I SHALL here attempt to show in succession the evolution of the chief aesthetic tendencies to which the art of India has been subject. With this purpose, I shall sometimes simplify greatly, at the risk of being incomplete and slightly distorting the facts. A sketch, as we know, in a few lines, which are usually untrue because they are isolated and exaggerated, often renders a movement more correctly than a drawing which copies the model faithfully in all its details. After following the various lines of development which we encounter from the third century B.C. to about the eighth century of our era and sketching some of their later extensions, all that will remain for me to do will be to put together, to tie as in a bouquet, these various tendencies which curve, cross, and mingle, that we may have a general view of the whole of Indian art and determine its position among other arts. So we shall have quite a different view of that art from that given by an examination of its various periods in order of time, which I have attempted elsewhere.
The art of India has a very great evocative power, chiefly, perhaps, with those who do not know much about it, and very different conceptions are the result.
People usually think of dark temples overloaded with decoration, or shadowy caves in which horrible angular gods stand scowling above pyres on which widows are burned, or ride on cars over the bodies of their worshippers. If we clear away the theatrical aspect and reduce the picture to true proportions, we cannot say that it is entirely wrong, but it represents only one part of late Hindu art or certain forms of the Tantric art of Tibet.
In Great Britain the fame of the Taj Mahal has established a picture of an India of white marble palaces inlaid with coloured flowers, with bulbous domes and minarets reflected in still tanks of water-lilies. That India exists, but it is a comparatively late Mahommedan India, whose art, already in decay, is chiefly connected with Persia.
The discovery of Graeco-Buddhist art made a great impression on those who believed in the absolute supremacy of the Greek genius and held that the excellence of an art lies in the accuracy with which it copies the real. To them Græco-Buddhist art seemed the norm to which everything should be referred, while the other tendencies of Indian art could only be decadence.
There is something to be said for all these various points of view, but they only touch the edge of Indian art. They seize upon only one aspect of it, a decadent or unoriginal aspect, which is, moreover, presented in a distorted manner. So they miss what is essential in that art, its central part —the age of complete maturity, which idealizes forms (Gupta art, that of Ajanta and Ellora, from the fifth to the ninth century); the age of youth, of love of direct, lively naturalism which preceded it (the art of Bharhut, Sanchi, and Mathura, from the third century B.C. to the second of our era); and that very personal art of Southern India which formed a bridge between the two periods (the art of Amaravati, from the second century to the fourth).
There are certain conceptions which are found in almost all religious arts. They seem so obvious that one hesitates to mention them. Let us, however, run over them briefly.
A religious art, as we know, does not try to create original and individual works; nor does it as a rule try to imitate nature and to be anatomically correct. Each artist receives a tradition, and he tries above all things to respect it, while setting his own stamp on it, almost in spite of himself, and so contributing to development. He wants to represent the beauty and power of the gods. In India that power is indicated by the many arms of the god, which also serve to multiply the number of his attributes.
In the reliefs, the chief persons are sometimes made larger than the others, in order that the story may be clearly understood, and also that they may provide centres to attract the eye and so produce a pleasant composition and prevent monotony. The same person may appear several times in various episodes, for the object is to tell a story, often a complicated one, while preserving unity of composition and decoration and keeping the episodes connected. The perspective is vertical, things at the back being placed high.
In decoration India does not usually aim at the impression of harmony and calm given by motives set in front of a detached background, without overlapping each other. It has, on the contrary, a love of the impression of life, vibration, and movement given by motives piled one on another and intertwined, what is commonly called horror vacui.
Spreading as it did over a huge sub-continent, in the course of over twenty centuries, Indian art has many different aspects. Yet to the eye which tries to see it as a whole it presents undeniable continuity and even a certain unity. One can realize this if one contrasts it with the arts which surround it, and follows, through their development, certain motives, such as the slanting hips (see below, p. 380). What is constant and personal in Indian art emerges when it is compared with Khmer art, for instance. Indian art is sensual, living, and essentially graceful, and it sets great store by decoration both in sculpture and in architecture. In its most different aspects one finds the sinuous line of the human body, exaggeration of the signs of feminine beauty, the slanting hips, and the crowding and overlapping of figures in the reliefs. In Khmer art, on the other hand, the Indian tilted hips soon disappear and bodies tend to the straight, vertical line, to hieratic poses and frontality. A man coming into contact with these two arts for the first time is seldom equally attracted by both. If he is drawn by the life, the voluptuousness, the casualness and fancy and luxuriance of the art of India, Khmer sculpture will at first seem cold and stiff; if he is susceptible to the hieratic dignity and restrained grandeur of Khmer art, he will be embarrassed by the opulence and over-fluid intertwining lines presented by Indian figures and decoration.
The art of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro is much closer to that of Sumer and Susiana, that is, of Mesopotamia and Persia, with which, however, it must not be confused, than to the Indian art which succeeds it. In religion the relations seem to have been the same. It is not, therefore, as Indian art, but as a branch of the great civilization which seems to have had its centre in Persia and Mesopotamia that this art should be studied. Nothing of what will be essential to later Indian culture seems to exist yet. I shall therefore speak very briefly of the art of Mohenjo-Daro. It is a prologue to the art of India, but a prologue quite distinct from the main theme, although we are beginning to suspect that certain traditions may perhaps have survived.
Seals of the Mohenjo-Daro style were found a long time ago, but it was only lately that excavations in the Indus valley brought to light two large cities, regularly built of brick, with thick walls, the construction of which reminds one of Mesopotamia, and many admirably engineered water-channels. Various objects have been discovered—a curious little bust (Pl. I, A), a statuette of a dancing-girl, painted pottery, jewels, and, above all, quantities of seals. These seals have an undeniable family likeness to those of Susiana and Mesopotamia, but their style is peculiar and the signs which they bear, not yet deciphered, are quite unlike those of cuneiform writing and look less developed. Whereas cylinders are frequent in Mesopotamia, none is found in the civilization of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. Most of the seals are adorned with the same bull (Pl. I, B), showing only one horn, in front of an uncertain object, which is always the same. This subject recalls the religions of Sumer. Some seals are decorated with essentially Indian animals, such as the elephant and zebu (Pl. I, C). These very well-executed designs already herald the animal art of India, and the style of the modelling makes it difficult to place them very early.
The date of the ancient civilizations of the Indus is not yet established. Marshall, who is responsible for the excavations and for the principal work dealing with these questions, is inclined to give them the earliest possible date, the third or even the end of the fourth millennium B.C. It is true that single seals, inscribed with characters of the Indus script, have been found in the lower strata of the Sumerian excavations, but it is not absolutely certain that these seals, which were chiefly found in cleared-away rubbish, really belonged to the stratum to which they are ascribed; moreover, the civilization which used the script which we find on the Indus may have developed in the course of long ages and in different places. While some indications tend to make us date the Mohenjo-Daro culture further and further back, others point in the opposite direction. On some seals the modelling of the Indian animals seems fairly late. One bears a stylized tree which recalls certain Indian conceptions; another, a human figure seated in the Indian fashion. In the few sculptures in the round discovered in the Indus valley, certain details, such as the flattened skull and the hair-dressing, appear to show connexion with the ancient sculpture of India. Vases, with fairly complicated decoration, remind one of the pottery of the second millennium. There are other such evidences.
So, although the Indus culture is almost certainly pre-Aryan, it may perhaps not be as ancient as was at first supposed. A thorough examination of a certain painted ware all over its area of dispersion, from the valley of the Indus to Baluchistan (Nal, etc.), and of the different prehistoric finds in India and other parts of Asia will doubtless shed light on this problem.