Vincent Arthur Smith ArtArt ofof India India TS Art of India 4C.qxp 7/6/2010 9:06 AM Page 2 Author: Vincent A. Smith Layout: Baseline Co. Ltd, 61A-63A Vo Van Tan Street 4th Floor District 3, Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam © Confidential Concepts,worldwide,USA © Parkstone Press International,New York,USA Image Barwww.image-bar.com © Ahaswerus | Dreamstime.com © Kshitize Agrawal | Dreamstime.com © Benoy K.Behl | Frontline © Arun Bhargava | Dreamstime.com © Daniel Boiteau | Dreamstime.com © Fabio Cardano | Dreamstime.com © Rafal Cichawa | Dreamstime.com © Rene Drouyer | Dreamstime.com © Ragne Kabanova | Dreamstime.com © Yuliya Kryzhevska | Dreamstime.com © Grigory Kubatyan | Dreamstime.com © Luciano Mortula | Dreamstime.com © Mikhail Nekrasov | Dreamstime.com © Rajhans Raut | Dreamstime.com © Jeremyrichards | Dreamstime.com © Samrat35 | Dreamstime.com © Shargaljut | Dreamstime.com © Nickolay Stanev | Dreamstime.com © Sid Viswakumar | Dreamstime.com All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced or adapted without the permission of the copyright holder, throughout the world. Unless otherwise specified, copyright on the works reproduced lies with the respective photographers. Despite intensive research, it has not always been possible to establish copyright ownership. Where this is the case, we would appreciate notification. ISBN: 978-1-78042-880-2 TS Art of India 4C.qxp 7/6/2010 9:06 AM Page 3 Vincent A. Smith Art of India TS Art of India 4C.qxp 7/6/2010 9:06 AM Page 4 TS Art of India 4C.qxp 7/6/2010 9:06 AM Page 5 Contents India and its Art 7 The Mauryan Period 25 The Early Period 31 Architecture 31 Sculpture 40 The Kushan, Later Satavahna, and Ikshvaku Periods 63 Mathura 63 Amaravati 72 The Gupta Period 79 The Medieval Period in the North of India 91 Architecture: Cave-Temples and Temples 91 Sculpture: Medieval and Modern Objects 104 Paintings: The Early Schools (Ajanta Caves) 117 The Medieval Period in the South of India 149 Architecture 149 Sculpture and Bronzes 158 Foreign Influences: The Early and Medieval Periods 169 The Islamic Period 179 The Indo-Islamic Styles of Architecture 179 The Indo-Islamic Decorative and Minor Arts 195 Coins, Gems, and Seals 195 Calligraphy and Decorative Reliefs 196 Lattices 200 Inlay and Mosaic 203 Tiles 204 The Indo-Islamic Styles of Painting 211 Gujarati Painting 211 Mughal Painting 212 Rajput Painting 236 Indian Paintings of the Twentieth Century 239 Timeline 246 Glossary 248 Bibliography 250 List of Illustrations 252 5 TS Art of India 4C.qxp 7/6/2010 9:06 AM Page 6 6 TS Art of India 4C.qxp 7/6/2010 9:06 AM Page 7 India and its Art n discussing Indian studies I am forced to acknowledge claimed, therefore, that there could be no better time than the considerable diffidence arising from a survey of the huge bulk present for the publication of a survey of Indian Fine Arts, that I of material to be dealt with. In the face of this complexity I the credit and loss of the exchange between the occidental and find myself inclined to rely on evidence that is subjective and the oriental may be appraised. Indeed this nationalisation of the therefore more or less unscientific, in which personal experience subject has been set forth at length by certain authors. It is, and interpretation is increasingly stressed. In speaking of India, a however, in contradistinction to the spirit of true criticism country that in its wide extent offers more beauty to the eyes than and full appreciation. The opposition of Eastern spirituality to many others in the world, a descriptive vein may well be excused. Western materialism is a generalisation without support, while the India is multiple; neither geographically, ethnologically, nor postulation of a metaphysical basis for any art is equally as sterile, culturally can it be considered a unity. This being so, I am led to and in fact as inconsequential, as the postulation of the existence suspect that the India of many writers is more imagination than of eternal, immutable classical standards. Art cannot be localised, fact, existing rather in pictorial expression than in reality. at least if the humanities upon which our culture is based have any meaning, and geographical differences should be no bar to The appeal of the pictorial, rising from a craving for colour and appreciation, but rather an added attraction in these days, when movement, is general among the generations of the present, for most of us our voyages of discovery do not exceed the continually chaffing against narrowed horizons and an experience bounds of the local time-table. It is, however, unfortunate that in bounded by economical necessity. There is magic to be found the minds of many people the East has a certain romantic but anywhere between Cancer and Capricorn. There the demands of quite indefinite lure about it, which accentuates the unusual and necessity would seem to be more easily fulfilled and life to run leads to the substitution of curiosity for appreciation. more rhythmically, in the train of the tropic alternation of the seasons. There, bread is to be gathered directly from the rich lap of Modern painting and sculpture provide a definite line of advance the earth. There, colour fills the day with its wealth, leaping to the and logical precepts to an extent that almost makes academicians of eye, like the sudden glow of fruit and flower caught by the sunlight, many of the younger school. This process is directly comparable to or of kaleidoscopic crowds in narrow streets. To enter a tropic that of the modern scientific method; modern art is indeed the result town is to enter, as in a dream, the life of a dead century. of methodical, aesthetic research. From the painting of Manet to that of Cézanne and the men of today, the story can only be told in The movement is not without parallels, and the pictorial and terms of intellectual adventure and aesthetic discovery. The effect of interpretational play a great part in its exposition; there is, indeed, the personal vision of the creators of modern art has been a something of the Pre-Raphaelite about it. The materialism of widening of the circle of aesthetic interest and a revaluation of today is to be checked by Indian spirituality. Arts and crafts are to things unknown or unconsidered: Chinese painting and sculpture, flourish everywhere, centred upon the social organization of the Gothic sculpture, archaic Greek sculpture, African sculpture, the village. India is to arise from the ashes of India. It might be harmony of fine carpets, the virility of primitive design, and not least Maha-Janaka Jataka: Three of the queen's maids respond to the unexpected news that the king plans to renounce his worldly goods and leave their mistress, late 6th century C.E., late Gupta period. Detail of a fresco. Ajanta caves (Cave I), near Aurangabad, Maharashtra. 7 TS Art of India 4C.qxp 7/6/2010 9:06 AM Page 8 among these, Indian Art in all its branches. In the face of these riches, the world. We hold that the existence of a distinct, a once despised and rejected, the dogmas of the past generations with potent, and a living tradition of art is a possession all their complacency, intolerance, and ignorance seem wilful in their of priceless value to the Indian people, and one restriction and impoverishment of life. which they, and all who admire and respect their achievements in this field, ought to guard with the So vital and so well founded is this movement that I would choose, utmost reverence and love. While opposed to the as the theme of a review of Indian Art, aesthetic discovery rather mechanical stereotyping of particular traditional than archaeological discovery, and for support I would rely upon forms, we consider that it is only in organic devel- the word of living artists whose creative vision and fellow appreci- opment from the national art of the past that the ation provides the basis of a criticism of greater precision than path of true progress is to be found. Confident that archaeological logic or the ulterior ends and confused categories of we here speak for a very large body of qualified evidence of those who would carry the discussion beyond the European opinion, we wish to assure our brother proper field of art. I cannot believe it is necessary or even desirable craftsmen and students in India that the school of to prelude the vision of a work of art with many words. Nor can I national art in that country, which is still showing its accept as sound criticism a discourse which shifts the foundations vitality and its capacity for the interpretation of of a true understanding of art from the visual into the literary or Indian life and thought, will never fail to command historical or metaphysical. I can but deplore the twisting awry of our admiration and sympathy so long as it remains aesthetic criticism and appreciation to local and temporary ends, true to itself. We trust that, while not disdaining to whatever the circumstances. accept whatever can be wholesomely assimilated from foreign sources, it will jealously preserve the In 1897 Gauguin wrote, ‘Ayez toujours devant vous les Persans, les individual character which is an outgrowth of the Cambodgiens et un peu d’Égyptiens.’ (Always keep before you the history and physical conditions of the country, as Persians, Cambodians, and Egyptians.) One wonders what he well as of those ancient and profound religious would have written if he had known of the frescoes at Ajanta with conceptions which are the glory of India and of all their magnificent surety of line and delicately rendered plasticity.