DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27191#0069
INTRODUCTION.
37
For an honest purpose-like pre-Raphaelite kind of art, there is
probably nothing much better to be found elsewhere.
The art had apparently begun to decline when the gateways
at Sanchi were executed somewhat later; but whether this was
not mainly due to the more refractory character of the stone,
and a different school of workmen, it is hard to say. They may
then have gained a little in breadth of treatment, but it had lost
in delicacy and precision. Its downward progress was, how-
ever, arrested, apparently by the rise, in the extreme north-west
of India, of a school of sculpture strongly impregnated with the
traditions of classical art. The Grmco-Baktrians, driven out by
the Yue-chi, continued to hold some sort of domination in
Afghanistan till not very long before our era, and a vast inter-
change of ideas was, at that period, carried on between the east
and west by means of newly - opened highways. Thus Greek
models and art became familiar, and when once a demand arose
for such workmanship, a school of art would appear. For the
present it is sufficient to know that a quasi-classical school of
sculpture did exist in the Panjab, and to the west of the Indus
during the first four centuries after Christ, and it can hardly
have flourished there so long, without its presence being felt
in India.1
Its effects were certainly apparent at Amaravati in the ist
and 2nd centuries, where a school of sculpture was developed,
partaking of the characteristics of both those of Central India
and of the west. Though it may, in some respects, be inferior
to either of the parent styles, the degree of perfection reached
by the art of sculpture at Amaravati may probably be considered
as the culminating point attained by that art in India.
When we meet it again in the early Hindu temples, and
later Buddhist caves, it has lost much of its higher aesthetic and
phonetic qualities, and frequently resorts to such expedients as
giving dignity to the principal personages by making them
double the size of less important characters, and of distinguish-
ing gods from men by giving them more heads and arms than
mortal man can use or understand.
All this is developed, it must be confessed, with considerable
vigour and richness of effect in the temples of Orissa and of
Mysore, down to the 13th or 14th century. After that, in the
north it was checked by the presence of the Moslims ; but, in
the south, some of the most remarkable groups and statues—
and they are very remarkable—were executed after this time,
1 For some account of Buddhist art in
GandMra and of early Indian sculpture,
see GrUnwedel’s ‘Buddhist Art in India,’
Eng. translation (Quaritch, 1901). A
work on Tndian Sculpture and Painting,’
by Mr E. B. Havell, has recently been
published by Mr Murray.
37
For an honest purpose-like pre-Raphaelite kind of art, there is
probably nothing much better to be found elsewhere.
The art had apparently begun to decline when the gateways
at Sanchi were executed somewhat later; but whether this was
not mainly due to the more refractory character of the stone,
and a different school of workmen, it is hard to say. They may
then have gained a little in breadth of treatment, but it had lost
in delicacy and precision. Its downward progress was, how-
ever, arrested, apparently by the rise, in the extreme north-west
of India, of a school of sculpture strongly impregnated with the
traditions of classical art. The Grmco-Baktrians, driven out by
the Yue-chi, continued to hold some sort of domination in
Afghanistan till not very long before our era, and a vast inter-
change of ideas was, at that period, carried on between the east
and west by means of newly - opened highways. Thus Greek
models and art became familiar, and when once a demand arose
for such workmanship, a school of art would appear. For the
present it is sufficient to know that a quasi-classical school of
sculpture did exist in the Panjab, and to the west of the Indus
during the first four centuries after Christ, and it can hardly
have flourished there so long, without its presence being felt
in India.1
Its effects were certainly apparent at Amaravati in the ist
and 2nd centuries, where a school of sculpture was developed,
partaking of the characteristics of both those of Central India
and of the west. Though it may, in some respects, be inferior
to either of the parent styles, the degree of perfection reached
by the art of sculpture at Amaravati may probably be considered
as the culminating point attained by that art in India.
When we meet it again in the early Hindu temples, and
later Buddhist caves, it has lost much of its higher aesthetic and
phonetic qualities, and frequently resorts to such expedients as
giving dignity to the principal personages by making them
double the size of less important characters, and of distinguish-
ing gods from men by giving them more heads and arms than
mortal man can use or understand.
All this is developed, it must be confessed, with considerable
vigour and richness of effect in the temples of Orissa and of
Mysore, down to the 13th or 14th century. After that, in the
north it was checked by the presence of the Moslims ; but, in
the south, some of the most remarkable groups and statues—
and they are very remarkable—were executed after this time,
1 For some account of Buddhist art in
GandMra and of early Indian sculpture,
see GrUnwedel’s ‘Buddhist Art in India,’
Eng. translation (Quaritch, 1901). A
work on Tndian Sculpture and Painting,’
by Mr E. B. Havell, has recently been
published by Mr Murray.