{"id":928,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:18","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=928"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:18","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:18","slug":"12-indian-art-vol-14-the-foundation-of-indian-culture-volume-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/14-the-foundation-of-indian-culture-volume-14\/12-indian-art-vol-14-the-foundation-of-indian-culture-volume-14","title":{"rendered":"-12_Indian Art.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\nA GOOD 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 whole- sale and undiscriminating depreciation of a great literature, but
\nhere too there has been, if not positive attack, much failure of understanding;
\nbut in 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.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nMr. Archer pursuing his policy of Thorough devotes a whole
\nchapter to the subject. This chapter is one long torrent of sweeping
\ndenunciation. But it would be a waste of time to take<\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage-196<\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\nhis attack as serious criticism and answer all in detail. His reply to defenders
\nand eulogists is amazing in its shallowness and triviality, made up mostly of
\nsmall, feeble and sometimes irrelevant points, big glaring epithets and forcibly
\nsenseless phrases, based for the rest on a misunderstanding or a sheer inability
\nto conceive the meaning of spiritual experiences and metaphysical ideas, which
\nbetrays an entire absence of the religious sense and the philosophic mind. Mr.
\nArcher is of course a rationalist and contemner of philosophy and entitled to
\nhis deficiencies; but why then try to judge things into the sense of which one
\nis unable to enter and exhibit the spectacle of a blind man discoursing on
\ncolours? I will cite one or two instances which will show the quality of his
\ncriticism and amply justify a refusal to attach any positive value to the actual
\npoints he labours to make, except for the light they throw on the psychology of
\nthe objectors.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI will give first an instance amazing in its ineptitude. The
\nIndian ideal figure of the masculine body insists on two features among many, a
\ncharacteristic width at the shoulders and slenderness in the middle. Well, an
\nobjection to broadness of girth and largeness of belly – allowed only where they
\nare appropriate as in sculptures of Ganesha or the Yakshas – is not peculiar to
\nthe Indian aesthetic sense; an emphasis, even a pronounced emphasis on their
\nopposites is surely intelligible enough as an aesthetic tradition, however some
\nmay prefer a more realistic and prosperous presentation of the human figure. But
\nIndian poets and authorities on art have given in this connection the simile of
\nthe lion, and lo and behold Mr. Archer solemnly discoursing on this image as a
\nplain proof that the Indian people were just only out of the semi-savage state!
\nIt is only too clear that they drew the ideal of heroic manhood from their
\nnative jungle, from theriolatry, that is to say, from a worship of wild beasts!
\nI presume, on the same principle and with the same stupefying ingenuity he would
\nfind in Kamban’s image of the sea for the colour and depth of Sita’s eyes clear
\nevidence of a still more primitive savagery and barbaric worship of inanimate
\nnature, or in Valmiki’s description of his heroine’s "eyes like wine", <\/font>
\nmadirek<\/font><\/i>S<\/font>an<\/font><\/i>\u00e3<\/font>,
\n<\/font><\/i>
\nevidence of a chronic inebriety and semi-drunken inspiration of
\nthe Indian poetic mind. This is one example of Mr. Archer’s most telling<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-197<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\npoints. It is by no means an isolated though it is an extreme
\nspecimen, and the absurdity of that particular argument only brings out the
\ntriviality of this manner of criticism. It is on a par with the common objection
\nto the slim hands and feet loved of the Bengal painters which one hears
\nsometimes advanced as a solid condemnation of their work. And that can be
\npardoned in the average man who under the high dispensation of modem culture is
\nnot expected to have any intelligent conception about art, – the instinctive
\nappreciation has been already safely killed and buried. But what are we to say
\nof a professed critic who ignores the deeper motives and fastens on details in
\norder to give them this kind of significance?<\/font><\/p>\n

\n     But there are more grave and important
\nobjections in this criticism; for Mr. Archer turns also to deal with philosophy
\nin art. The whole basis of Indian artistic creation, perfectly conscious and
\nrecognised in the canons, is directly spiritual and intuitive. Mr. Havell
\nrightly lays stress on this essential distinction and speaks in passing of the
\ninfinite superiority of the method of direct perception over intellect, an
\nassertion naturally offensive to the rationalistic mind, though it is now
\nincreasingly affirmed by leading western thinkers. Mr. Archer at once starts out
\nto hack at it with a very blunt tomahawk. How does he deal with this crucial
\nmatter? In a way which misses the whole real point and has nothing whatever to
\ndo with the philosophy of art. He fastens on Mr. Havell’s coupling of the master
\nintuition of Buddha with the great intuition of Newton and objects to the
\nparallel because the two discoveries deal with two different orders of
\nknowledge, one scientific and physical, the other mental or psychic, spiritual
\nor philosophic in nature. He trots out from its stable the old objection that
\nNewton’s intuition was only the last step in a long intellectual process, while
\naccording to this positive psychologist and philosophic critic the intuitions of
\nBuddha and other Indian sages had no basis in any intellectual process of any
\nkind or any verifiable experience. It is on the contrary the simple fact,
\nwell-known to all who know anything of the subject, that the conclusions of
\nBuddha and other Indian philosophers (I am not now speaking of the inspired
\nthought of the Upanishads which was pure spiritual experience enlightened by
\nintuition and<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-198<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ngnosis,) were preceded by a very acute scrutiny of relevant
\npsychological phenomena and a process of reasoning which, though certainly not
\nrationalistic, was as rational as any other method of thinking. He clinches his
\nrefutation by the sage remark that these intuitions which he chooses to call
\nfantasies contradict one another and therefore, it seems, have no sort of value
\nexcept their vain metaphysical subtlety. Are we to conclude that the patient
\nstudy of phenomena, the scrupulous and rigidly verifiable intellectual
\nreasonings and conclusions of western scientists have led to no conflicting or
\ncontradictory results? One could never imagine at this rate that the science of
\nheredity is torn by conflicting "fantasies" or that Newton’s "fantasies" about
\nspace and gravitational effect on space are at this day in danger of being upset
\nby Einstein’s "fantasies" in the same field. It is a minor matter that Mt.
\nArcher happens to be wrong in his idea of Buddha’s intuition when he says that
\nhe would have rejected a certain Vedantic intuition, since Buddha neither
\naccepted nor rejected, but simply refused at all to speculate on the supreme
\ncause. His intuition was confined to the cause of sorrow and the impermanence of
\nthings and the release by extinction of ego, desire and <\/font>
\nsa<\/font><\/i>m<\/font>sk<\/font><\/i>\u00e3<\/font>ra,
\n<\/font><\/i>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.
\n     Thus far Mr. Archer on intuition. This is the character
\nof his excursions on first principles in art. Is it really necessary to point
\nout that a power of mind or spirit may be the same and yet act differently in
\ndifferent fields? or that a certain kind of intuition may be prepared by a long
\nintellectual training, but that does not make it a last step in an intellectual
\nprocess, any more than the precedence of sense activity makes intellectual
\nreasoning a last step of sense-perception? The reason overtops sense and admits
\nus to other and subtler ranges of truth; the intuition<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-199<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nsimilarly overtops reason and admits us to a more direct and
\nluminous power of truth. But very obviously, in the use of the intuition the
\npoet and artist cannot proceed precisely in the same way as the scientist or
\nphilosopher. Leonardo da Vinci’s remarkable intuitions in science and his
\ncreative intuitions in art started from the same power, but the surrounding or
\nsubordinate mental operations were of a different character and colour. And in
\nart itself there are different kinds of intuition. Shakespeare’s seeing of life
\ndiffers in its character and aids from Balzac’s or Ibsen’s, but the essential
\npart of the process, that which makes it intuitive, is the same. The Buddhistic,
\nthe Vedantic seeing of things may be equally powerful starting-points for
\nartistic creation, may lead one to the calm of a Buddha or the other to the
\nrapture dance or majestic stillness of Shiva, and it is quite indifferent to the
\npurposes of art to which of them the metaphysician may be inclined to give a
\nlogical preference. These are elementary notions and it is not surprising that
\none who ignores them should misunderstand the strong and subtle artistic
\ncreations of India.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n     The weakness of Mr. Archer’s attack, its
\nempty noise and violence and exiguity of substance must not blind us to the very
\nreal importance of the mental outlook from which his dislike of Indian art
\nproceeds. For the outlook and the dislike it generates are rooted in something
\ndeeper than themselves, a whole cultural training, natural or acquired
\ntemperament and fundamental attitude towards existence, and it measures, if the
\nimmeasurable can be measured, the width of the gulf which till recently
\nseparated the oriental and the western mind and most of all the European and the
\nIndian way of seeing things. An inability to understand the motives and methods
\nof Indian art and a contempt of or repulsion from it was almost universal till
\nyesterday in the mind of Europe. There was little difference in this regard
\nbetween the average man bound by his customary first notions and the competent
\ncritic trained to appreciate different forms of culture. The gulf was too wide
\nfor any bridge of culture then built to span. To the European mind Indian art
\nwas a thing barbarous, immature, monstrous, an arrested growth from humanity’s
\nprimitive savagery and incompetent child-<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-200<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

\nhood. If there has been now some change, it is due to the
\nremarkably sudden widening of the horizon and view of European culture, a
\npartial shifting even of the standpoint from which it was accustomed to see and
\njudge all that it saw. In matters of art the western mind was long bound up as
\nin a prison in the Greek and Renascence tradition modified by a later mentality
\nwith only two side rooms of escape, the romantic and the realistic motives, but
\nthese were only wings of the same building; for the base was the same and a
\ncommon essential canon united their variations. The conventional superstition of
\nthe imitation of Nature as the first law or the limiting rule of art governed
\neven the freest work and gave its tone to the artistic and critical
\nintelligence. The canons of western artistic creation were held to be the sole
\nvalid criteria and everything else was regarded as primitive and half-developed
\nor else strange and fantastic and interesting only by its curiosity. But a
\nremarkable change has begun to set in, even though the old ideas still largely
\nrule. The prison, if not broken, has at least had a wide breach made in it; a
\nmore flexible vision and a more profound imagination have begun to superimpose
\nthemselves on the old ingrained attitude. As a result, and as a contributing
\ninfluence towards this change, oriental or at any rate Chinese and Japanese art
\nhas begun to command something like adequate recognition.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n     But the change has not yet gone far
\nenough for a thorough appreciation of the deepest and most characteristic spirit
\nand inspiration of Indian work. An eye or an effort like Mr. Haven’s is still
\nrare. For the most part even the most sympathetic criticism stops short at a
\ntechnical appreciation and imaginative sympathy which tries to understand from
\noutside and penetrates into so much only of the artistic suggestion as can be at
\nonce seized by the new wider view of a more accomplished and flexible critical
\nmentality. But there is little sign of the understanding of the very well-spring
\nand spiritual fountain of Indian artistic creation. There is therefore still a
\nutility in fathoming the depths and causes of the divergence. That is especially
\nnecessary for the Indian mind itself, for by the appreciation excited by an
\nopposing view it will be better able to understand itself and especially to
\nseize what is essential in Indian art and must be clung to in the<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-201<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nfuture and what is an incident or a phase of growth and can be
\nshed in the advance to a new creation. This is properly a task for those who
\nhave themselves at once the creative insight, the technical competence and the
\nseeing critical eye. But everyone who has at all the Indian spirit and feeling,
\ncan at least give some account of the main, the central things which constitute
\nfor him the appeal of Indian painting, sculpture and architecture. This is all
\nthat I shall attempt, for it will be in itself the best de- fence and
\njustification of Indian culture on its side of aesthetic significance.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n     The criticism of art is a vain and dead
\nthing when it ignores the spirit, aim, essential motive from which a type of
\nartistic creation starts and judges by the external details only in the light of
\na quite different spirit, aim and motive. Once we understand the essential
\nthings, enter into the characteristic way and spirit, are able to interpret the
\nform and execution from that inner centre, we can then see how it looks in the
\nlight of other standpoints, in the light of the comparative mind. A comparative
\ncriticism has its use, but the essential understanding must pre- cede it if it
\nis to have any real value. But while this is comparatively easy in the wider and
\nmore flexible turn of literature, it is, I think, more difficult in the other
\narts, when the difference of spirit is deep, because there the absence of the
\nmediating word, the necessity of proceeding direct from spirit to line and form
\nbrings about a special intensity and exclusive concentration of aim and stress
\nof execution. The intensity of the thing that moves the work is brought out with
\na more distinct power, but by its very stress and directness allows of few
\naccommodations and combined variations of appeal. The thing meant and the thing
\ndone strike deep home into the soul or the imaginative mind, but touch it over a
\nsmaller surface and with a lesser multitude of points of contact. But whatever
\nthe reason, it is less easy for a different kind of mind to appreciate.
    
\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<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-202<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nillustrates the difficulty in an extreme form. The critic tells
\nme that the Indian figure is full of a strong spiritual sense,<\/font>
\n–<\/font> here of the very breath and being of devotion, an
\nineffable devotion, and that is true, it is a suggestion or even a revelation
\nwhich breaks through or overflows the fom1 rather than depends on the external
\nwork, – but the Greek creation can only awaken a sublimated carnal or sensuous
\ndelight. Now having entered somewhat into the heart of meaning of Greek
\nsculpture, I can see that this is a wrong account of the matter. The critic has
\ngot into the real spirit of the Indian, but not into the real spirit of the
\nGreek work; his criticism from that moment, as a comparative appreciation, loses
\nall value. The Greek figure stresses no doubt the body, but appeals through it
\nto an imaginative seeing inspiration which aims at expressing a certain divine
\npower of beauty and gives us therefore something which is much more than a
\nmerely sensuous aesthetic pleasure. If the artist has done this with perfection,
\nthe work has accomplished its aim and ranks as a masterpiece. The Indian
\nsculptor stresses something behind, something more remote to the surface
\nimagination, but nearer to the soul, and subordinates to it the physical form.
\nIf he has only partially succeeded or done it with power but with something
\nfaulty in the execution, his work is less great, even though it may have a
\ngreater spirit in the intention; but when he wholly succeeds, then his work too
\nis a masterpiece, and we may prefer it with a good conscience, if the spiritual,
\nthe higher intuitive vision is what we most demand from art. This however need
\nnot interfere with an appreciation of both kinds in their own order.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n     But in viewing much of other European
\nwork of the very greatest repute, I am myself aware of a failure of spiritual
\nsympathy. I look for instance on some of the most famed pieces of Tintoretto, –
\nnot the portraits, for those give the soul, if only the active or character soul
\nin the man, but say, the Adam and Eve, the S1. George slaying the dragon, the
\nChrist appearing to Venetian Senators, and I am aware of standing baffled and
\nstopped by an irresponsive blankness somewhere in my being. I can see the
\nmagnificence and power of colouring and design, I can see the force of
\nexternalised imagination or the spirited dramatic rendering of action, but I
\nstrive in vain to get out<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-203<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nany significance below the surface or equivalent t9 the greatness
\nof the form, except perhaps an incidental minor suggestion here and there and
\nthat is not sufficient for me. When I try to analyse my failure, I find at first
\ncertain conceptions which conflict with my expectation or my own way of seeing.
\nThis muscular 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
\nimagination I personally demand; but though, my acquired cultured mind explains
\nthis to me and may intellectually catch at the something more, my natural being
\nwill not be satisfied, I am oppressed, not uplifted by this triumph of life and
\nthe flesh and of the power and stir of life,<\/font>
\n–<\/font> not that I object to these things in
\nthemselves or to the greatest emphasis on the sensuous or even the sensual,
\nelements not at all absent from Indian creation, if I can get something at least
\nof the deeper thing I want behind it, – and I find myself turning away from the
\nwork of one of the greatest Italian masters to satisfy myself with some
\n"barbaric" Indian painting or statue, some calm unfathomable Buddha, bronze
\nShiva or eighteen-armed Durga slaying the Asuras. But the cause of my failure is
\nthere, that I am seeking for something which was not meant in the spirit of this
\nart and which I ought not to expect from its characteristic creation. And if I
\nhad steeped myself in this Renascence mind as in the original Hellenic spirit, I
\ncould have added something to my inner experience and acquired a more catholic
\nand universal aesthesis.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-204<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n <\/font>       
\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, – 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, – 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 –
\nbut is it really a total and a deeply understanding appreciation? – 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 try to believe that it
\nis the work of an Italian sculptor, some astonishing genius, no doubt, who
\nIndianised himself miraculously in this one hour of solitary achievement, – for
\nIndia is a land of miracles, – and probably died of the effort, for he has left
\nus no other work to admire. Again it admires, at least in Mr. Archer, Javanese
\nwork because of its humanity and even concludes from that that it is not Indian.
\nIts essential unity with Indian work behind the variation of manner is invisible
\nto this mind because the spirit and inner meaning of Indian work is a blank to
\nits vision and it sees only a form, a notation of the meaning, which, therefore,
\nit does not understand and dislikes. One might just as well say that the Gita
\nwritten in the Devanagari is a barbaric, monstrous or meaningless thing, but put
\ninto some cursive character at once becomes not Indian, because human and
\nintelligible!<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n     But, ordinarily, place this mind before
\nanything ancient, Hindu, Buddhistic or Vedantic in art and it looks at it with a
\nblank or an angry incomprehension. It looks for the sense and<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-205<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ndoes not find any, because either it has not in itself the
\nexperience and finds it difficult to have the imagination, much more the
\nrealisation of what this art does really mean and express, or because it insists
\non looking for what it is accustomed to see at home and, not finding that, is
\nconvinced that there is nothing to see or nothing of any value. Or else if there
\nis something which it could have understood, it does not understand because it
\nis expressed in the Indian form and the Indian way. It looks at the method and
\nform and finds it unfamiliar, contrary to its own canons, is revolted,
\ncontemptuous, repelled, speaks of the thing as monstrous, barbarous, ugly or
\nnull, passes on in a high dislike or disdain. Or if it is overborne by some
\nsense of unanalysable beauty of greatness or power it still speaks of a splendid
\nbarbarism. Do you want an illuminating instance of this blankness of
\ncomprehension? Mr. Archer sees the Dhyani Buddha with its supreme, its
\nunfathomable, its infinite spiritual calm which every cultured oriental mind can
\nat once feel and respond to in the depths of his being, and he denies that there
\nis anything,- only drooped eyelids, an immobile pose and an insipid, by which I
\nsuppose he means a calm passionless face.1<\/sup>  He turns for comfort
\nto the Hellenic nobility of expression of the Gandharan Buddha, or to the living
\nRabindranath Tagore more spiritual than any Buddha from Peshwar to Kamakura, an
\ninept misuse of comparison against which I imagine the great poet himself would
\nbe the first to protest. There we have the total incomprehension, the blind
\nwindow, the blocked door in the mind, and there too the reason why the natural
\nwestern mentality comes to Indian art with a demand for something other than
\nwhat its characteristic spirit and motive intend to give, and, demanding that,
\nis not prepared to enter into another kind of spiritual experience and another
\nrange of creative sight, imaginative power and mode of self-expression<\/font><\/p>\n

\n     This once understood, we can turn to the
\ndifference in the spirit and method of artistic creation which has given rise to
\nthe<\/font><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n


\n1 <\/sup>In a note Mr. Archer mentions and very rightly discounts
\nan absurd apology for these Buddhas, viz., that the greatness and spirituality
\nare not at all in the work, but in the devotion of the artist! If the artist
\ncannot put into his work what was in him, – and here it is not devotion that is
\nexpressed, – his work is a futile abortion. But if he has expressed what he has
\nfelt, the capacity to feel it must also be there in the mind that looks at his
\nwork.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-206<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nmutual incomprehension; for that will bring us to the positive
\nside of the matter. All great artistic work proceeds from an’ act of intuition,
\nnot really an intellectual idea or a splendid imagination, -these are only
\nmental translations, – but a direct intuition of some truth of life or being,
\nsome significant form of that truth, some development of it in the mind of man.
\nAnd so far there is no difference between great European and great Indian work.
\nWhere then begins the immense divergence? It is there in everything else, in the
\nobject and field of the intuitive vision, in the method of working out the sight
\nor suggestion, in the part taken in the rendering by the external form and
\ntechnique, in the whole way of the rendering to the human mind, even in the
\ncentre of our being to which the work appeals. The European artist gets his
\nintuition by a suggestion from an appearance in life and Nature or, if it starts
\nfrom something in his own soul, relates it at once to an external support. He
\nbrings down that intuition into his normal mind and sets the intellectual idea
\nand the imagination in the intelligence to clothe it with a mental stuff which
\nwill render its form to the moved reason, emotion, aesthesis. Then he missions
\nhis eye and hand to execute it in terms which start from a colourable
\n"imitation" of life and Nature – and in ordinary hands too often end there – to
\nget at an interpretation that really changes it into the image of something not
\noutward in our own being or in universal being which was the real thing seen.
\nAnd to that in looking at the work we have to get back through colour and line
\nand disposition or whatever else may be part of the external means, to their
\nmental suggestions and through them to the soul of the whole matter. The appeal
\nis not direct to the eye of the deepest self and spirit within, but to the
\noutward soul by a strong awakening of the sensuous, the vital, the emotional,
\nthe intellectual and imaginative being, and of the spiritual we get as much or
\nas little as can suit itself to and express itself through the outward man.
\nLife, action, passion, emotion, idea, Nature seen for their own sake and for an
\naesthetic delight in them, these are the object and field of this creative
\nintuition. The something more which the Indian mind knows to be behind these
\nthings looks out, if at all, from behind many veils. The direct and unveiled
\npresence of the Infinite and<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-207<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nits godheads is not evoked or thought necessary to the greater
\ngreatness and the highest perfection.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n     The theory of ancient Indian art at its
\ngreatest – and the greatest gives its character to the rest and throws on it
\nsomething of its stamp and influence – is of another kind. Its highest business
\nis to disclose something of the Self, the Infinite, the Divine to the regard of
\nthe soul, the Self through its expressions, the Infinite through its living
\nfinite symbols, the Divine through his powers. Or the Godheads are to be
\nrevealed, luminously interpreted or in some way suggested to the soul’s
\nunderstanding or to its devotion or at the very least to a spiritually or
\nreligiously aesthetic emotion. When this hieratic art comes down from these
\naltitudes to the intermediate worlds behind ours, to the lesser godheads or
\ngenii, it still carries into them some power or some hint from above. And when
\nit comes quite down to the material world and the life of man and the things of
\nexternal Nature, it does not altogether get rid of the greater vision, the
\nhieratic stamp, the spiritual seeing, and in most good work – except in moments
\nof relaxation and a humorous or vivid play with the obvious – there is always
\nsomething more in which the seeing presentation of life floats as in an
\nimmaterial atmosphere. Life is seen in the self or in some suggestion of the
\ninfinite or of some- thing beyond or there is at least a touch and influence or
\nthese which helps to shape the presentation. It is not that all Indian work
\nrealises this ideal; there is plenty no doubt that falls short, is lowered,
\nineffective or even debased, but it is the best and the most characteristic
\ninfluence and execution which gives its tone to an art and by which we must
\njudge. Indian art in fact is identical in its spiritual aim and principle with
\nthe rest of Indian culture.
     A seeing in the self
\naccordingly becomes the characteristic method of the Indian artist and it is
\ndirectly enjoined on him by the canon. He has to see first in his spiritual
\nbeing the truth of the thing he must express and to create its form in his
\nintuitive mind; he is not bound to look out first on outward life and Nature for
\nhis model, his authority, his rule, his teacher or his fountain of suggestions.
\nWhy should he when it is something quite inward he has to bring out into
\nexpression? It is not an idea<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-208<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/p>\n

\n7. Kandarya Mahadev Temple, Khajuraho<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nThe great temples of the north have often…<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\na singular grace in their power,<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\na luminous lightness relieving their mass and strength,<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\na rich delicacy of beauty in their ornate fullness.<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\n(P.221)<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\n8. Sarangapani Temple, Kumbakonam<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nThe qwealth of ornament, detail, circumstance<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\nin Indian temples represents the infinite variety<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\nand repetition of the worlds <\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\n\u2014 suggests the infinite multiplicity in the infinite oneness.<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\n(P. 219)<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/p>\n

\n9. Jambukesvara Temple, Tiruvanaikkaval<\/font><\/p>\n


\nTo appreciate this spiritual-aesthetic truth<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\nof Indian architecture…<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\nThe straight way…is not to detach the temple from its
\nsurroundings,<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\nbut to see it in unity with the sky and low-lying landscape…<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\nand feel the thing common to both…<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\nthe reality in nature<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\nand the reality expressed in the work of art.   
\n(P. 217)<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n10. Keshava Temple, Somanathpur, Mysore<\/font><\/p>\n


\nAn Indian temple,<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\nto whatever godhead it may be built,<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\nis in its inmost reality<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\nan altar raised to the divine Self,<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\na house of the Cosmic Spirit,<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\nand appeal and aspiration to the Infnite.<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n


\n(P.214)<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

\nin the intellect, a mental imagination, an outward emotion on
\nwhich he has to depend for his stimulants, but an idea, image, emotion of the
\nspirit, and the mental equivalents are subordinate things for help in the
\ntransmission and give only a part of the colouring and the shape. A material
\nform, colour, line and design are his physical means of the expression, but in
\nusing them he is not bound to an imitation of Nature, but has to make the form
\nand all else significant of his vision, and if that can only be done or can best
\nbe done by some modification, some pose, some touch or symbolic variation which
\nis not found in physical Nature; he is at perfect liberty to use it, since truth
\nto his vision, the unity of the thing he is seeing and expressing is his only
\nbusiness. The line, colour and the rest are not his first, but his last
\npreoccupation, because they have to carry on them a world of things which have
\nalready taken spiritual form in his mind. He has not for instance to re-create
\nfor us the human face and body of the Buddha or some one passion or incident of
\nhis life, but to reveal the calm of Nirvana through a figure of the Buddha, and
\nevery detail and accessory must be turned into a means or an aid of his purpose.
\nAnd even when it is some human passion or incident he has to portray, it is not
\nusually that alone, but also or more something else in the soul to which it
\npoints or from which it starts or some power behind the action that has to enter
\ninto the spirit of his design and is often really the main thing. And through
\nthe eye that looks on his work he has to appeal not merely to an excitement of
\nthe outward soul, but to the inner self, <\/font>antar<\/font><\/i>\u00e3<\/font>tman.
\n<\/font><\/i>One may well say that beyond the ordinary cultivation
\nof the aesthetic instinct necessary to all artistic appreciation there is a
\nspiritual insight or culture needed if we are to enter into the whole meaning of
\nIndian artistic creation, otherwise we get only at the surface external things
\nor at the most at things only just below the surface. It is an intuitive and
\nspiritual art and must be seen with the intuitive and spiritual eye.
     
\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<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-209<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nexpression of their significance. There is much in the literature
\nwhich can be well enough appreciated without any very deep entry into these
\nthings, but it is comparatively a very small part of what is left of the other
\narts, Hindu or Buddhistic, of which this can be said. They have been very
\nlargely a hieratic aesthetic script of India’s spiritual, contemplative and
\nreligious experience. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-210<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n2<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/font><\/span> <\/span><\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nA<\/b>RCHITECTURE<\/span><\/font>,<\/font><\/span> sculpture and painting, <\/font> <\/span>
\nbecause they are the three great arts which appeal to
\nthe spirit through the eye, are those too in which the sensible and the
\ninvisible meet with the strongest emphasis on themselves and yet the greatest
\nnecessity of each other. The form with its insistent masses, proportions,
\nlines, colours, can here only justify them by <\/font> <\/span>
\ntheir
\nservice for the something intangible it<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nhas to express; the <\/font> <\/span>
\nspirit needs all the possible help of the material
\nbody to interpret itself to itself through the eye, yet asks of it that it
\nshall be as trans- parent a veil as possible of its own greater significance.
\nThe art of the East and the art of the West,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\neach in its characteristic or mean, for there are
\nalways exceptions,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\ndeal 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
\nspirit. Every line, arrangement of mass, colour, shape, posture, every physical
\nsuggestion, how- ever 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.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>This characteristic attitude of the Indian
\nreflective and creative mind necessitates in our view of its creations an
\neffort to get beyond at once to the inner spirit of the reality it expresses
\nand see from it and not from outside. And in fact to start from the<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-211<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nphysical details and their synthesis\u00a0 <\/span>appears to me quite the wrong way to look at
\nan Indian work of art. The orthodox style of western criticism seems to be to
\ndwell scrutinisingly on the technique, on form, on the obvious story of the
\nform, and then pass to some appreciation of beautiful or impressive emotion and
\nidea. It is only in some deeper and more sensitive minds that we get beyond
\nthat depth into profounder things. A criticism of that kind applied to Indian
\nart leaves it barren or poor of significance. Here the only right way is to get
\nat once through a total intuitive or revelatory impression or by some
\nmeditative dwelling on the whole, <\/font> dhy<\/font><\/i><\/span>\u00e3<\/font><\/span>na
\n<\/font> <\/span><\/i>
\nin the technical Indian term, to the spiritual meaning
\nand atmosphere, make ourselves one with that as completely as possible, and
\nthen only the helpful meaning and value of all the rest comes out with a
\ncomplete and revealing force. For here it is the spirit that carries the form,
\nwhile in most western art it is the form that carries whatever there may be of
\nspirit. The striking phrase of Epictetus recurs to the mind in which he
\ndescribes man as a little soul carrying a corpse, psucharion ei bastazon
\nnekron. <\/i>The more ordinary western outlook is upon animate matter carrying
\nin its life a modicum of soul. But the seeing of the Indian mind and of Indian
\nart is that of a great, a limitless self and spirit, <\/font> mah<\/font><\/i><\/span>\u00e3<\/font><\/span>n <\/font> <\/span><\/i>
\n\u00e3<\/font><\/span>tm<\/font><\/span><\/i>\u00e3<\/font><\/span>, <\/font> <\/span><\/i>
\nwhich carries to us in the sea
\nof its presence a living shape of itself, small in comparison to its own
\ninfinity, but yet sufficient by the power that informs this symbol to support
\nsome aspect of that infinite’s self-expression. It is therefore essential that
\nwe should look here not solely with the physical eye informed by the reason and
\nthe aesthetic imagination, but make the physical seeing a passage to the
\nopening of the inner spiritual eye and a moved communion in the soul. A great
\noriental work of art does not easily reveal its secret to one who comes to it
\nsolely in a mood of aesthetic curiosity or with a considering critical
\nobjective mind, still less as the cultivated and interested tourist passing
\namong strange and foreign things; but it has to be seen in loneliness, in the
\nsolitude 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, – a sense
\nwhich modern Europe with her assault<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Page-212<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

of crowded art galleries and over-pictured walls seems
\nto have <\/span>quite lost, though perhaps I am wrong, and those are the right
\nconditions for display of European art, –<\/span>
\nhave put their temples and their Buddhas as often as possible away on mountains
\nand in distant or secluded scenes of Nature and avoid living with great
\npaintings in the crude hours of daily life, but keep them by preference in such
\na way that their undisputed suggestions can sink into the mind in its finer
\nmoments or apart where they can go and look at them in a treasured secrecy when
\nthe soul is at leisure from life. That is an indication of the utmost value
\npointing to the nature of the appeal made by eastern art and the right way and
\nmood for looking at its creations.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Indian architecture especially demands
\nthis kind of inner study and this spiritual self-identification with its deepest
\nmeaning and will not otherwise reveal itself to us. The secular buildings<\/font><\/span> of <\/font> <\/span>
\nancient India, her palaces and places of assembly and civic
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nedifices have not outlived the ravage of time; what remains to us is
\nmostly something of the great mountain and cave temples, something too of the
\ntemples of her ancient cities of the plains, and for the rest we have the fanes
\nand shrines of her later times, whether situated in temple cities and places of
\npilgrimage like Srirangam and Rameshwaram or in her great once regal towns like
\nMadura, when the temple was the centre of life. It is then the most hieratic
\nside of a hieratic art that remains to us. These sacred buildings are the
\nsigns, the architectural self-expression of an <\/font> <\/span>
\nancient spiritual and
\nreligious culture. Ignore the spiritual <\/font> <\/span>
\nsuggestion,
\nthe religious significance, the meaning of the symbols <\/font> <\/span>
\nand<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nindications,
\nlook only with the rational and secular aesthetic <\/font> <\/span>
\nmind,
\nand it is vain to expect that we shall get to any true and discerning
\nappreciation of this art. And it has to be remembered <\/font> <\/span>
\ntoo<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nthat
\nthe religious spirit here is something quite different from <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe sense of European religions; and even mediaeval Christianity,
\nespecially as now looked at by the modern European mind which has <\/font> <\/span>
\ngone through the
\ntwo great crises of the Renascence and <\/font> <\/span>
\nrecent
\nsecularism, will not in spite of its oriental origin and affinities be of much
\nreal help. To bring in into the artistic look <\/font> <\/span>
\non
\nan<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nIndian temple occidental memories or a comparison with
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>
\nGreek Parthenon or Italian church or Duomo or
\nCampanile or<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 213<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>even the great Gothic cathedrals of mediaeval
\nFrance, though these have in them something much nearer to the Indian
\nmentality, is to intrude a fatally foreign and disturbing element or standard
\nin the mind. But this consciously or else subconsciously is what almost every
\nEuropean mind does to a greater or less degree, and it is here a pernicious
\nimmixture, for it subjects the work of a vision that saw the immeasurable to
\nthe tests of an eye that dwells only on measure.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nIndian sacred architecture of whatever date,
\nstyle or dedication goes back to something timelessly ancient and now outside
\nIndia almost wholly lost, something which belongs to the past, and yet it goes
\nforward too, though this the rationalistic mind will not easily admit, to
\nsomething which will return upon us and is already beginning to return,
\nsomething which belongs to the future. An Indian temple, to whatever godhead it
\nmay be built, is in its inmost reality an altar raised to the divine Self, a
\nhouse of the Cosmic Spirit, an appeal and aspiration to the Infinite. As that
\nand in the light of that seeing and conception it must in the first place be
\nunderstood, and everything else must be seen in that setting and that light,
\nand then only can there be any real under- standing. No artistic eye however
\nalert and sensible and no aesthetic mind however full and sensitive can arrive
\nat that under- standing, if it is attached to a Hellenised conception of
\nrational beauty or shuts itself up in a materialised or intellectual
\ninterpretation and fails to open itself to the great things here meant by a
\nkindred close response to some touch of the cosmic consciousness, some
\nrevelation of the greater spiritual Self, some suggestion of the Infinite.
\nThese things, the spiritual Self, the Cosmic Spirit, the Infinite, are not
\nrational, but suprarational, eternal presences, but to the intellect only
\nwords, and visible, sensible, near only to an intuition and revelation in our
\ninmost selves. An art which starts from them as a first conception can only
\ngive us what it has to give, their touch, their nearness, their
\nself-disclosure, through some responding intuition and revelation in us, in our
\nown soul, our own self. It is this which one must come to it to find and not
\ndemand from it the satisfaction of some quite other seeking or some very
\ndifferent turn of imagination and more limited superficial significance.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-214<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>This is the first
\ntruth of Indian architecture and its significance which demands emphasis and it
\nleads at once to the answer to certain very common misapprehennsions and
\nobjections.<\/font><\/span> All art reposes on some unity and all its details, whether few and<\/font><\/span> spa<\/font><\/span>ring or lavish and crowded and full, must go back to that unity and\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>help its significance; otherwise it is not
\nart. Now find our western critic telling us with an assurance which would be
\nstupefying if one did not see how naturally it arose, that in Indian
\narchitecture there is no unity, which is as much as to say that <\/font> <\/span>
\nthere is here no great art at all, but only a skill in the execution of
\ncrowded and unrelated details. We are told even by otherwise sympathetic judges
\nthat there is an overloading of ornament and detail which, however beautiful or
\nsplendid in itself, stands in the way of unity, an attempt to load every rift
\nwith ore, an absence of calm, no unfilled spaces, no relief to the eye.
\nMr.Archer as usual carries up the adverse criticism to its extremeclamorous top
\nnotes; <\/font> <\/span>
\nhis
\nheavily shotted phrases are all a continous<\/font><\/span>
\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 <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> observation seems to my judgment sufficiently
\ncontradictory, since I do not understand how there can be a marvel of
\nconstruction, whether light or massive, without any unity, <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nbut <\/font> <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>here is not even, it seems, a trace of it,
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nor a mighty impressiveness without any greatness or
\nnobility whatever, even allowing<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>this to be a titanic and not an Olympian nobleness. He tells us that everything
\nis ponderous, everything here overwrought and the most prominent features
\nswarming, writhing with contorted semi-human figures are as senseless as
\nanything in architecture. How, one might ask, does he know that they are
\nsenseless, when he practically admits that he has made no attempt to find what
\nis their sense, but has simply assumed from the self-satisfied sufficiency of
\nhis own admitted ignorance and failure to understand <\/font> <\/span>
\nthat
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>
\nthere cannot be any meaning? And the whole thing he<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nP<\/font>age-215<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ncharacterises as a
\nmonstrosity built by Rakshasas, ogres, demons, a gigantesque barbarism. The
\nnorthern buildings find a little less disfavour in his eyes, but the difference
\nin the end is small or none. There is the same ponderousness, absence of
\nlightness and grace, an even greater profusion of incised ornament; these too
\nare barbaric creations. Alone the Mahomedan architecture, called
\nIndo-Saracenic, is exempted from this otherwise universal condemnation.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nIt is a little surprising after all, however natural the first blindness
\nhere, that even assailants of this extreme kind, since they must certainly know
\nthat there can be no art, no effective construction without unity, should not
\nhave paused even once to ask themselves whether after all there must not be
\nhere some principle of oneness which they had missed because they came with
\nalien conceptions and looked at things from the wrong end, and before
\npronouncing this magisterial judgment should not have had patience to wait in a
\nmore detached and receptive way upon the thing under their eye and seen whether
\nthen some secret of unity did not emerge. But it is the more sympathetic and
\nless violent critic who deserves a direct answer. Now it may readily be
\n,admitted that the failure to see at once the unity of this architecture is
\nperfectly natural to a European eye, because unity in the sense demanded by the
\nwestern conception, the Greek unity gained by much suppression and a sparing
\nuse of detail and circumstance or even the Gothic unity got by casting every-
\nthing into the mould of a single spiritual aspiration, is not there. And the
\ngreater unity that really is there can never be arrived at all, if the eye
\nbegins and ends by dwelling on form and detail and ornament, because it will
\nthen be obsessed by these things and find it difficult to go beyond to the
\nunity which all this in its totality serves not so much to express in itself, but
\nto fill it with that which comes out of it and relieve its oneness by
\nmultitude. An original oneness, not a combined or synthetic or an effected
\nunity, is that from which this art begins and to which its work when finished
\nreturns or rather lives in it as in its self and natural atmosphere. Indian
\nsacred architecture constantly represents the greatest oneness of the Self, the
\ncosmic, the infinite in the immensity of its world-design, the multitude of its
\nfeatures of<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nP<\/font><\/span>age-216<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nseIf-expression, laksana, <\/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 <\/font> <\/span>
\nnecessary
\ncircumstances of this poem, this epic or this lyric<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span>
\nfor<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nthere are smaller structures which are such lyrics<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>of the <\/font> <\/span>
\nInfinite<\/font><\/span>. The western mentality, except in those who
\nare coming or returning, since Europe had once something of this cult in her
\nown way, to this vision, may find it difficult to appreciate the truth and
\nmeaning of such an art, which tries to figure existence as a whole and not in
\nits pieces; but I would invite those Indian minds who are troubled by these
\ncriticisms or partly or temporarily overpowered by the western way of seeing
\nthings, to look at our architecture in the light of this conception and see
\nwhether all but minor objections do not vanish as soon as the real meaning makes
\nitself felt and gives body to the first indefinable impression and emotion
\nwhich we experience before the greater constructions of the Indian builders.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nTo appreciate this
\nspiritual-aesthetic truth of Indian architecture, it will be best to look first
\nat some work where there is not the complication of surroundings now often out
\nof harmony with the building, outside even those temple towns which still
\nretain their dependence on the sacred motive, and rather in some <\/font> <\/span>
\n‘"<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nplace
\nwhere there is room for a free background of Nature.<\/font><\/span> I
\nhave before me two prints which can well serve the purpose, a temple at
\nKalahasti, a temple at,Sinhachalam, two buildings entirely different in
\ntreatment and yet one in the ground and the <\/font> <\/span>
\n;<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nuniversal
\nmotive. The straight way here is not to detach the temple from its
\nsurroundings, but to see it in unity with the sky and low-lying landscape or
\nwith the sky and hills around and feel the thing common to both, the
\nconstruction and its environment, the reality in Nature, the reality expressed
\nin the work of art. The oneness to which this Nature aspires in her inconscient
\nself- creation and in which she lives, the oneness to which the soul of man
\nuplifts itself in his conscious spiritual upbuilding, his labour of aspiration
\nhere expressed in stone, and in which so upbuilt he and his work live, are the
\nsame and the soul-motive is one.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

P<\/font>age-217<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\nThus seen this work
\nof man seems to be something which has started out and detached itself against
\nthe power of the natural world, something of the one common aspiration in both
\nto the same infinite spirit of itself,<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe inconscient uplook and against it the strong
\nsingle relief of the selfconscient effort and success of finding. One of these
\nbuildings climbs up bold, massive in projection, up-piled in the greatness of a
\nforceful but sure ascent, preserving its range and line to the last, the other
\nsoars from the strength of its base, in the grace and emotion of a curving mass
\nto a rounded summit and crowning symbol. There is in both a constant, subtle
\nyet pronounced lessening from the base towards the top, but at each stage a
\nrepetition of the same form, the same multiplicity of insistence, the same
\ncrowded full- ness and indented relief, but one maintains its multiple
\nendeavour 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
\nthis nature and this art live, then see this thronged expression as the sign of
\nthe infinite multiplicity which fills this oneness, see in the regular
\nlessening ascent of the edifice the subtler and subtler return from the base on
\nearth to the original unity and seize on the symbolic indication of its close
\nat the top. Not absence of unity, but a tremendous unity is revealed. Re-
\ninterpret intimately what this representation means in the terms of our own
\nspiritual self-existence and cosmic being, and we have what these great
\nbuilders saw in themselves and reared in stone. All objections, once we have
\ngot at this identity in spiritual experience, fall away and show themselves to
\nbe what they really are, the utterance and cavil of an impotent
\nmisunderstanding, an insufficient apprehension or a complete failure to see. To
\nappreciate the detail of Indian architecture is easy when the whole is thusseen
\nand known; otherwise, it is impossible.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>This method of interpretation applies, however different the
\nconstruction and the nature of the rendering, to all Dravidian architecture,
\nnot only to the mighty temples of far-spread fame, but to unknown roadside
\nshrines in small towns, which are only a slighter execution of the same theme,
\na satisfied suggestion here, but the greater buildings a grandiose fulfilled
\naspiration. The architectural language of the north is of a different kind,<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-218<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nthere <\/font> <\/span>
\nis another basic style; but here too the same
\nspiritual, meditative<\/font><\/span>,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nintuitive method
\nhas to be used and we get at the same <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nresult, an aesthetic
\ninterpretation or suggestion of the one spiritual experience, one in all its
\ncomplexity and diversity, which founds the unity of the infinite variations of
\nIndian spirituality bud religious feeling and the realised union of the human
\nself with <\/font> <\/span>the Divine. This is the unity too of all the creations of this hieratic<\/font><\/span> art. The different styles and motives arrive at or express that unity
\nin different ways. The objection that an excess of thronging detail and
\nornament hides, impairs or breaks up the unity, is advanced only because the
\neye has made the mistake of dwel<\/font><\/span>ling<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\non the detail first
\nwithout relation to this original spiritual <\/font> <\/span>
\noneness,
\nwhich has first to be fixed in an intimate spiritual seeing and union and then
\nall else seen in that vision and experience. <\/font> <\/span>
\nWhen<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nwe
\nlook on the multiplicity of the world, it is <\/i>only a <\/font> <\/span>
\ncrowded plurality that we can find and to arrive at unity we have to
\nreduce, to suppress what we have seen or sparingly select a few indications or
\nto be satisfied with the unity of this or that separate idea, experience or
\nimagination; but when we have realised the Self, the infinite unity and look
\nback 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
\nunity remains unabridged by even the most endless self- multiplication of its
\ninforming creation. We find the same thing in looking at this architecture. The
\nwealth of ornament, detail, circumstance in Indian temples represents the
\ninfinite variety and repetition of the worlds, <\/font> <\/span>
\n– not our world only, but all
\nthe <\/font> <\/span>
\nplanes,<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> suggests the infinite multiplicity in the infinite oneness. It is a
\nmatter of our own experience and fullness of vision how much <\/font> <\/span>
\nwe leave out or
\nbring in, whether we express so much <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nor so little or
\nattempt as in the Dravidian style to give the impression of a teeming
\ninexhaustible plenitude. The largeness <\/font> <\/span>
\n"<\/font><\/span> of this unity is base and continent enough for any super-structure or
\ncontent of multitude.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nTo condemn this
\nabundance as barbarous is to apply a foreign standard. Where after all are we
\nbound to draw the line? To the pure classical taste Shakespeare’s art once
\nappeared great but barbarous for a similar reason, one remembers the Gallic<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

P<\/font>age-219<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

description of him as a
\ndrunken barbarian of genius, – his artistic unity non-existent or spoilt by
\ncrowding tropical vegetation of incident and character, his teeming
\nimaginations violent, exaggerated, sometimes bizarre, monstrous, without
\nsymmetry, proportion and all the other lucid unities, lightnesses, graces loved
\nby the classic mind. That mind might say of his work in language like Mr.
\nArcher’s that here there is indeed a titanic genius, a mass of power, but of
\nunity, clarity, classic nobility no trace, but rather an entire absence of
\nlucid grace and lightness and restraint, a profusion of wild ornament and an
\nimaginative riot without law or measure, strained figures, distorted positions
\nand gestures, no dignity, no fine, just, rationally natural and beautiful
\nclassic movement and pose. But even the strictest Latin mind has now got over its
\nobjections to the "splendid barbarism" of Shakespeare and can
\nunderstand that here is a fuller, less sparing and exiguous vision of life, a
\ngreater intuitive unity than the formal unities of the classic aesthesis. But
\nthe Indian vision of the world and existence was vaster and fuller than
\nShakespeare’s, because it embraced not merely life, but all being, not merely
\nhumanity, but all the worlds and all Nature and cosmos. The European mind not
\nhaving arrived except in individuals at any close, direct, insistent
\nrealisation of the unity of the infinite Self or the cosmic consciousness
\npeopled with its infinite multiplicity, is not driven to express these things,
\ncannot understand or put up with them when they are expressed in this oriental
\nart, speech and style and object to it as the Latin mind once objected to
\nShakespeare. Perhaps the day is not distant when it will see and understand and
\nperhaps even itself try to express the same things in another language.<\/font><\/p>\n

The objection that the
\ncrowding detail allows no calm, gives no relief or space to the eye, falls
\nunder the same heading, springs from the same root, is urged from a different
\nexperience and has no validity for the Indian experience. For this unity on
\nwhich all is upborne, carries in itself the infinite space and calm of the
\nspiritual realisation, and there is no need for other unfilled spaces or tracts
\nof calm of a lesser more superficial kind. The eye is here only a way of access
\nto the soul, it is to that that there is the appeal, and if the soul living in
\nthis realisation or dwelling under the<\/font><\/p>\n

P<\/font>age-220<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ninfluence of this aesthetic
\nimpression needs any relief, it is not from the incidence of life and form, but
\nfrom the immense incidence of that vastness of infinity and tranquil silence,
\nand that can only be given by its opposite, by an abundance of form and detail
\nand life. As for the objection in regard to Dravidian architecture to its
\nmassiveness and its titanic construction, the precise spiritual effect intended
\ncould not be given otherwise; for the infinite, the cosmic seen as a whole in
\nits vast manifestation is titanic, is mighty in material and power. It is other
\nand quite different things also, but none of these are absent from Indian
\nconstruction. The great temples of the north have often in spite of Mr.
\nArcher’s dictum, a singular grace in their power, a luminous lightness
\nrelieving their mass and strength, a rich delicacy of beauty in their ornate
\nfullness. It is not indeed the Greek lightness, clarity or naked nobleness, nor
\nis it exclusive, but comes in <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>a fine blending of opposites which is in the very
\nspirit of the Indian religious, philosophical and aesthetic mind. Nor are these<\/font><\/span>,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nthings absent from many
\nDravidian buildings, though in certain styles they are boldly sacrificed or
\nonly put into minor incidents, –<\/font><\/span>one instance of the kind Mr. Archer rejoices in as an
\noasis in the desert of this to him unintelligible mass of might and greatness,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n– but in either case suppressed so that the
\nfullness of <\/font> <\/span>solemn and grandiose effect may have a complete, an undimi<\/font><\/span>nished expression.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/font> <\/span>I
\nneed not deal with adverse strictures of a more insignificant kind, <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> such as the dislike of the Indian form of the
\narch and dome, because they are not the radiating arch and dome of other
\nstyles. That is only an intolerant refusal to admit the beauty of unaccustomed
\nforms. It is legitimate to prefer one’s own things, those to which our mind and
\nnature have been trained, but to condemn other art and effort because it also
\nprefers its own way of arriving at beauty, greatness, self-expression, is a
\nnarrowness which with the growth of a more catholic culture ought to disappear.
\nBut there is one comment on Dravidian temple architecture which is worth noting
\nbecause it is made by <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n"<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nothers
\nthan Mr. Archer and his kind. Even a sympathetic mind <\/font> <\/span>
\nlike
\nProfessor Geddes is impressed by some sense of a monstrous effect of terror and
\ngloom in these mighty buildings. Such expres-<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-221<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nsions are astonishing to an
\nIndian mind because terror and gloom are conspicuously absent from the feelings
\naroused in it by its religion, art or literature. In the religion they are
\nrarely awakened and only in order to be immediately healed and, even when they
\ncome, are always sustained by the sense of a supporting and help<\/font><\/span>ing presence, an eternal greatness and calm or love or Delight
\n<\/font> <\/span>behind; the very
\ngoddess of destruction is at the same time the compassionate and loving Mother;
\nthe austere Maheswara, Rudra, is also Shiva, the auspicious, Ashutosha, the
\nrefuge of men. The Indian thinking and religious mind looks with calm, without
\nshrinking or repulsion, with an understanding born of its agelong effort at
\nidentity and oneness, at all that meets it in the stupendous spectacle of the
\ncosmos. And even its asceticism, its turning from the world, which begins not
\nin terror and gloom, but in a sense of vanity and fatigue, or of something
\nhigher, truer, happier than life, soon passes beyond any element of pessimistic
\nsadness into the rapture of the eternal peace and bliss. Indian secular poetry
\nand drama is throughout rich, vital and joyous and there is more tragedy,
\nterror, sorrow and gloom packed into any few pages of European work than we can
\nfind in the whole mass of Indian literature. It does not seem to me that Indian
\nart is at all different in this respect from the religion and literature. The
\nwestern mind is here thrusting in its own habitual reactions upon things in the
\nindigenous conception in which they have no proper place. Mark the curious
\nmisreading of the dance of Shiva as a dance of Death or Destruction, whereas,
\nas anybody ought to be able to see who looks upon the Nataraja, it expresses on
\nthe contrary the rapture of the cosmic dance with the profundities behind of
\nthe unmoved eternal and infinite bliss. So too the figure of Kali which is so
\nterrible to European eyes is, as we know, the Mother of the universe accepting
\nthis fierce aspect of destruction in order to slay the Asuras, the powers of
\nevil in man and the world. There are other strands in this feeling in the
\nwestern mind which seem to spring from a dislike of anything uplifted far
\nbeyond the human measure and others again in which we see a subtle survival of
\nthe Greek limitation, the fear, gloom and aversion with which the sunny
\nterrestrial Hellenic mind commonly met the idea of the<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-222<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>beyond, the limitless, the unknown; but that
\nreaction has no place in Indian mentality. And as for the strangeness or
\nformidable aspect of certain unhuman figures or the conception of demons or
\nRakshasas, it must be remembered that the Indian aesthetic mind deals not only
\nwith the earth but with psychic <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nplanes in which these things
\nexist and ranges freely among them<\/font><\/span> without being overpowered because it carries
\neverywhere the stamp of a large confidence in the strength and the omnipresence
\nof the Self or the Divine.
\n<\/font>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>I have dwelt on Hindu and especially on
\nDravidian architecture because the latter is the most fiercely attacked as the
\nmost uncompromisingly foreign to European taste. But a word too may be said
\nabout Indo-Moslem architecture. I am not concerned to defend any claim for the
\npurely indigenous origin of its features. It seems to me that here the Indian
\nmind 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
\nMoghul temperament; but it remains clear enough that it is still on the whole a
\ntypically Indian creation with the peculiar Indian gift. The richness of
\ndecorative skill and imagination has been turned to the uses of another style,
\nbut it is the same skill which we find in the northern Hindu temples, and in
\nthe ground we see, however toned down, something sometimes of the old epic mass
\nand power, but more often that lyric grace which we see developing before the
\nMahomedan advent in the indigenous sculpture,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n– as in the <\/font> <\/span>
\nschools of the North-East and of Java, – and sometimes a blending of the
\ntwo motives. The modification, the toning down sets the average European mind
\nat ease and secures its suffrage. But what is it that it so much admires? Mr.
\nArcher tells us at first that it is its rational beauty, refinement and grace,
\nnormal, fair, refreshing after the monstrous riot of Hindu yogic hallucination
\nand nightmare. That description which might have been written of Greek art,
\nseems to me grotesquely inapplicable. Immediately afterwards he harps on quite
\nanother and an incompatible phrase, and calls it a fairyland of exquisite
\narchitecture. A rational fairyland is a wonder which may perhaps be here- after
\ndiscovered by some strange intertwining of the nineteenth<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-223<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nand twentieth century minds,
\nbut I do not think it has yet existed on earth or in the heavens. Not rational
\nbut magical beauty satisfying and enchanting to some deeper quite suprarational
\naesthetic soul in us is the inexpressible charm of these creations. But still
\nwhere 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,
\nthe stately halls of sepulture, the marvellous loggias and arcades, the
\nmagnificent plinths and platforms, the majestic gateways, et cetera. <\/i>And
\nis this then all? Only the charm of an outward material luxury and
\nmagnificence? Yes; Mr. Archer again tells us that we must be content here with
\na visual sensuous beauty without any moral suggestion~ And that helps him to
\nbring in the sentence of destructive condemnation without which he could not
\nfeel happy in dealing with Indian things: this Moslem architecture suggests not
\nonly unbridled luxury, but effeminacy and decadence! But in that case, what-
\never its beauty, it belongs entirely to a secondary plane of artistic creation
\nand cannot rank with the great spiritual aspirations in stone of the Hindu
\nbuilders.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>I do not demand "moral
\nsuggestions" from architecture, but is it true that there is nothing but a
\nsensuous outward grace and beauty and luxury in these Indo-Moslem buildings? It
\nis not at all true of the characteristic greater work. The Taj is not merely a
\nsensuous reminiscence of an imperial amour or a fairy enchantment hewn from the
\nmoon’s lucent quarries, but the eternal dream of a love that survives death.
\nThe great mosques embody often a religious aspiration lifted to a noble
\nausterity 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
\nbuildings of Fatehpur-Sikri are not monuments <\/font> <\/span>
\nof
\nan effeminate luxurious decadence, <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n–<\/font><\/span> an absurd description <\/font> <\/span>
\nfor the mind of the time of Akbar, – but give form to
\na nobility, power and beauty which lay hold upon but do not wallow on the
\nearth. There is not here indeed the vast spiritual content of the earlier
\nIndian mind, but it is still an Indian mind which in these delicate creations
\nabsorbs the West Asian influence, and lays stress on the sensuous as before in
\nthe poetry of Kalidasa, but uplifts it to a certain immaterial charm, rises
\noften from the earth<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Page-224<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n11. Tomb of Salim Chisti, Agra<\/font><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n12. Humayun’s Tomb, New Delhi<\/font><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\n…in certain mosques and tombs I seem to find an impress<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\nof the robust and bold Afghan and Moghul temperament…   
\n(P.223)<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

\nThe buildings of Fatehpur-Sikri<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\nare not monuments of an effeminate luxurious decadence,<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n\u2014 but give form to a nobility, power and beauty<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\nwhich lay hold upon but do not wallow on the earth.<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\nThere is not here indeed the vast spiritual content<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\nof the earlier Indian mind,<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\nbut it is still an Indian mind which in these delicate
\ncreations<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\nabsorbs the West Asian influence.<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n(P.224)<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n13. Tomb of I’tmat-ud-Daula, Agra<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n14. Taj Mahal, Agra<\/font><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\nThe Taj is not merely a sensuous reminiscence <\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\nof an imperial amour<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\nor a fairy enchantment hewn-from the moon’s lucent quarries,
\n<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\nbut the eternal dream of a love that survives death.<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n(P.224)<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t<\/p>\n

\n15. Panchamahal, Fatehpuri Sikri<\/font><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\n\n\n
\n


\n\t\tNot rational but magical beauty<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

satisfying and
\n\t\tenchanting <\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

to some deeper
\n\t\t<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

…suprarational
\n\t\taesthetic soul in us<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

is the
\n\t\tinexpressible charm<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

of these creations.<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

(P.224)<\/font><\/i><\/td>\n

\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n16. Tomb of I’tmat-ud-Daula (Detail)<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>without
\n<\/font> <\/span>quite leaving it into the
\nmagical beauty of the middle <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nwor1d and in the religious
\nmood touches with a devout hand the skirts of the Divine. The all-pervading
\nspiritual obsession not there, but other elements of life not ignored by Indian
\nculture and gaining on it since the classical times are here brought out under
\na new influence and are still penetrated with some radiant glow of a superior
\nlustre.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-225<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n3<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nTHE<\/span><\/font> sculpture and painting of
\nancient India have recently been rehabilitated with a surprising suddenness in
\nthe eyes of a more cultivated European criticism in the course of that rapid
\nopening of the western mind to the value of oriental thought and creation which
\nis one of the most significant signs of a change that is yet only in its
\nbeginning. There have even been here and there minds of a fine perception and
\nprofound originality who have seen in a return to the ancient and persistent
\nfreedom of oriental art, its refusal to be shackled or debased by an imitative
\nrealism, its fidelity to the true theory of art as an inspired interpretation of
\nthe deeper soul-values of existence lifted beyond servitude to the outsides of
\nNature, the right way to the regeneration and liberation of the aesthetic and
\ncreative mind of Europe. And actually, although much of western art runs still
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nalong the old grooves, much too of its most original
\nrecent<\/font><\/span> crea<\/font><\/span>tion has elements or a guiding direction which brings
\nit nearer to the eastern mentality and understanding. It might then be possible
\nfor us to leave it at that and wait for time to deepen this new vision and
\nvindicate more fully the truth and greatness of the art of India.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>But we are concerned not only with the
\ncritical estimation of our art by Europe, but much more nearly with the evil
\neffect of the earlier depreciation on the Indian mind which has been for a long
\ntime side-tracked off its true road by a foreign, an anglicised education and,
\nas a result, vulgarised and falsified by the loss of its own true centre,
\nbecause this hampers and retards a sound and living revival of artistic taste
\nand culture and stands in the way of a new age of creation. It was only a few
\nyears ago that the mind of educated India<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n"educated" without an atom of
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nreal culture<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\naccepted
\ncontentedly the vulgar English estimate of our sculpture and painting as
\nundeveloped inferior art or even a mass of monstrous and abortive miscreation,
\nand though that has passed and there is a great change, there is still very
\ncommon a heavy weight of second-hand occidental notions, a bluntness or<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-226<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nabsolute <\/font> <\/span>
\nlacking of
\naesthetic taste,1<\/sup>()<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\na
\nfailure to appreciate, and <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\none still comes sometimes across
\na strain of blatantly anglicised criticism which depreciates all that is in the
\nIndian manner and praises only what is consistent with western canons. And the
\nold style of European criticism continues to have some weight with <\/font> <\/span>
\nus, because<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe lack of aesthetic or indeed of any real cultural
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\ntraining <\/font> <\/span>
\nin our present system of education makes us ignorant
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nundiscriminating receptacles, so that we are ready to take the
\nconsidered opinions of competent critics like Okakura or Mr. Laurence Binyon
\nand the rash scribblings of journalists of the type of Mr. Archer, who write
\nwithout authority because in these <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nthings<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nthey
\nhave neither taste nor knowledge, as of equal impo<\/font><\/span>rtance
\nand the latter even attract a greater attention. It is still necessary
\ntherefore to reiterate things which, however obvious to trained or sensitive
\naesthetic intelligence, are not yet familiar to the average mind still
\nuntutored or habituated to a system of false weights and values. The work of
\nrecovering a true and inward understanding of ourselves, – our past and our
\npresent self and from that our future – is only in its commencement for the
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nmajority of our people.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nTo appreciate our
\nown artistic past at its right value we have <\/font> <\/span>
\nfree<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nourselves
\nfrom all subjection to a foreign outlook and see <\/font> <\/span>
\nour
\nsculpture and painting, as I have already suggested about our, architecture, in
\nthe light of its own profound intention and greatness of spirit. When we so
\nlook at it, we shall be able to see that le sculpture of ancient and mediaeval
\nIndia claims its place on the <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nvery<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nhighest levels of
\nartistic achievement. I do not know <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nhere we shall find a
\nsculptural art of a more profound intention, greater spirit, a more consistent
\nskill of achievement. Inferior work there is, work that fails or succeeds only
\npartially, but take it in its whole, in the long persistence of its excellence,
\nin the umber of its masterpieces, in the power with which it renders <\/font> <\/span>
\nLe<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nsoul<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nand the mind of a
\npeople, and we shall be tempted to go <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nfurther and claim for
\nit a first place. The art of sculpture has indeed flourished supremely only in
\nancient countries where it<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

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

\nPage-227<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nwas conceived against its
\nnatural background and support, a great architecture. Egypt, Greece, India take
\nthe premier rank in this kind of creation. Mediaeval and modern Europe produced
\nnothing of the same mastery, abundance and amplitude, while on the contrary in
\npainting later Europe has done much and richly and with a prolonged and
\nconstantly renewed inspiration. The difference arises from the different kind
\nof mentality required by the two arts. The material in which we work makes its
\nown peculiar demand on the creative spirit, lays down its own natural
\nconditions, as Ruskin has pointed out in a different connection, and the art of
\nmaking in stone or bronze calls for a cast of mind which the ancients had and
\nthe modems 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
\npersonality and emotion and the touches that excite and pass, but founded
\nrather on some great basis of assured thought and vision, stable in
\ntemperament, fixed in its imagination on things that are firm and enduring. One
\ncannot trifle with ease in this sterner material, one cannot even for long or
\nwith safety indulge in them in mere grace and external beauty or the more
\nsuperficial, mobile and lightly attractive motives. The aesthetic
\nself-indulgence which the soul of colour permits and even invites, the
\nattraction of the mobile play of life to which line of brush, pen or pencil
\ngives latitude, are here forbidden or, if to some extent achieved, only within
\na line of restraint to cross which is perilous and soon fatal. Here grand or
\nprofound motives are called for, a more or less penetrating spiritual vision or
\nsome sense of things eternal to base the creation. The sculptural art is
\nstatic, self-contained, necessarily firm, noble or severe and demands an
\naesthetic spirit capable of these qualities. A certain mobility of life and mastering
\ngrace of line can come in upon this basis, but if it entirely replaces the
\noriginal Dharma of the material, that means that the spirit of the statuette
\nhas come into the statue and we may be sure of an approaching decadence.
\nHellenic sculpture following this line passed from the greatness of Phidias
\nthrough the soft of Praxiteles to its decline. A later Europe has failed for
\nthe most part in sculpture, in spite of some great work<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nby in-<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-228<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ndividuals, an Angelo or a
\nRodin, because it played externally with stone and bronze, took them as a
\nmedium for the representation of life and could not find a sufficient basis of
\nprofound vision or spiritual motive. In Egypt and in India, on the contrary,
\nsculpture preserved its power of successful creation through several great
\nages. 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
\nprevious creation behind it, and the latest work of some high value comes down
\nto within a few centuries from our own time. An assured history of two <\/font> <\/span>
\nmillenniums of accomplished sculptural creation is a rare and
\n<\/font> <\/span>significant fact in
\nthe life of a people.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nThis greatness and continuity
\nof Indian sculpture is due to the close connection between the religious and
\nphilosophical and the aesthetic mind of the people. Its survival into times not
\nfar from us was possible because of the survival of the cast of the antique
\nmind in that philosophy and religion, a mind familiar with eternal things,
\ncapable of cosmic vision, having its roots of thought and seeing in the
\nprofundities of the soul, in the most intimate, pregnant and abiding
\nexperiences of the human spirit. The spirit of this greatness is indeed at the
\nopposite pole to the perfection within limits, the lucid nobility or the vital
\nfineness and physical grace of Hellenic creation in’ stone. And since the
\nfavourite trick of Mr. Archer and his kind is to throw the Hellenic ideal
\nconstantly in our face, as if sculpture must be either governed by the Greek
\nstandard or worthless, it is as well to take note of the meaning of the
\ndifference. The earlier and more archaic Greek style had indeed something in it
\nwhich looks like<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\na reminiscent touch of a
\nfirst creative origin from Egypt and the <\/font> <\/span>
\nOrient, but there is already
\nthere the governing conception which determined the Greek aesthesis and has
\ndominated the later mind of Europe, the will to combine some kind of expression
\nof an inner truth with an idealising imitation of external Nature. The
\nbrilliance, beauty and nobility of the work which was accomplished<\/font><\/span>, was a very great and perfect thing, but it is idle to main<\/font><\/span>tain that that is
\nthe sole possible method or the one permanent and natural law of artistic
\ncreation. Its highest greatness subsisted only so long<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nand it was not for very long
\n– as a<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-229<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ncertain
\nsatisfying balance was struck and constantly maintained between a fine, but not
\nvery subtle, opulent or profound spiritual suggestion and an outward physical
\nharmony of nobility and grace. A later work achieved a brief miracle of vital
\nsuggestion and sensuous physical grace with a certain power of expressing the
\nspirit of beauty in the mould of the senses; but this once done, there was no
\nmore to see or create. For the curious turn which impels at the present day the
\nmodem mind to return to spiritual vision through a fiction of exaggerated
\nrealism which is really a pressure upon the form of things to yield the secret
\nof 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,
\nthat an acknowledgment of the greatness of Greek art in its own province ought
\nnot to prevent the plain perception of the rather strait and narrow bounds of
\nthat province. What Greek sculpture expressed was fine, gracious and noble, but
\nwhat it did not express and could not by the limitations of its canon hope to
\nattempt, was considerable, was immense in possibility, was that spiritual depth
\nand extension which the human mind needs for its larger and deeper
\nself-experience. And just this is the great- ness of Indian sculpture that it
\nexpresses in stone and bronze what the Greek aesthetic mind could not conceive
\nor express and embodies it with a profound understanding of its right
\nconditions and a native perfection.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n            The more ancient sculptural art of India embodies in
\nvisible form what the Upanishads threw out into inspired thought and the
\nMahabharata and Ramayana portrayed by the word in life. This sculpture like the
\narchitecture springs from spiritual realisation, and what it creates and
\nexpresses at its greatest is the spirit in form, the soul in body, this or that
\nliving soul-power in the divine or the human, the universal and cosmic
\nindividualised in suggestion but not lost in individuality, the impersonal
\nsupporting a not too insistent play of personality, the abiding moments of the
\neternal, the presence, the idea, the power, the calm or potent delight of the
\nspirit in its actions and creations. And over all the art something of this
\nintention broods and persists and is suggested even where it does not dominate
\nthe mind of the sculptor. And therefore as in the architecture so in the sculp-<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-230<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nture,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nwe have<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nto bring a
\ndifferent mind to this work, a different <\/font> <\/span>
\ncapacity<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nof
\nvision and response, we have to go deeper into our<\/font><\/span>selves
\nto see than in the more outwardly imaginative art of Europe. The Olympian gods
\nof Phidias are magnified and uplifted human beings saved from a too human
\nlimitation by a certain divine calm of impersonality or universalised quality,
\ndivine type, gunna; <\/i>in other work we see heroes, athletes, feminine
\nincarnations of beauty, calm and restrained embodiments of idea, action or
\nemotion in the idealised beauty of the human <\/font> <\/span>
\nfigure. The gods of Indian
\nsculpture are cosmic beings, em<\/font><\/span>bodiments of some great
\nspiritual power, spiritual idea and, action, inmost psychic significance, the human
\nform a vehicle of this soul meaning, its outward means of self-expression;
\neverything in the figure, every opportunity it gives, the face, the hands the
\n<\/font> <\/span>posture of the
\nlimbs, the poise and turn of the body, every <\/font> <\/span>
\naccessory,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nhas
\nto be made instinct with the inner meaning, help <\/font> <\/span>
\nit
\nto emerge, carry out the rhythm of the total suggestion, and on the other hand
\neverything is suppressed which would defeat this end, especially all that would
\nmean an insistence on the merely vital or physical, outward or obvious
\nsuggestions of the human figure. Not the ideal physical or emotional beauty,
\nbut the <\/font> <\/span>
\nutmost spiritual beauty or significance of
\nwhich the human <\/font> <\/span>
\nform is capable, is the aim of this kind of
\ncreation. The divine self in us is its theme, the body made a form of the soul
\nis its idea and its secret. And. therefore in front of this art it is not
\nenough to look at it and respond with the aesthetic eye and the imagination,
\nbut we must look also into the form for what it carries and even through and
\nbehind it to pursue the profound suggestion it gives into its own infinite. The
\nreligious or hieratic side of Indian sculpture is intimately connected with the
\nspiritual <\/font> <\/span>
\nexperiences of Indian meditation and adoration,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> those deep things of our
\nself-discovery which our critic calls contemptuously<\/font><\/span>,
\nYogic hallucinations,<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nsoul
\nrealisation is its method of creation and soul realisation must be the way of
\nour response and understanding. And even with the figures of human beings or
\ngroups it is still a like inner aim and vision which governs the labour of the
\nsculptor. The statue of a king or a saint is not meant merely to give the idea
\nof a king or saint or to portray<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-231<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>some dramatic
\naction or to be a character, portrait in stone, but\u00a0 <\/span>to embody rather a soul-state or experience
\nor deeper soul-quality, as for instance, not the outward emotion, but the inner
\nsoul-side of rapt ecstasy of adoration and God-vision in the saint or the\u00a0 <\/span>devotee before the presence of the worshipped
\ndeity. This is the. character of the task the Indian sculptor set before his
\neffort 1 and it is according to his success in that and not by the absence<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>of something else,
\nsome quality or some intention foreign to his<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>mind and contrary to
\nhis design, that we have to judge of his <\/font> <\/span>
\nachievement and his labour.<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Once we admit this standard, it is
\nimpossible to speak too highly of the profound intelligence of its conditions
\nwhich was developed in Indian sculpture, of the skill with which its task was
\ntreated or of the consummate grandeur and beauty of its masterpieces. Take the
\ngreat Buddhas<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nnot the Gandharan,
\nbut the divine figures or groups in cave-cathedral or temple, the best of the
\nlater southern bronzes of which there is "a remarkable collection of
\nplates in Mr. Gangoly’s book on that subject, the Kala<\/font><\/span>sanhara
\nimage, the Natarajas. No greater or finer work,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nwhether in
\nconception or execution, has been done by the human hand and its greatness is
\nincreased by obeying a spiritualised aesthetic vision. The figure of the Buddha
\nachieves the expression of the infinite in a finite image, and that is surely
\nno mean or barbaric achievement, to embody the illimitable calm of Nirvana in a
\nhuman form and visage. The Kalasanhara Shiva is supreme not only by the
\nmajesty, power, calmly forceful control, dignity and kingship of existence
\nwhich the whole spirit and pose of the’ figure visibly incarnates, -that is
\nonly half or less than half <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nits achievement,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>but much more by the
\nconcentrated divine passion of the spiritual overcoming of time and existence
\nwhich the artist has succeeded in putting into eye and brow and mouth and every
\nfeature and has subtly supported by the contained suggestion, not emotional,
\nbut spiritual, of every part of the body of the godhead and the rhythm of his
\nmeaning which he has poured through the whole unity of this creation. Or what
\nof the marvellous genius and skill in the treatment of the cosmic movement and
\ndelight of the dance of Shiva, the success with which the posture of every limb
\nis made to bring out the rhythm<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nP<\/font><\/span>age-232<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>of the significance, the
\nrapturous intensity and abandon of the <\/font> <\/span>
\nmovement itself and yet the
\njust restraint in the intensity of motion, the subtle variation of each element
\nof the single theme in the seizing idea of these master sculptors? Image after
\nimage in the great temples or saved from the wreck of time shows the same grand
\ntraditional art and the genius which worked in that tradition and its many
\nstyles, the profound and firmly grasped spiritual idea, the consistent
\nexpression of it in every curve, line and mass, in hand and limb, in suggestive
\npose, in expressive <\/font> <\/span>
\n,<\/font><\/span> rhythm,
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nit is an art which,
\nunderstood in its own spirit, need <\/font> <\/span>
\nfear no comparison with any other, ancient or
\nmodern, Hellemc or Egyptian, of the near or the far East or of the West in any
\nof its creative ages. This sculpture passed through many changes, a more
\nancient art of extraordinary grandeur and epic power uplifted by the same
\nspirit as reigned in the Vedic and Vedantic seers and in the epic poets, a
\nlater Puranic turn towards grace and beauty and rapture and an outburst of
\nlyric ecstasy and movement, and last a rapid and vacant decadence; but through-
\nout all the second period too the depth and greatness of sculptural motive
\nsupports and vivifies the work and in the very turn to- wards decadence
\nsomething of it often remains to redeem from complete debasement, emptiness or
\ninsignificance.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>Let us see then what is the value of the objections made to the spirit
\nand style of Indian sculpture. This is the burden of the objurgations of the
\ndevil’s advocate that his self-bound European mind finds the whole thing
\nbarbaric, meaningless, uncouth, strange, bizarre, the work of a distorted
\nimagination labouring mid a nightmare of unlovely unrealities. Now there is in
\nthe total of what survives to us work that is less inspired or even work that
\nis bad, exaggerated, forced or clumsy, the production of mechanic artificers
\nmingled with the creation of great nameless artists, and an eye that does not
\nunderstand the sense, the first conditions of the work, the mind of the race or
\nits type of aesthesis, may well fail to distinguish between good and inferior
\nexecution, decadent work and the work of the great hands and the great eras.
\nBut applied as a general description the criticism is itself grotesque and
\ndistorted and it means only that here are conceptions and a figuring
\nimagination strange to the western<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-233<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>intelligence. The line and run and turn
\ndemanded by the Indian aesthetic sense are not the same as those demanded by
\nthe European. It would take too long to examine the detail of the difference
\nwhich we find not only in sculpture, but in the other plastic arts and in music
\nand even to a certain extent in literature, but on the whole we may say that
\nthe Indian mind moves on the spur of a spiritual sensitiveness and psychic
\ncuriosity, while the aesthetic curiosity of the European temperament is
\nintellectual, vital, emotional and imaginative in that sense, and almost the
\nwhole strangeness of the Indian use of line and mass, ornament and proportion
\nand rhythm arises from this difference. The two minds live almost in different
\nworlds, are either not looking at the same things or, even where they meet in
\nthe object, see it from a different level or surrounded by a different
\natmosphere, and we know what power the point of view or the medium of vision
\nhas to transform the object. And undoubtedly there is very ample ground for Mr.
\nArcher’s complaint of the want of natural- ism in most Indian sculpture. The
\ninspiration, the way of seeing is frankly not naturalistic, not, that is to
\nsay, the vivid, con<\/font><\/span>vincing and accurate, the graceful, beautiful
\nor strong, or<\/font><\/span> even <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe idealised or imaginative imitation of
\nsurface or terrestrial nature. The Indian sculptor is concerned with embodying
\nspiritual experiences and impressions, not with recording or glorifying what is
\nreceived by the physical senses. He may start with suggestions from earthly and
\nphysical things, but he produces his work only after he has closed his eyes to
\nthe insistence of the physical circumstances, seen them in the psychic memory
\nand transformed them within himself so as to bring out something other than
\ntheir physical reality or their vital and intellectual significance. His eye
\nsees the psychic line and turn of things and he replaces by them the material
\ncontours. 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
\na broad and sympathetic culture. And what is strange to us is naturally
\nrepugnant to our habitual mind and uncouth to our habitual sense, bizarre to
\nour imaginative tradition and aesthetic training. We want what is familiar to
\nthe eye and obvious to the imagination and will not readily admit that there
\nmay be here<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-234<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nanother<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nand perhaps greater beauty than that in the circle<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nof
\nwhich<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nwe are accustomed to live and take pleasure.
\n<\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>It seems to be especially the application
\nof this psychic vision to the human form which offends these critics of Indian
\nsculpture. There is the familiar objection to such features as the
\nmultiplication of the arms in the figures of gods and goddesses, the four, six,
\neight or ten arms of Shiva, the eighteen arms of Durga, because they are a
\nmonstrosity, a thing not in nature. Now certainly a play of imagination of this
\nkind would be out of place in the representation of a man or woman, because it
\nwould have no artistic or other meaning, but I cannot see why this freedom
\nshould be denied in the representation of cosmic beings like the Indian
\ngodheads. The whole question is, first, whether it is an appropriate means of
\nconveying a significance not otherwise to be represented with an equal power
\nand force and, secondly, whether it is capable of artistic representation, a
\nrhythm of artistic truth and unity which need not be that of physical <\/font> <\/span>
\nnature. <\/font> <\/span>
\nIf not, then it is an ugliness and violence,
\nbut if these<\/font><\/span>, conditions are satisfied, the means are justified and I do not see
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nthat we have any right, faced with the perfection of the work, to
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nraise <\/font> <\/span>
\na discordant clamour. Mr. Archer himself is
\nstruck with <\/font> <\/span>the perfection of skill and mastery with which these to him superfluous
\nlimbs are disposed in the figures of the dancing Shiva, and indeed it would
\nneed an eye of impossible blindness not to see that much, but what is still
\nmore important is the artistic significance which this skill is used to serve,
\nand, if that is understood, we can at once see that the spiritual emotion and
\nsuggestions of the cosmic dance are brought out by this device in a way which
\nwould not be as possible with a two-armed figure. The<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nsame truth holds as to the Durga with her eighteen arms
\n<\/font> <\/span>slaying the Asuras or
\nthe Shivas of the great Pallava creations where<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe lyrical beauty of the Natarajas is absent, but there is
\n<\/font> <\/span>instead a great
\nepical rhythm and grandeur. Art justifies its own means and here it does it
\nwith a supreme perfection. And as for \u201c<\/font><\/span>contorted"
\npostures of some figures, the same law holds. <\/font> <\/span>
\nThere
\nis often a departure in this respect from the anatomical norm of the physical
\nbody or else <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>and that is a rather different
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>
\nthing<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>– an emphasis more or less
\npronounced on an unusual <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-235<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\npose of limbs or
\nbody, and the question <\/font> <\/span>
\nthen without sense or purpose, a. mere clumsiness or
\nan<\/font><\/span> ugly, exaggeration, or whether it rather serves some
\nsignificance and establishes in the place of the normal physical metric of
\nNature another purposeful and successful artistic rhythm. Art after all! is not
\nforbidden to deal with the unusual or to alter and over <\/font> <\/span>
\npass Nature, and it
\nmight almost be said that it has been<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\ndoing,<\/font><\/span> <\/font>
\n<\/span>
\nlittle else since it began to serve the human
\nimagination from its <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>first grand epic
\nexaggerations to the violences of modem roman<\/font><\/span>ticism
\nand realism, from the high ages of Valmiki and Homer to the day of Hugo and
\nIbsen. The means matter, but less than the <\/font> <\/span>
\nsignificance and the thing
\ndone and the power and beauty<\/font><\/span> with
\n<\/font> <\/span>which it expresses
\nthe dreams and truths of the human spirit.<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The whole question of the Indian artistic
\ntreatment<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nof the <\/font> <\/span>
\nhuman figure has to be understood in the light of its aesthetic<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\npurpose. It works with a certain intention and
\nideal, a general’ norm and standard which permits of a good many variations and<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nfrom which too there are appropriate
\ndepartures. The epithets with which Mr. Archer tries to damn its features are
\nabsurd, captious, exaggerated, the forced phrases of a journalist trying <\/font> <\/span>
\nto depreciate a
\nperfectly sensible, beautiful and aesthetic<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nnorm <\/font> <\/span>
\nwith which he does not sympathise. There are other things<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nhere <\/font> <\/span>
\nthan a repetition of hawk faces, wasp waists,
\nthin legs and the<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nrest <\/font> <\/span>
\nof the ill-tempered caricature. He doubts Mr. Havell’s suggestion that
\nthese old Indian artists knew the anatomy of the body well enough, as Indian
\nscience knew it, but chose to depart from it for their own purpose. It does not
\nseem to me to matter much, since art is not anatomy, nor an artistic
\nmasterpiece necessarily are production of physical fact or a lesson in natural
\nscience. I see no reason to regret the absence of telling studies in muscles,
\ntorsos, etc., for I cannot regard these things as having in themselves any
\nessential artistic value. The one important point is that the Indian artist had
\na perfect idea of proportion and rhythm and used them in certain styles with
\nnobility and power, in others like the lavan, the Gauda or the southern bronzes
\nwith that or with a perfect grace added and often an intense and a lyrical
\nsweetness. The dignity and beauty of the human figure in the best Indian
\nstatues cannot be excelled, but what was sought and what was<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-236<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>achieved was not an outward naturalistic, but a spiritual and a hic
\nbeauty, and to achieve it the sculptor suppressed, and was entirely right in
\nsuppressing, the obtrusive material detail and d instead at purity of outline
\nand fineness of feature. And that outline, into that purity and fineness he was
\nable to work whatever he chose, mass of force or delicacy of grace, a static
\ndignity or a mighty strength or a restrained violence of movement or whatever
\nserved or helped his meaning. A divine and subtle body was his ideal; and to a
\ntaste and imagination too blunt or realistic to conceive the truth and beauty
\nof 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
\nof the natural realistic man; that triumphs and endures which appeals to the
\nbest, <\/font> s<\/font><\/i><\/span>\u00e3<\/font><\/span>dhu-sammatam, <\/font> <\/span><\/i>
\n
\nthat is deepest and greatest
\nwhich satisfies the profoundest souls and the most sensitive psychic
\nimaginations.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Each manner of art has its own ideals,
\ntraditions, agreed conventions; for the ideas and forms of the creative spirit
\nare many though there is one ultimate basis. The perspective, the psychic <\/font> <\/span>
\nvision of the
\nChinese and Japanese painters are not the <\/font> <\/span>
\nsame
\nas those of European artists; but who can ignore the beauty and the wonder of
\ntheir work? I dare say Mr. Archer could set a Constable or a Turner above the
\nwhole mass of Far Eastern work, as I myself, if I had to make a choice, would
\ntake a Chinese or Japanese landscape or other magic transmutation of Nature in
\npreference to all others; but these are matters of individual, national or
\ncontinental temperament and preference. The essence of the question lies in the
\nrendering of the truth and beauty <\/font> <\/span>
\nseized by the spirit. Indian sculpture, Indian
\nart in general<\/font><\/span> follows its own ideal and traditions and these
\nare unique in their character and quality. It is the expression, great as a
\nwhole rough <\/font> <\/span>many centuries and ages of creation, supreme at its best,
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nwheather in rare early pre-Asokan, in Asokan or later work of the first
\nheroic age or in the magnificent statues of the cave-cathedrals and Pallava and
\nother southern temples or the noble, accomplished or gracious imaginations of
\nBengal, Nepal and Java through the after centuries or in the singular skill and
\ndelicacy the bronze work of the southern religions, a self-expression of<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-237<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nthe spirit and ideals
\nof a great nation and a great culture<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>which stands apart
\nin the cast of its mind and qualities among the earth’s peoples, famed for its
\nspiritual achievement, its deep philosophies and its religious spirit, its
\nartistic taste, the richness of its poetic imagination, and not inferior once
\nin its dealings with life and its social endeavour and political institutions.
\nThis sculpture is a singularly powerful, a seizing and profound interpretation
\nin stone and bronze of the inner soul of that people. The nation, the culture
\nfailed for a time in life after a long great- ness, as others failed before it
\nand others will yet fail that now flourish; the creations of its mind have been
\narrested, this art like others has ceased or- fallen into decay, but the thing
\nfrom which it rose, the spiritual fire within still burns and in the renascence
\nthat is coming it may be that this great art too will revive, not saddled with
\nthe grave limitations of modem western work in the kind, but vivified by the
\nnobility of a new impulse and power of the ancient spiritual motive. Let it
\nrecover, not limited by old forms, but undeterred by the cavillings of an alien
\nmind, the sense of the grandeur and beauty and the inner significance of its
\npast achievement; for in the continuity of its spiritual endeavour lies its
\nbest hope for the future.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-238<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n4<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n <\/span><\/font>                      <\/span>
\n
\n  <\/span>
\n<\/font>
\nT<\/font><\/span>HE<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nart of painting in ancient and later India, owing to
\nthe comparative scantiness of its surviving creations, does not create quite so
\ngreat an impression as her architecture and sculpture and it has even been supposed
\nthat this art flourished only at intervals, finally ceased for a period of
\nseveral centuries and was revived later on by the Moghuls and by Hindu artists
\nwho underwent the Moghul influence. This however is a hasty view that does not
\noutlast a more careful research and consideration of the available evidence. It
\nappears, on the contrary, that Indian culture was able to arrive at a well
\ndeveloped and an understanding aesthetic use of colour and line from –
\nvery early times and, allowing for the successive fluctuations, periods of
\ndecline and fresh outbursts of originality and vigour, which the collective
\nhuman mind undergoes in all countries, used this form of self-expression very
\npersistently through the long centuries of its growth and greatness. And
\nespecially it is apparent now that there was a persistent tradition, a
\nfundamental spirit and turn of the aesthetic sense native to the mind of India
\nwhich links even the latest Rajput art to the earliest surviving work still
\npreserved at its highest summit of achievement in the rock-cut retreats of
\nAjanta.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The materials of the art of painting are
\nunfortunately more perishable than those of any other of the greater means of
\ncreative aesthetic self-expression and of the ancient masterpieces only a
\nlittle survives, but that little still indicates the immensity of the amount of
\nwork of which it is the fading remnant. It is said that of the twenty-nine
\ncaves at Ajanta almost all once bore signs of decoration by frescoes; only so
\nlong ago as forty years sixteen still contained something of the original
\npaintings, but now six alone still bear their witness to the greatness of this
\nancient art, though rapidly perishing and deprived of something of the original
\nwarmth and beauty and glory of colour. The rest of all that vivid
\ncontemporaneous creation which must at one time have covered the whole country
\nin the temples and viharas and<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>Page-239<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe houses of the cultured and
\nthe courts and pleasure-houses of nobles and kings, has perished, and we have
\nonly, more or less similar to the work at Ajanta, some crumbling fragments of
\nrich and profuse decoration in the caves of Bagh and a few paintings of female
\nfigures in two rock-cut chambers at Sigiriya.1<\/sup>  These remnants
\nrepresent the work of some six or seven centuries, but they leave gaps, and
\nnothing now remains of any paintings earlier than the first century of the
\nChristian era, except some frescoes, spoilt by unskilful restoration, from the
\nfirst century before it, while after the seventh there is a blank which might
\nat first sight argue ‘a total decline of the art, a cessation and
\ndisappearance. But there are fortunately evidences which carry back the
\ntradition of the art at one end many centuries earlier and other re- mains more
\nrecently discovered and of another kind outside India and in the Himalayan
\ncountries carry it forward at the other end as late as the twelfth century and
\nhelp us to link it on to the later schools of Rajput painting. The history of
\nthe self-expression of the Indian mind in painting covers a period of as much
\nas two millenniums of more or less intense artistic creation and stands on a
\npar in this respect with the architecture and sculpture. The paintings that
\nremain to us from ancient times are the work of Buddhist painters, but the art
\nitself in India was of pre- Buddhistic origin. The Tibetan historian ascribes a
\nremote antiquity to all the crafts, prior to the Buddha, and this is a
\nconclusion increasingly pointed to by a constant accumulation of evidence.
\nAlready in the third century before the Christian era we find the theory of the
\nart well founded from previous times, the six essential elements, sadanga, <\/i>recognized
\nand enumerated, like the more or less corresponding six Chinese canons which
\nare first mentioned nearly a thousand years later, and in a very ancient work
\non the art pointing back to pre-Buddhistic times a number of careful and very
\nwell-defined rules and traditions are laid down which were developed into an
\nelaborate science of technique and traditional rule’ in the later Shilpasutras.
\nThe frequent references in the ancient literature also are of a character which
\nwould have been impossible without a widespread practice<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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

\n
\nP<\/span><\/font>age-240<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\n17. Dhyani Buddha, Ajanta<\/font><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\nDhyani Buddha with its Supreme,<\/font><\/p>\n

\nits unfathomable, its infinite spiritual calm…<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/p>\n

\n18. Buddha, Mathura Museum<\/font><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\nThe figure of the Buddha<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\nachieves the expression of <\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\nthe infinite in a finite image,<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n…the illimitable calm of Nirvana<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\nin a human form and visage.<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n(P.232)<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/p>\n

\n19.Durga, Mahishasuramardini, Mahabalipuram<\/font><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\n…some calm unfathomable Buddha, <\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\nbronze Siva or<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\neight-armed Durga slaying the Asuras.<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n(P. 204)<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

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

 \n<\/p>\n

\n

\nand
\nappreciation of the art by both men and women of the cultured classes, and
\nthese allusions and incidents evidencing a moved delight in the painted form
\nand beauty of colour and the appeal both to the decorative sense and to the
\naesthetic emotion occur not only in the later poetry of Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti
\nand other classical dramatists, but in the early popular drama of Bhasa and
\nearlier still in die epics and in the sacred books of the Buddhists. The absence
\nof any actual creations of this earlier art makes it indeed impossible to say
\nwith absolute certainty what was its fundamental character and intimate source
\nof inspiration or whether it was religious and hieratic or secular in its
\norigin. The theory has been advanced rather too positively that it was in the
\ncourts of kings that the art began and with a purely secular motive and
\ninspiration, and it is true that while the surviving work of Buddhist artists
\nis mainly religious in subject or at least links on common scenes of life to
\nBuddhist ceremony and legend, the references in the epic and dramatic
\nliterature are usually to painting of a more purely aesthetic character,
\npersonal, domestic or civic, portrait painting, the representation of scenes
\nand incidents in the lives of kings and other great personalities or mural
\ndecoration of palaces and private or public buildings. On the other hand, there
\nare similar elements in Buddhist painting, as, for example, the portraits of
\nthe 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
\nthat all along Indian painting, both Buddhist and Hindu, covered much the same
\nkind of ground as the later Rajput work in a more ample fashion and with a more
\nantique greatness of spirit and was in its ensemble an interpretation of the
\nwhole religion, culture and life of the Indian people. The one important and
\nsignificant thing that emerges is the constant oneness and continuity of all Indian
\nart in its essential spirit and tradition. Thus the earlier work at Ajanta has
\nbeen found to be akin to the earlier sculptural work of the Buddhists, while
\nthe later paintings have a similar close kinship to the sculptural reliefs at
\nJava. And we find that the spirit and tradition which reigns through all
\nchanges of style and manner at Ajanta, is present too at Bagh and Sigiriya, in
\nthe Khotan frescoes, in the illuminations of Buddhist manuscripts of<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nP<\/font><\/span>age-241<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\na<\/font><\/span> much
\nlater time and in spite of the change of form and manner is still spiritually
\nthe same in the Rajput paintings. This unity and continuity enable us to
\ndistinguish and arrive at a clear understanding of what is the essential aim,
\ninner turn and motive, spiritual method which differentiate Indian painting
\nfirst from occidental work and then from the nearer and more kindred art of
\nother countries of Asia.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The spirit and motive of Indian painting
\nare in their centre conception and shaping force of sight identical with the
\ninspiring vision of Indian sculpture. All Indian art is a throwing out of a
\ncertain profound self-vision formed by a going within to find out the secret
\nsignificance of form and appearance, a discovery of the subject in one’s deeper
\nself, the giving of soul-form to that vision and a remoulding of the material
\nand natural shape to express the psychic truth of it with the greatest possible
\npurity and power of outline and the greatest possible concentrated rhythmic
\nunity of significance in all the parts of an indivisible artistic whole. Take
\nwhatever masterpiece of Indian painting and we shall find these conditions
\naimed at and brought out into a triumphant beauty of suggestion and execution.
\nThe only difference from the other arts comes from the turn natural and inevitable
\nto its own kind of aesthesis, from the moved and indulgent dwelling on what one
\nmight call the mobilities of the soul rather than on its static eternities, on
\nthe casting out of self into the grace and movement of psychic and vital life
\n(subject always to the reserve and restraint necessary to all art) rather than
\non the holding back of life in the stabilities of the self and its eternal
\nqualities and principles, guna <\/i>and tattva. <\/i>This distinction is of
\nthe very essence of the difference between the work given to the sculptor and
\nthe painter, a difference imposed on them by the natural scope, turn,
\npossibility of their instrument and medium. The sculptor must express always in
\nstatic form; the idea of the spirit is cut out for him in mass and line, significant
\nin the stability of its insistence, and he can lighten the weight of this
\ninsistence but not get rid of it or away from it; for him eternity seizes hold
\nof time in its shapes and arrests it in the monumental spirit of stone or
\nbronze. The painter on the contrary lavishes his soul in colour and there is a
\nliquidity in the form, a fluent grace of subtlety in the line<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nhe<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-242<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nuses
\nwhich imposes on him a more mobile and emotional way of self-expression. The
\nmore he gives us of the colour and changing form and emotion of the life of the
\nsoul, the more his work glows with beauty, masters the inner aesthetic sense
\nand opens it to the thing his art better gives us than any other, the delight
\nof the motion of the self out into a spiritually sensuous joy of beautiful
\nshapes and the coloured radiances of existence. Painting is naturally the most
\nsensuous of the arts, and the highest greatness open to the painter is to
\nspiritualise this sensuous appeal by making the most vivid outward beauty a
\nrevelation of subtle spiritual emotion so that the soul and the sense are at
\nharmony in the deepest and finest richness of both and united in their
\nsatisfied consonant expression of the inner significances of things and life.
\nThere is less of the austerity of Tapasya in his way of working, a less
\nseverely restrained expression of eternal things and of the fundamental truths
\nbehind the forms of things, but there is in compensation a moved wealth of
\npsychic or warmth of vital suggestion, a lavish delight of the beauty of the
\nplay of the<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\neternal in the moments of
\ntime and there the artist arrests it for <\/font> <\/span>
\nus and makes moments of the
\nlife of the soul reflected in form of man or creature or incident or scene or
\nNature full of a permanent and opulent significance to our spiritual vision.
\nThe art of the painter justifies visually to the spirit the search of the sense
\nfor delight by making it its own search for the pure intensities of meaning of
\nthe 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
\nthe inner being through the power of a certain spiritually aesthetic Ananda.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The Indian artist lived in the light of an
\ninspiration which imposed this greater aim on his art and his method sprang
\nfrom its fountains and served it to the exclusion of any more earthly sensuous
\nor outwardly imaginative aesthetic impulse. The six limbs of his art, the sadhanga
\n<\/i>are common to all work in line and colour: they are the necessary elements
\nand in their elements the great arts are the sam.e everywhere; the distinction
\nof forms, rupabheda, <\/i>proportion, arrangement of line and mass, design,
\nharmony, perspective, pramana, <\/i>the emotion or aesthetic feeling
\nexpressed by the form, bhava, <\/i>the seeking for beauty and charm for<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-243<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe
\nsatisfaction of the aesthetic spirit, lavanya, <\/i>truth of the form and its
\nsuggestion, sadrsya, <\/i>the turn, combination, harmony of colours, varnikabhanga,
\n<\/i>are the first constituents to which every successful work of art reduces
\nitself in analysis. But it is the turn given to each of the constituents which
\nmakes 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
\ncombination which makes all the difference in the spiritual value of the
\nachievement, and the unique character of Indian painting, the peculiar appeal
\nof the art of Ajanta springs from the remarkably inward, spiritual and psychic
\nturn which was given to the artistic conception and method by the pervading
\ngenius of Indian culture. Indian painting no more than Indian architecture and
\nsculpture could escape from its absorbing motive, its trans- muting atmosphere,
\nthe direct or subtle obsession of the mind that has been subtly and strangely
\nchanged, the eye that has been trained to see, not as others with only the
\nexternal eye but by a constant communing of the mental parts and the inner
\nvision with the self beyond mind and the spirit to which forms are only a
\ntransparent veil or a slight index of its own greater splendour. The outward
\nbeauty and power, the grandeur of drawing, the richness of colour, the
\naesthetic grace of this painting is too obvious and insistent to be denied, the
\npsychical appeal usually carries something in it to which there is a response
\nin every cultivated and sensitive human mind and the departures from the
\noutward physical norm are less vehement and intense, less disdainful of the
\nmore external beauty and grace, – as is only right <\/font> <\/span>
\nin
\nthe nature of this art, <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n–<\/font><\/span> than
\nin the sculpture: therefore we <\/font> <\/span>
\nfind it more easily appreciated up to a certain point
\nby the western critical mind, and even when not well appreciated, it is exposed
\nto milder objections. There is not the same blank incomprehension or violence
\nof misunderstanding and repulsion. And yet we find at the same time that there
\nis something which seems to escape the appreciation or is only imperfectly
\nunderstood, and this something is precisely that profounder spiritual intention
\nof which the things the eye and esthetic sense immediately seize are only the
\nintermediaries. This explains the remark often made about Indian work of the
\nless visibly potent and quieter kind that<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nP<\/span><\/font>age-244<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nit lacks inspiration or imagination or is a conventional art: the spirit is missed
\nwhere it does not strongly impose itself, and is not fully caught even where
\nthe power which is put into the expression is too great and direct to allow of
\ndenial. Indian painting like Indian architecture and sculpture appeals through
\nthe physical and psychical to another spiritual vision from which the artist
\nworked and it is only when this is no less awakened in us than the aesthetic
\nsense that it can be appreciated in all the depth of its significance.
\n<\/font>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nThe orthodox western artist works
\nby a severely conscientious reproduction of the forms of outward Nature; the
\nexternal world is his model, and he has to keep it before his eye and re- press
\nany tendency towards a substantial departure from it or any motion to yield his
\nfirst allegiance to a subtler spirit. His imagination submits itself to
\nphysical Nature even when he brings in conceptions which are more properly of
\nanother kingdom, the stress of the physical world is always with him, and the
\nSeer of the subtle, the creator of mental forms, the inner Artist, the wide
\neyed voyager in the vaster psychical realms, is obliged to subdue his
\ninspirations to the law of the Seer of the outward, the spirit,<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>that has embodied itself in the creations of the terrestrial life, the material
\nuniverse. An idealised imaginative realism is as far as he can ordinarily go in
\nthe method of his work when he would fill the outward with the subtler inner
\nseeing. And when, dissatisfied with this confining law, he would break quite
\nout of the circle, he is exposed to a temptation to stray into intellectual or
\nimaginative extravagances which violate the universal rule of the right
\ndistinction of forms, rupabheda, <\/i>and belong to the vision of some
\nintermediate world of sheer fantasia. His art has discovered the rule of
\nproportion, arrangement and perspective which preserves the illusion of
\nphysical Nature and he relates his whole design to her design in a spirit of
\nconscientious obedience and faithful dependence. His imagination is a servant
\nor interpreter of her imaginations, he finds in the observation of her
\nuniversal law of beauty his secret of unity and harmony, and his subjectivity
\ntries to discover itself in hers by a close dwelling on the objective shapes
\nshe has given to her creative spirit. The farthest he has got in the direction
\nof a more intimately subjective spirit is an<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Page-245<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nimpressionism
\nwhich still waits upon her models but seeks to get at some first inward or
\noriginal effect of them on the inner sense, and through that he arrives at some
\nmore strongly psychical rendering, but he does not work altogether from within
\noutward in the freer manner of the oriental artist. His emotion and artistic
\nfeeling move in this form and are limited by this artistic convention and are
\nnot a pure spiritual or psychic emotion but usually an imaginative exaltation
\nderived from the suggestions of life and outward things with a psychic element
\nor an evocation of spiritual feeling initiated and dominated by the touch of the
\noutward. The charm that he gives is a sublimation of the beauty that appeals to
\nthe outward senses by the power of the idea and the imagination working on the
\noutward 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
\ncreations of physical Nature and their intellectual, emotional and aesthetic
\nsignificances, and his work of line and wave of colour are meant to embody the
\nflow of this vision. The method of this art is always a transcript from the
\nvisible world with such necessary transmutation as the aesthetic mind imposes
\non its materials. At the lowest to illustrate, at the highest to interpret life
\nand Nature to the mind by identifying it with deeper things through some
\nderivative touch of the spirit that has entered into and subdued itself to
\ntheir shapes, pravisya yah pratirupo babhuva, <\/i>is the governing
\nprinciple.1<\/sup>
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The Indian artist sets out from the
\nother end of the scale of values of experience which connect life and the
\nspirit. The whole creative force comes here from a spiritual and psychic
\nvision, the emphasis of the physical is secondary and always deliberately
\nlightened so as to give an overwhelmingly spiritual and psychic impression and
\neverything is suppressed which does not serve this purpose or would distract
\nthe mind from the purity of this intention. This painting expresses the soul
\nthrough 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
\nis a real and a very vivid and vital representation, but it is more <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>All this is no
\nlonger true of European art in much of its more prominent recent developments.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n1 All this is no longer true of European art in much of
\nits more prominent recent developments.<\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-246<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nof an inner psychical than of the outward physical life. A critic of high
\nrepute speaking of the Indian influence in a famous Japanese painting fixes on
\nthe grand strongly outlined figures and the feeling for life and character
\nrecalling the Ajanta frescoes as the signs of its Indian character: but we have
\nto 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
\ncharacter here is a very different thing from the splendid and abundant
\nvitality and the power and force of\u00a0
\n<\/span>character which we find in an Italian painting, a fresco from Michael
\nAngelo’s hand or<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\na <\/font> <\/span>
\nportrait by Titian or
\nTintoretto. The first primitive object of the art of painting is to illustrate
\nlife and Nature and at the lowest this becomes a more or less vigorous and
\norigil1al or conventionally faithful reproduction, but it rises in great hands
\nto a revelation of the glory and beauty of the sensuous appeal of life or of
\nthe dramatic power and moving interest of character and emotion and action.
\nThat is a common form of aesthetic work in Europe; but in Indian art it is
\nnever the governing motive. The sensuous appeal is there, but it is refined
\ninto only one and not the chief element of the richness of a soul of psychic
\ngrace and beauty which is for the Indian artist the true beauty, lavanya <\/i>the
\ndramatic motive is subordinated and made only a purely secondary element, only
\nso much is given of character and action as will help to bring out the deeper
\nspiritual or psychic feeling, bhava, <\/i>and all insistence or too prominent
\nforce of these more outwardly dynamic things is shunned, because that would
\nexternalise too much the spiritual emotion and take away from its intense
\npurity by the interference of the grosser intensity which emotion puts on in
\nthe stress of the active outward nature. The life depicted is the life of the
\nsoul and not, except as a form and a helping suggestion, the life of the vital
\nbeing and the body. For the second more elevated aim of art is the
\ninterpretation or intuitive revelation of existence through the form of life
\nand Nature and it is this that is the starting-point of the Indian motive. But
\nthe interpretation may proceed on the basis of the forms already given us by
\nphysical Nature and try to evoke by the form an idea, a truth of the spirit
\nwhich starts from it as a suggestion and returns upon it for support, and the
\neffort is then<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

P<\/font>age-247<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nto correlate the form as it is to the physical eye with the truth which it
\nevokes without over passing the limits imposed by the appearance. This is the
\ncommon method of occidental art always zealous for the immediate fidelity to
\nNature which is its idea of true correspondence, sadrsya, <\/i>but it is
\nrejected by the Indian artist. He begins from within, sees in his soul the
\nthing he wishes to express or interpret and tries to discover the right line,
\ncolour and design of his intuition which, when it appears on the physical
\nground, is not a just and reminding reproduction of the line, colour and design
\nof physical nature, but much rather what seems to us a psychical transmutation
\nof the natural figure. In reality the shapes he paints are the forms of things
\nas he has seen them in the psychical plane of experience: these are the
\nsoulfigures of which physical things are a gross representation and their
\npurity and subtlety reveals at once what the physical masks by the thickness of
\nits casings. The lines and colours sought here are the psychic lines and the
\npsychic hues proper to the vision\u00a0 <\/span>which
\nthe artist has gone into himself to discover.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


\n       This
\nis the whole governing principle of the art which gives its stamp to every
\ndetail of an Indian painting and transforms the artist’s use of the six limbs
\nof the canon. The distinction of forms is faithfully observed, but not in the
\nsense of an exact naturalistic fidelity to the physical appearance with the
\nobject of a faithful reproduction of the outward shapes of the world in which
\nwe live. To recall with fidelity something our eyes have seen or could have
\nseen on the spot, a scene, an interior, a living and breathing person, and give
\nthe aesthetic sense and emotion of it to the mind is not the motive. There is
\nhere an extraordinary vividness, naturalness, reality, but it is a more than
\nphysical 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
\nto which the soul, not the outward naturalness of the form to which the
\nphysical eye bears witness. The truth, the exact likeness is there, the
\ncorrespondence, sadrsya, <\/i>but it is the truth of the essence of the form,
\nit is ‘the likeness of the soul to itself, the reproduction of the subtle
\nembodiment which is the basis of the physical embodiment, the purer and finer
\nsubtle body of an object which is the very expression of its own essential na-<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-248<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>ture,
\n<\/font> svabhava.
\n<\/font>
\n<\/i>The
\nmeans by which this effect is produced is characteristic of the inward vision
\nof the Indian mind. It is done by a bold and firm insistence on the pure and
\nstrong outline and a total suppression of everything that would interfere with
\nits boldness, strength and purity or would blur over and dilute the intense
\nsignificance of the line. In the treatment of the human figure all corporeal
\nfilling in of the outline by insistence on the flesh, the muscle, the
\nanatomical detail is minimised or disregarded: the strong subtle lines and pure
\nshapes 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
\nof the spirit to the eye, but not the superfluous physicality which he carries
\nwith him as his burden. It is the ideal psychical figure and body of man and
\nwoman that is before us in its charm and beauty. The filling in of the line is
\ndone in another way; it is effected by a disposition of pure masses, a design
\nand coloured wave-flow of the body, bhanga, <\/i>a simplicity of content that
\nenables the artist to flood the whole with the significance of<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>the one spiritual emotion, feeling, suggestion which he intends to convey, his
\nintuition of the moment of the soul, its living self- experience. All is
\ndisposed so as to express that and that alone. The almost miraculously subtle
\nand meaningful use of the hands to express the psychic suggestion is a common
\nand well-marked feature of Indian paintings and the way in which the suggestion
\nof the face and the eyes is subtly repeated or supplemented by this expression
\nof the hands is always one of the first things that strikes the regard, but as
\nwe continue to look, we see that every turn of the body, the pose of each limb,
\nthe relation and design of all the masses are filled with the same psychical
\nfeeling. The more important accessories help it by a kindred suggestion or
\nbring it out by a support or variation or extension or relief of the motive.
\nThe same law of significant line and suppression of distracting detail is
\napplied to animal forms, buildings, trees, objects. There is in all the art an
\ninspired harmony of conception, method and expression. Colour too is used as a
\nmeans for the spiritual and psychic intention, and we can see this well enough
\nif we study the suggestive significance of the hues in a Buddhist miniature.
\nThis power of line and subtlety of psychic suggestion in the<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nP<\/span><\/font>age-249<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nfilling in of the expressive outlines is the
\nsource of that remarkable <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>union of greatness and
\nmoving grace which is the stamp of the <\/font> <\/span>
\nwhole work of Ajanta and
\ncontinues in Rajput painting, though there the grandeur of the earlier work is
\nlost 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
\ntradition which is the mark of all the truly indigenous work of India. <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>These things have to be carefully
\nunderstood and held in mind when we look at an Indian painting and the real
\nspirit of it first grasped before we condemn or praise. To dwell on that in
\nit\u00a0 <\/span>which is common to an art is well
\nenough, but it is what is peculiar to India that is its real essence. And there
\nagain to appreciate the technique and the fervour of religious feeling is not
\nsufficient; the spiritual intention served by the technique, the psychic
\nsignificance of line and colour, the greater thing of which the religious
\nemotion is the result has to be felt if we would identify ourself with the
\nwhole purpose of the artist. If we look long, for an example, at the adoration
\ngroup 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
\nof intense religious feeling of adoration there is only the most outward
\ngeneral touch in the ensemble of the emotion. That which it deepens to is the
\nturning of the soul of humanity in love to the benignant and calm Ineffable
\nwhich has made itself sensible and human to us in the universal compassion of
\nthe Buddha, and the motive of the soul-moment the painting interprets is the
\ndedication of the awakening mind of the child, the coming younger humanity, to
\nthat in which already the soul of the mother had learned to find and fix its
\nspiritual joy. The eyes, brows, lips, face, poise of the head of the woman are
\nfilled with this spiritual emotion which is a continued memory and possession
\nof the psychical release, the steady settled calm of the heart’s experience filled
\nwith an ineffable 1enderness, the familiar depths which are yet moved with the
\nwonder and always farther appeal of some- thing that is infinite, the body and
\nother limbs are grave masses of this emotion and in their poise a basic
\nembodiment of it, while the hands prolong it in the dedicative putting forward
\nof her child to meet the Eternal. This contact of the human and eternal is<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage – <\/span><\/font>
\n250<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nrepeated in the smaller figure with a subtly
\nand strongly indicated variation, the glad and childlike smile of awakening
\nwhich promises but not yet possesses the depths that are to come, the hands
\ndisposed to receive and keep, the body in its looser curves and waves
\nharmonising with that significance. The two have forgotten themselves and, seem
\nalmost to forget or confound each other in that which they adore and
\ncontemplate, and yet the dedicating hands unite mother and child in the common
\nact and feeling by their simultaneous gesture of maternal possession and
\nspiritual giving. The two figures have at each point the same rhythm, but with
\na significant difference. The simplicity in the greatness and power, the
\nfullness of expression gained by reserve and suppression and concentration\u00a0 <\/span>which we find here is the perfect method of
\nthe classical art of India. And by this perfection Buddhist art became not
\nmerely an illustration of the religion and an expression of its thought and its
\nreligious feeling, history and legend, but a revealing interpretation of the
\nspiritual sense of Buddhism and its profounder meaning to the soul of India. To
\nunderstand that – we must always seek first and foremost this kind of deeper
\nintention<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nis to understand
\nthe reason of the differences between the occidental and the Indian treatment
\nof the life motives. Thus a portrait by a great European painter will express
\nwith sovereign power the soul through character, through the active qualities,
\nthe ruling powers and passions, the master feeling and temperament, the active
\nmental and vital man: the Indian artist tones down the outward-going dynamic
\nindices and gives only so much of them as will serve to bring out or to
\nmodulate something that is more of the grain of the subtle soul, something more
\nstatic and impersonal of which our personality is at once the mask and the index.
\nA moment of the spirit expressing with purity the permanence of a very subtle
\nsoul quality is the highest type of the Indian portrait. And more generally the
\nfeeling for character which has been noted as a feature of the Ajanta\u00a0 <\/span>work is of a similar kind. An Indian painting
\nexpressing, let us say, a religious feeling centred on some significant
\nincident will show the expression in each figure varied in such a way as to
\nbring out the universal spiritual essence of the emotion modified by the
\nessential soul type, different waves<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>of<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – <\/font><\/span>
\n251<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe\u00a0 <\/span>one sea, all complexity of dramatic
\ninsistence is avoided, and so much stress only is laid on character in the
\nindividual feeling as to give the variation without diminishing the unity of
\nthe fun- damental emotion. The vividness of life in these paintings must not
\nobscure for us the more profound purpose for which it is the setting, and this
\nhas especially to be kept in mind in our view of the later art which has not
\nthe greatness of the classic work and runs to a less grave and highly sustained
\nkind, to lyric emotion, minute vividness of life movement, the more naive
\nfeelings of the people. One sometimes finds inspiration, decisive power of
\nthought and feeling, originality of creative imagination denied to this later art;
\nbut its real difference from that of Ajanta is only that the intermediate
\npsychic transmission between the life movement and the inmost motive has been
\ngiven with less power and distinctness: the psychic thought and feeling are
\nthere more thrown outward in movement, less contained in the soul, but still
\nthe soul-motive is not only present but makes the true atmosphere and if we
\nmiss it, we miss the real sense of the picture. This is more evident where the
\ninspiration is religious, but it is not absent from the secular subject. Here
\ntoo spiritual intention or psychic suggestion are the things of the first
\nimportance. In Ajanta work they are all-important and to ignore them at all is
\nto open the way to serious errors of interpretation. Thus a highly competent
\nand very sympathetic critic speaking of the painting of the Great Renunciation
\nsays truly that this great work excels in its expression of sorrow and feeling
\nof profound pity, but then, looking for what a western imagination would
\nnaturally put into such a subject, he goes on to speak of the weight of a
\ntragic decision, the bitterness of renouncing a life of bliss blended with a
\nyearning sense of hope in the happiness of the future, and that is singularly
\nto misunderstand the spirit in which the Indian mind turns from the transient
\nto the eternal, to mistake the Indian art motive and to put a vital into the
\nplace of a spiritual emotion. It is not at all his own personal sorrow but the
\nsorrow of all others, not an emotional self-pity but a poignant pity for the
\nworld, not the regret for a life of domestic bliss but the afilicting sense of
\nthe unreality of human happiness that is concentrated in the eyes and lips of
\nthe Buddha, and the yearning there is not, certainly, for earthly<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font><\/span>252<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>happiness in the future but for the spiritual way out, the anguished seeking
\nwhich found its release, already foreseen by the spirit behind and hence the
\nimmense calm and restraint that support the sorrow, in the true bliss of
\nNirvana. There is illustrated the whole difference between two kinds of
\nimagination, the mental, vital and physical stress of the art of Europe and the
\nsubtle, less forcefully tangible spiritual stress of the art of India.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nIt is the indigenous art of which
\nthis is the constant spirit and tradition, and it has been doubted whether the
\nMoghul paintings deserve that name, have anything to do with that tradition and
\nare not rather an exotic importation from Persia. Al- most all oriental art is
\nakin in this respect that the psychic enters into and for the most part lays
\nits subtler law on the physical vision and the psychic line and significance
\ngive the characteristic turn, are the secret of the decorative skill, direct
\nthe higher art in its principal motive. But there is a difference between the
\nPersian\u00a0 <\/span>psychicality\u00a0 <\/span>which is redolent of the magic of the middle
\nworlds and the Indian which is only a means of transmission of the spiritual
\nvision. And obviously the Indo- Persian\u00a0
\n<\/span>style of the former kind and not indigenous to India. But the Moghul
\nschool is not an exotic; there is rather a blending of two mentalities: on the
\none side there is a leaning to some kind of external- ism which is not the same
\nthing as western naturalism, a secular spirit and certain prominent elements
\nthat are more strongly illustrative than interpretative, but the central thing
\nis still the domination of a transforming touch which shows that there as in
\nthe architecture the Indian mind has taken hold of another invading mentality
\nand made it a help to a more outward-going self-expression that comes in as a
\nnew side-strain in the spiritual continuity of achievement which began in
\nprehistoric times and ended only with the general decline of Indian culture.
\nPainting, 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.
\nIt is not necessary to dilate on the decorative arts and crafts of India, for
\ntheir excellence has always been beyond dispute. The generalised sense of\u00a0 <\/span>beauty which they imply is one of the
\ngreatest proofs that there can be of the value and soundness of a national
\nculture. Indian culture in this respect need not fear any<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font><\/span>253<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ncomparison: if it is less
\npredominantly artistic than that of Japan, it is because it has put first the
\nspiritual need and made all other things subservient to and a means for the
\nspiritual growth of the people. Its civilisation, standing in the first rank in
\nthe 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
\nactivities, but a most powerful force for the many- sided development of the
\nhuman whole.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font><\/span>254<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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