanta. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe materials of the art of painting are unfortunately more perishable than those of any other of the greater means of creative aesthetic self-expression and of the ancient masterpieces only a little survives, but that little still indicates the immensity
\nof the amount of work of which it is the fading remnant. It is said that of the twenty-nine caves at Ajanta almost all once bore signs
\nof decoration by frescoes; only so long ago as forty years sixteen still contained something of the original paintings, but now six
\nalone still bear their witness to the greatness of this ancient art, though rapidly perishing and deprived of something of the
\n  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 298<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\noriginal warmth and beauty and glory of colour. The rest of all that vivid contemporaneous creation which must at one time
\nhave covered the whole country in the temples and viharas and the houses of the cultured and the courts and pleasure-houses of
\nnobles and kings, has perished, and we have only, more or less similar to the work at Ajanta, some crumbling fragments of rich
\nand profuse decoration in the caves of Bagh and a few paintings of female figures in two rock-cut chambers at Sigiriya.1<\/font><\/sup> These
\nremnants represent the work of some six or seven centuries, but they leave gaps, and nothing now remains of any paintings
\nearlier than the first century of the Christian era, except some frescoes, spoilt by unskilful restoration, from the first century
\nbefore it, while after the seventh there is a blank which might at first sight argue a total decline of the art, a cessation and
\ndisappearance. But there are fortunately evidences which carry back the tradition of the art at one end many centuries earlier
\nand other remains more recently discovered and of another kind outside India and in the Himalayan countries carry it forward
\nat the other end as late as the twelfth century and help us to link it on to the later schools of Rajput painting. The history of the
\nself-expression of the Indian mind in painting covers a period of as much as two millenniums of more or less intense artistic
\ncreation and stands on a par in this respect with the architecture and sculpture.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe paintings that remain to us from ancient times are the work of Buddhist painters, but the art itself in India was of
\npre-Buddhistic origin. The Tibetan historian ascribes a remote antiquity to all the crafts, prior to the Buddha, and this is a
\nconclusion increasingly pointed to by a constant accumulation of evidence. Already in the third century before the Christian era
\nwe find the theory of the art well founded from previous times,
\nthe six essential elements, sadanga<\/i>, recognised and enumerated, like the more or less corresponding six Chinese canons which
\nare first mentioned nearly a thousand years later, and in a very <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n1
\nSince then more paintings of high quality have been found in some southern temples, akin in their spirit and style to the work at Ajanta.
\n   <\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 299<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nancient work on the art pointing back to pre-Buddhistic times a number of careful and very well-defined rules and traditions
\nare laid down which were developed into an elaborate science of technique and traditional rule in the later
\nShilpasutras. The
\nfrequent references in the ancient literature also are of a character which would have been impossible without a widespread
\npractice and appreciation of the art by both men and women of the cultured classes, and these allusions and incidents evidencing
\na moved delight in the painted form and beauty of colour and the appeal both to the decorative sense and to the aesthetic emotion
\noccur not only in the later poetry of Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti and other classical dramatists, but in the early popular drama of
\nBhasa and earlier still in the epics and in the sacred books of the Buddhists. The absence of any actual creations of this earlier art
\nmakes it indeed impossible to say with absolute certainty what was its fundamental character and intimate source of inspiration
\nor whether it was religious and hieratic or secular in its origin. The theory has been advanced rather too positively that it was
\nin the courts of kings that the art began and with a purely secular motive and inspiration, and it is true that while the
\nsurviving work of Buddhist artists is mainly religious in subject or at least links on common scenes of life to Buddhist ceremony
\nand legend, the references in the epic and dramatic literature are usually to painting of a more purely aesthetic character,
\npersonal, domestic or civic, portrait painting, the representation of scenes and incidents in the lives of kings and other great
\npersonalities or mural decoration of palaces and private or public buildings. On the other hand, there are similar elements in
\nBuddhist painting, as, for example, the portraits of the queens of King Kashyapa at Sigiriya, the historic representation of a
\nPersian embassy or the landing of Vijaya in Ceylon. And we may fairly assume that all along Indian painting both Buddhist
\nand Hindu covered much the same kind of ground as the later Rajput work in a more ample fashion and with a more antique
\ngreatness of spirit and was in its ensemble an interpretation of the whole religion, culture and life of the Indian people. The
\none important and significant thing that emerges is the constant   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 300<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\noneness and continuity of all Indian art in its essential spirit and tradition. Thus the earlier work at Ajanta has been found to
\nbe akin to the earlier sculptural work of the Buddhists, while the later paintings have a similar close kinship to the sculptural
\nreliefs at Java. And we find that the spirit and tradition which reigns through all changes of style and manner at Ajanta, is
\npresent too at Bagh and Sigiriya, in the Khotan frescoes, in the illuminations of Buddhist manuscripts of a much later time and
\nin spite of the change of form and manner is still spiritually the same in the Rajput paintings. This unity and continuity enable
\nus to distinguish and arrive at a clear understanding of what is the essential aim, inner turn and motive, spiritual method which
\ndifferentiate Indian painting first from occidental work and then from the nearer and more kindred art of other countries of Asia.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe spirit and motive of Indian painting are in their centre of conception and shaping force of sight identical with the inspiring
\nvision of Indian sculpture. All Indian art is a throwing out of a certain profound self-vision formed by a going within to find out
\nthe secret significance of form and appearance, a discovery of the subject in one’s deeper self, the giving of soul-form to that vision
\nand a remoulding of the material and natural shape to express the psychic truth of it with the greatest possible purity and power
\nof outline and the greatest possible concentrated rhythmic unity of significance in all the parts of an indivisible artistic whole.
\nTake whatever masterpiece of Indian painting and we shall find these conditions aimed at and brought out into a triumphant
\nbeauty of suggestion and execution. The only difference from the other arts comes from the turn natural and inevitable to its
\nown kind of aesthesis, from the moved and indulgent dwelling on what one might call the mobilities of the soul rather than on
\nits static eternities, on the casting out of self into the grace and movement of psychic and vital life (subject always to the reserve
\nand restraint necessary to all art) rather than on the holding back of life in the stabilities of the self and its eternal qualities
\nand principles, guna and tattwa. This distinction is of the very essence of the difference between the work given to the sculptor
\nand the painter, a difference imposed on them by the natural   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 301<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nscope, turn, possibility of their instrument and medium. The sculptor must express always in static form; the idea of the spirit
\nis cut out for him in mass and line, significant in the stability of its insistence, and he can lighten the weight of this insistence
\nbut not get rid of it or away from it; for him eternity seizes hold of time in its shapes and arrests it in the monumental spirit of
\nstone or bronze. The painter on the contrary lavishes his soul in colour and there is a liquidity in the form, a fluent grace of
\nsubtlety in the line he uses which imposes on him a more mobile and emotional way of self-expression. The more he gives us of
\nthe colour and changing form and emotion of the life of the soul, the more his work glows with beauty, masters the inner aesthetic
\nsense and opens it to the thing his art better gives us than any other, the delight of the motion of the self out into a spiritually
\nsensuous joy of beautiful shapes and the coloured radiances of existence. Painting is naturally the most sensuous of the arts,
\nand the highest greatness open to the painter is to spiritualise this sensuous appeal by making the most vivid outward beauty
\na revelation of subtle spiritual emotion so that the soul and the sense are at harmony in the deepest and finest richness of both
\nand united in their satisfied consonant expression of the inner significances of things and life. There is less of the austerity of
\nTapasya in his way of working, a less severely restrained expression of eternal things and of the fundamental truths behind the
\nforms of things, but there is in compensation a moved wealth of psychic or warmth of vital suggestion, a lavish delight of the
\nbeauty of the play of the eternal in the moments of time and there the artist arrests it for us and makes moments of the life
\nof the soul reflected in form of man or creature or incident or scene or Nature full of a permanent and opulent significance
\nto our spiritual vision. The art of the painter justifies visually to the spirit the search of the sense for delight by making it its
\nown search for the pure intensities of meaning of the universal beauty it has revealed or hidden in creation; the indulgence of
\nthe eye’s desire in perfection of form and colour becomes an enlightenment of the inner being through the power of a certain
\nspiritually aesthetic Ananda.   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 302<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nThe Indian artist lived in the light of an inspiration which imposed this greater aim on his art and his method sprang from
\nits fountains and served it to the exclusion of any more earthly sensuous or outwardly imaginative aesthetic impulse. The six
\nlimbs of his art, the sadanga<\/i>, are common to all work in line
\nand colour: they are the necessary elements and in their elements the great arts are the same everywhere; the distinction of forms,
\nrūpabheda<\/i>, proportion, arrangement of line and mass, design,
\nharmony, perspective, pramāna<\/i>, the emotion or aesthetic feeling expressed by the form,
\nbhāva<\/i>, the seeking for beauty and
\n <\/i>charm for the satisfaction of the aesthetic spirit, lāvanya<\/i>, truth
\n <\/i>of the form and its suggestion, sādrśya<\/i>, the turn, combination,
\nharmony of colours, varnikābhanga<\/i>, are the first constituents to which every successful work of art reduces itself in analysis. But
\nit is the turn given to each of the constituents which makes all the difference in the aim and effect of the technique and the source
\nand character of the inner vision guiding the creative hand in their combination which makes all the difference in the spiritual
\nvalue of the achievement, and the unique character of Indian painting, the peculiar appeal of the art of Ajanta springs from
\nthe remarkably inward, spiritual and psychic turn which was given to the artistic conception and method by the pervading
\ngenius of Indian culture. Indian painting no more than Indian architecture and sculpture could escape from its absorbing motive, its transmuting atmosphere, the direct or subtle obsession of the mind that has been subtly and strangely changed, the
\neye that has been trained to see, not as others with only the external eye but by a constant communing of the mental parts
\nand the inner vision with the self beyond mind and the spirit to which forms are only a transparent veil or a slight index of
\nits own greater splendour. The outward beauty and power, the grandeur of drawing, the richness of colour, the aesthetic grace
\nof this painting is too obvious and insistent to be denied, the psychical appeal usually carries something in it to which there is
\na response in every cultivated and sensitive human mind and the departures from the outward physical norm are less vehement
\nand intense, less disdainful of the more external beauty and   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 303<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ngrace, \u2014 as is only right in the nature of this art, \u2014 than in the sculpture: therefore we find it more easily appreciated up to a
\ncertain point by the Western critical mind, and even when not well appreciated, it is exposed to milder objections. There is
\nnot the same blank incomprehension or violence of misunderstanding and repulsion. And yet we find at the same time that
\nthere is something which seems to escape the appreciation or is only imperfectly understood, and this something is precisely that
\nprofounder spiritual intention of which the things the eye and aesthetic sense immediately seize are only the intermediaries.
\nThis explains the remark often made about Indian work of the less visibly potent and quieter kind that it lacks inspiration or
\nimagination or is a conventional art: the spirit is missed where it does not strongly impose itself, and is not fully caught even
\nwhere the power which is put into the expression is too great and direct to allow of denial. Indian painting like Indian architecture
\nand sculpture appeals through the physical and psychical to another spiritual vision from which the artist worked and it is
\nonly when this is no less awakened in us than the aesthetic sense that it can be appreciated in all the depth of its significance.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe orthodox Western artist works by a severely conscientious reproduction of the forms of outward Nature; the external
\nworld is his model, and he has to keep it before his eye and repress any tendency towards a substantial departure from it
\nor any motion to yield his first allegiance to a subtler spirit. His imagination submits itself to physical Nature even when
\nhe brings in conceptions which are more properly of another kingdom, the stress of the physical world is always with him,
\nand the Seer of the subtle, the creator of mental forms, the inner Artist, the wide-eyed voyager in the vaster psychical realms, is
\nobliged to subdue his inspirations to the law of the Seer of the outward, the spirit that has embodied itself in the creations of
\nthe terrestrial life, the material universe. An idealised imaginative realism is as far as he can ordinarily go in the method of his work
\nwhen he would fill the outward with the subtler inner seeing. And when, dissatisfied with this confining law, he would break
\nquite out of the circle, he is exposed to a temptation to stray   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 304<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ninto intellectual or imaginative extravagances which violate the  <\/i>
\nuniversal rule of the right distinction of forms, rūpabheda<\/i>, and belong to the vision of some intermediate world of sheer fantasia. His art has discovered the rule of proportion, arrangement and perspective which preserves the illusion of physical Nature
\nand he relates his whole design to her design in a spirit of conscientious obedience and faithful dependence. His imagination
\nis a servant or interpreter of her imaginations, he finds in the observation of her universal law of beauty his secret of unity
\nand harmony and his subjectivity tries to discover itself in hers by a close dwelling on the objective shapes she has given to
\nher creative spirit. The farthest he has got in the direction of a more intimately subjective spirit is an impressionism which
\nstill waits upon her models but seeks to get at some first inward or original effect of them on the inner sense, and through
\nthat he arrives at some more strongly psychical rendering, but he does not work altogether from within outward in the freer
\nmanner of the oriental artist. His emotion and artistic feeling move in this form and are limited by this artistic convention
\nand are not a pure spiritual or psychic emotion but usually an imaginative exaltation derived from the suggestions of life
\nand outward things with a psychic element or an evocation of spiritual feeling initiated and dominated by the touch of
\nthe outward. The charm that he gives is a sublimation of the beauty that appeals to the outward senses by the power of
\nthe idea and the imagination working on the outward sense appeal and other beauty is only brought in by association into
\nthat frame. The truth of correspondence he depends upon is a likeness to the creations of physical Nature and their intellectual, emotional and aesthetic significances, and his work of line and wave of colour are meant to embody the flow
\nof this vision. The method of this art is always a transcript from the visible world with such necessary transmutation as
\nthe aesthetic mind imposes on its materials. At the lowest to illustrate, at the highest to interpret life and Nature to the mind
\nby identifying it with deeper things through some derivative touch of the spirit that has entered into and subdued itself to
\n   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 305<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ntheir shapes, praviśya yah pratirūpo babhūva<\/i>, is the governing
\nprinciple 2<\/font><\/sup> . <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe Indian artist sets out from the other end of the scale
\nof values of experience which connect life and the spirit. The whole creative force comes here from a spiritual and psychic
\nvision, the emphasis of the physical is secondary and always deliberately lightened so as to give an overwhelmingly spiritual
\nand psychic impression and everything is suppressed which does not serve this purpose or would distract the mind from the purity
\nof this intention. This painting expresses the soul through life, but life is only a means of the spiritual self-expression, and
\nits outward representation is not the first object or the direct motive. There is a real and a very vivid and vital representation,
\nbut it is more of an inner psychical than of the outward physical life. A critic of high repute speaking of the Indian influence in
\na famous Japanese painting fixes on the grand strongly outlined figures and the feeling for life and character recalling the Ajanta
\nfrescoes as the signs of its Indian character: but we have to mark carefully the nature of this feeling for life and the origin and
\nintention of this strong outlining of the figures. The feeling for life and character here is a very different thing from the splendid
\nand abundant vitality and the power and force of character which we find in an Italian painting, a fresco from Michael
\nAngelo’s hand or a portrait by Titian or Tintoretto. The first primitive object of the art of painting is to illustrate life and
\nNature and at the lowest this becomes a more or less vigorous and original or conventionally faithful reproduction, but it rises
\nin great hands to a revelation of the glory and beauty of the sensuous appeal of life or of the dramatic power and moving
\ninterest of character and emotion and action. That is a common form of aesthetic work in Europe; but in Indian art it is never
\nthe governing motive. The sensuous appeal is there, but it is refined into only one and not the chief element of the richness
\nof a soul of psychic grace and beauty which is for the Indian <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n2
\nAll this is no longer true of European art in much of its more prominent recent developments.
\n  
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 306<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nartist the true beauty, lāvanya<\/i>: the dramatic motive is subordinated and made only a purely secondary element, only so much is given of character and action as will help to bring out the
\ndeeper spiritual or psychic feeling, bhāva<\/i>, and all insistence or
\ntoo prominent force of these more outwardly dynamic things is shunned, because that would externalise too much the spiritual
\nemotion and take away from its intense purity by the interference of the grosser intensity which emotion puts on in the stress of
\nthe active outward nature. The life depicted is the life of the soul and not, except as a form and a helping suggestion, the life of the
\nvital being and the body. For the second more elevated aim of art is the interpretation or intuitive revelation of existence through
\nthe forms of life and Nature and it is this that is the starting-point of the Indian motive. But the interpretation may proceed on the
\nbasis of the forms already given us by physical Nature and try to evoke by the form an idea, a truth of the spirit which starts from
\nit as a suggestion and returns upon it for support, and the effort is then to correlate the form as it is to the physical eye with the
\ntruth which it evokes without overpassing the limits imposed by the appearance. This is the common method of occidental art
\nalways zealous for the immediate fidelity to Nature which is its
\nidea of true correspondence, sādrśya<\/i>, but it is rejected by the Indian artist. He begins from within, sees in his soul the thing he
\nwishes to express or interpret and tries to discover the right line, colour and design of his intuition which, when it appears on
\nthe physical ground, is not a just and reminding reproduction of the line, colour and design of physical nature, but much rather
\nwhat seems to us a psychical transmutation of the natural figure. In reality the shapes he paints are the forms of things as he has
\nseen them in the psychical plane of experience: these are the soul-figures of which physical things are a gross representation and
\ntheir purity and subtlety reveals at once what the physical masks by the thickness of its casings. The lines and colours sought here
\nare the psychic lines and the psychic hues proper to the vision which the artist has gone into himself to discover.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThis is the whole governing principle of the art which gives its stamp to every detail of an Indian painting and transforms
\n   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 307<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe artist’s use of the six limbs of the canon. The distinction of forms is faithfully observed, but not in the sense of an exact
\nnaturalistic fidelity to the physical appearance with the object of a faithful reproduction of the outward shapes of the world in
\nwhich we live. To recall with fidelity something our eyes have seen or could have seen on the spot, a scene, an interior, a living
\nand breathing person, and give the aesthetic sense and emotion of it to the mind is not the motive. There is here an extraordinary
\nvividness, naturalness, reality, but it is a more than physical reality, a reality which the soul at once recognises as of its own
\nsphere, a vivid naturalness of psychic truth, the convincing spirit of the form to which the soul, not the outward naturalness of
\nthe form to which the physical eye bears witness. The truth, the
\nexact likeness is there, the correspondence, sādrśya<\/i>, but it is the truth of the essence of the form, it is the likeness of the soul
\nto itself, the reproduction of the subtle embodiment which is the basis of the physical embodiment, the purer and finer subtle
\nbody of an object which is the very expression of its own essential  <\/i>
\nnature, svabhāva<\/i>. The means by which this effect is produced is characteristic of the inward vision of the Indian mind. It is
\ndone by a bold and firm insistence on the pure and strong outline and a total suppression of everything that would interfere
\nwith its boldness, strength and purity or would blur over and dilute the intense significance of the line. In the treatment of the
\nhuman figure all corporeal filling in of the outline by insistence on the flesh, the muscle, the anatomical detail is minimised or
\ndisregarded: the strong subtle lines and pure shapes which make the humanity of the human form are alone brought into relief;
\nthe whole essential human being is there, the divinity that has taken this garb of the spirit to the eye, but not the superfluous
\nphysicality which he carries with him as his burden. It is the ideal psychical figure and body of man and woman that is before us in
\nits charm and beauty. The filling in of the line is done in another way; it is effected by a disposition of pure masses, a design and
\n˙<\/i> coloured wave-flow of the body, bhanga<\/i>, a simplicity of content
\nthat enables the artist to flood the whole with the significance of the one spiritual emotion, feeling, suggestion which he intends
\n  
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 308<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n25. The Adoration Group, Ajanta
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe simplicity in the greatness and power, the fullness
\nof expression gained by reserve and suppression and concentration which we find here is the perfect method
\nof the classical art of India. (p.310)  
\n  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

\nto convey, his intuition of the moment of the soul, its living
\nself-experience. All is disposed so as to express that and that alone.
\nThe almost miraculously subtle and meaningful use of the hands to express the psychic suggestion is a common and well-marked
\nfeature of Indian paintings and the way in which the suggestion of the face and the eyes is subtly repeated or supplemented by
\nthis expression of the hands is always one of the first things that strikes the regard, but as we continue to look, we see that every
\nturn of the body, the pose of each limb, the relation and design of all the masses are filled with the same psychical feeling. The
\nmore important accessories help it by a kindred suggestion or bring it out by a support or variation or extension or relief of
\nthe motive. The same law of significant line and suppression of distracting detail is applied to animal forms, buildings, trees,
\nobjects. There is in all the art an inspired harmony of conception, method and expression. Colour too is used as a means for the
\nspiritual and psychic intention, and we can see this well enough if we study the suggestive significance of the hues in a Buddhist
\nminiature. This power of line and subtlety of psychic suggestion in the filling in of the expressive outlines is the source of that
\nremarkable union of greatness and moving grace which is the stamp of the whole work of Ajanta and continues in Rajput
\npainting, though there the grandeur of the earlier work is lost in the grace and replaced by a delicately intense but still bold and
\ndecisive power of vivid and suggestive line. It is this common spirit and tradition which is the mark of all the truly indigenous
\nwork of India. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThese things have to be carefully understood and held in
\nmind when we look at an Indian painting and the real spirit of it first grasped before we condemn or praise. To dwell on that
\nin it which is common to all art is well enough, but it is what is peculiar to India that is its real essence. And there again to
\nappreciate the technique and the fervour of religious feeling is not sufficient; the spiritual intention served by the technique,
\nthe psychic significance of line and colour, the greater thing of which the religious emotion is the result has to be felt if we
\nwould identify ourself with the whole purpose of the artist. If   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 309<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nwe look long, for an example, at the adoration group of the mother and child before the Buddha, one of the most profound,
\ntender and noble of the Ajanta masterpieces, we shall find that the impression of intense religious feeling of adoration there is
\nonly the most outward general touch in the ensemble of the emotion. That which it deepens to is the turning of the soul of
\nhumanity in love to the benignant and calm Ineffable which has made itself sensible and human to us in the universal compassion
\nof the Buddha, and the motive of the soul moment the painting interprets is the dedication of the awakening mind of the child,
\nthe coming younger humanity, to that in which already the soul of the mother has learned to find and fix its spiritual joy. The
\neyes, brows, lips, face, poise of the head of the woman are filled with this spiritual emotion which is a continued memory and
\npossession of the psychical release, the steady settled calm of the heart’s experience filled with an ineffable tenderness, the familiar
\ndepths which are yet moved with the wonder and always farther appeal of something that is infinite, the body and other limbs are
\ngrave masses of this emotion and in their poise a basic embodiment of it, while the hands prolong it in the dedicative putting
\nforward of her child to meet the Eternal. This contact of the human and eternal is repeated in the smaller figure with a subtly
\nand strongly indicated variation, the glad and childlike smile of awakening which promises but not yet possesses the depths that
\nare to come, the hands disposed to receive and keep, the body in its looser curves and waves harmonising with that significance.
\nThe two have forgotten themselves and seem almost to forget or confound each other in that which they adore and contemplate,
\nand yet the dedicating hands unite mother and child in the common act and feeling by their simultaneous gesture of maternal
\npossession and spiritual giving. The two figures have at each point the same rhythm, but with a significant difference. The
\nsimplicity in the greatness and power, the fullness of expression gained by reserve and suppression and concentration which we
\nfind here is the perfect method of the classical art of India. And by this perfection Buddhist art became not merely an illustration
\nof the religion and an expression of its thought and its religious   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 310<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nfeeling, history and legend, but a revealing interpretation of the spiritual sense of Buddhism and its profounder meaning to the
\nsoul of India. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nTo understand that \u2014 we must always seek first and foremost this kind of deeper intention \u2014 is to understand the reason of the differences between the occidental and the Indian treatment of the life motives. Thus a portrait by a great European painter will express with sovereign power the soul through
\ncharacter, through the active qualities, the ruling powers and passions, the master feeling and temperament, the active mental
\nand vital man: the Indian artist tones down the outward-going dynamic indices and gives only so much of them as will serve to
\nbring out or to modulate something that is more of the grain of the subtle soul, something more static and impersonal of which
\nour personality is at once the mask and the index. A moment of the spirit expressing with purity the permanence of a very
\nsubtle soul quality is the highest type of the Indian portrait. And more generally the feeling for character which has been noted
\nas a feature of the Ajanta work is of a similar kind. An Indian painting expressing, let us say, a religious feeling centred on some
\nsignificant incident will show the expression in each figure varied in such a way as to bring out the universal spiritual essence of
\nthe emotion modified by the essential soul type, different waves of the one sea, all complexity of dramatic insistence is avoided,
\nand so much stress only is laid on character in the individual feeling as to give the variation without diminishing the unity of
\nthe fundamental emotion. The vividness of life in these paintings must not obscure for us the more profound purpose for which
\nit is the setting, and this has especially to be kept in mind in our view of the later art which has not the greatness of the
\nclassic work and runs to a less grave and highly sustained kind, to lyric emotion, minute vividness of life movement, the more
\nnaive feelings of the people. One sometimes finds inspiration, decisive power of thought and feeling, originality of creative
\nimagination denied to this later art; but its real difference from that of Ajanta is only that the intermediate psychic transmission
\nbetween the life movement and the inmost motive has been given   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 312<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nwith less power and distinctness: the psychic thought and feeling are there more thrown outward in movement, less contained in
\nthe soul, but still the soul motive is not only present but makes the true atmosphere and if we miss it, we miss the real sense
\nof the picture. This is more evident where the inspiration is religious, but it is not absent from the secular subject. Here too
\nspiritual intention or psychic suggestion are the things of the first importance. In Ajanta work they are all-important and to ignore
\nthem at all is to open the way to serious errors of interpretation. Thus a highly competent and very sympathetic critic speaking of
\nthe painting of the Great Renunciation says truly that this great work excels in its expression of sorrow and feeling of profound
\npity, but then, looking for what a Western imagination would naturally put into such a subject, he goes on to speak of the
\nweight of a tragic decision, the bitterness of renouncing a life of bliss blended with a yearning sense of hope in the happiness of
\nthe future, and that is singularly to misunderstand the spirit in which the Indian mind turns from the transient to the eternal,
\nto mistake the Indian art motive and to put a vital into the place of a spiritual emotion. It is not at all his own personal sorrow
\nbut the sorrow of all others, not an emotional self-pity but a poignant pity for the world, not the regret for a life of domestic
\nbliss but the afflicting sense of the unreality of human happiness that is concentrated in the eyes and lips of the Buddha, and
\nthe yearning there is not, certainly, for earthly happiness in the future but for the spiritual way out, the anguished seeking which
\nfound its release, already foreseen by the spirit behind and hence the immense calm and restraint that support the sorrow, in the
\ntrue bliss of Nirvana. There is illustrated the whole difference between two kinds of imagination, the mental, vital and physical
\nstress of the art of Europe and the subtle, less forcefully tangible spiritual stress of the art of India.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIt is the indigenous art of which this is the constant spirit and tradition, and it has been doubted whether the Mogul paintings
\ndeserve that name, have anything to do with that tradition and are not rather an exotic importation from Persia. Almost all
\noriental art is akin in this respect that the psychic enters into  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 312<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nand for the most part lays its subtler law on the physical vision and the psychic line and significance give the characteristic turn,
\nare the secret of the decorative skill, direct the higher art in its principal motive. But there is a difference between the Persian
\npsychicality which is redolent of the magic of the middle worlds and the Indian which is only a means of transmission of the
\nspiritual vision. And obviously the Indo-Persian style is of the former kind and not indigenous to India. But the Mogul school
\nis not an exotic; there is rather a blending of two mentalities: on the one side there is a leaning to some kind of externalism
\nwhich is not the same thing as Western naturalism, a secular spirit and certain prominent elements that are more strongly
\nillustrative than interpretative, but the central thing is still the domination of a transforming touch which shows that there as
\nin the architecture the Indian mind has taken hold of another invading mentality and made it a help to a more outward-going
\nself-expression that comes in as a new side strain in the spiritual continuity of achievement which began in prehistoric times and
\nended only with the general decline of Indian culture. Painting, the last of the arts in that decline to touch the bottom, has also
\nbeen the first to rise again and lift the dawn fires of an era of new creation.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIt is not necessary to dilate on the decorative arts and crafts of India, for their excellence has always been beyond dispute.
\nThe generalised sense of beauty which they imply is one of the greatest proofs that there can be of the value and soundness of
\na national culture. Indian culture in this respect need not fear any comparison: if it is less predominantly artistic than that of
\nJapan, it is because it has put first the spiritual need and made all other things subservient to and a means for the spiritual growth
\nof the people. Its civilisation, standing in the first rank in the three great arts as in all things of the mind, has proved that the
\nspiritual urge is not, as has been vainly supposed, sterilising to the other activities, but a most powerful force for the many-sided
\ndevelopment of the human whole.  <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 313<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

XII   Indian Art   A GOOD deal of hostile or unsympathetic Western criticism of Indian civilisation has been directed in the past against its…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-20-the-renaissance-in-india","wpcat-55-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9633,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2930\/revisions\/9633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}