INDIAN ART.•
THE history of painting in India is an amazing one. There, as in Europe, primitive man of the Stone Age drew animals on, the rock walls of caves, and later a great school of artists flourished whose works are still found in the rock temples of Ajanta. Up till the seventh century of our era the work proceeded. Then came a pause lasting a thousand years, and of this period Mr. Brown in the very interesting books before us says :— " From the time that the last painter at Ajanta threw down his brush in A.D. 650, until we come m contact with the art again as it was revived in the reign of the Mogul Emperor Akbar, in the latter half of the sixteenth century, the story of painting in India remains, to all intents and purposes, a blank."
So remarkable a phenomenon might have been explicable if other arts had ceased at the same period; but this was not so, for during the time when all painting stopped dead sculpture and architecture flourished, and remain to us in the wealth of carving lavished upon great monuments such as the Temples of Elephanta and Ellora. When painting reappeared in the time of the Moguls, it had fallen from being a great monumental art and had become small and intimate. Shooting expeditions of the Emperor, Court cere- monies, and portraits are the chief subjects chosen by artists endowed with great delicacy of execution. But charming and fanciful as these miniature paintings are, they have no touch of the decorative grandeur of the early Buddhist frescoes. The portraits of this epoch show an advanced and sensitive art, and are thus described by Mr. Brown :- " It is in the delineation of the actual features that the genius
• (1) Indian Painting. By Percy Brown. " The Heritage of India Series." Oxford : at the University Press. Rs. 6d. net.)—(2) The Beginnings of Buddhist Art. By A. Toucher. Translated from the French by L. A. and F. W. Thomas. London : Humphrey Milford. [his. Od. net.] of the Mogul. portrait-painter is seen at its best. Technically the
ctual painting of the face and head is a marvel of fineness and finish, but the amount of character that the artist has put into the likenessof his subject is only excelled in the medals of Pisanello. The mental ' stook-in-trade ' of an experienced portrait-painter contains much knowledge of human nature as reflected in the visage of the sitter, and the Mogul artist, had this knowledge at his finger-tips. Stiff and formal as his portraits at first sight may seem to be, the delicate drawing and subtle modelling of the likeness is there in its perfection, and by means of these qualities we realise the character and soul of the original—actually look into the heart of the man himself."
Another branch of Indian painting has been named Rajput, which, although contemporary with Mogul art, seems to bear some trace of having been derived from the great Buddhist frescoes. Rajput painting does not occupy itself with Court life, but. is democratic and religious, and concerned with folk-lore and the Hindu Pantheon. Technically it is allied to Mogul painting, which it strongly re- sembles. The characteristics of both these schools, and indeed of Indian art generally, may be best realized by considering the way in which the painters and sculptors arrange their works. It would not be far from the truth to say that with them design is treated like the fitting together of an infinitely complicated puzzle. Figure-
by figure, detail by detail, the bits are joinedone to another Cun- ningly and with infinite patience the parts are interlocked ; part is added to part so cleverly that a great and coherent whole is attained. But at the same time we can never get away from the feeling that fundamentally the finished work remains a vast collection of parts rhythmically assembled and not an organic growth.
Now turn to the primitive frescoes at Ajanta and note the differ- ence. In the illustration given by Mr. Brown from Cave 17 dating from the sixth century we have a group of figures imagined on the grandest scale of line and mass. Here also we are aware that the design is organic in the sense that it has been conceived as a whole, and thus the creator of such a work•joins hands with another great primitive, Giotto.
Mr. Brown tells us, that in modern times and under Western influence native painting practically died out in India. Happily now there is a revival going. on by a group of artists whose aim is to connect themselves with the traditional art of their country at its best, and a single figure by Mr. Abanindra Nath Tagore is repro- duced showing power of expression and grace, and apparently leaning to the Rajput style of era
In the earliest Buddhist time both in painting and sculpture the figure of Buddha - himself is not. represented ; the throne is there, but empty. The inquiry as to when the- first images of Buddha, were made forms the subject of a very learned and detailed study in M. Fouoher's book on The Beginnings of Buddhist Art.2 This work is a collection of essays and lectureswhieh have been revised by their author and translated from the French by Messrs. L. A: and F. W. Thomas, and form an important contribution to the study of the subject. M. Foucher tells us that the representation of Buddha did not make its appearance till four hundred years after the found- ing of the religion. When it did appear Greek art had already got a footing in India,-and to this foreign source the earliest images of Buddha are to be traced. Reasons' are given for considering that the earliest sculptured images are not to be found in Ceylon, China, Japan, or Benares, and the author says :-
"The-oldest known Buddhas are those which we have encountered in the House of Marvels,' as the natives call the museum of Lahore. To complete the geographical part of our quest, it remains only to find out exactly whence these Buddhas come. . . . All the carvings came originally from the district of Peshawar, on the right bank of the Indus, at its confluence with the Kabul-Rad."
After describing the country and pointing out that here we are on the ground where Alexander caused Greek and Indian to meet, M. Foucher says :— " To cut as short as possible, let me lead you straight to the centre of the country, into the little garrison town of Roti-Mardfln, and there, at the hospitable mess of. the regiment of the Guides, I will show you, leaning against the wall of the dining-room and no longer inhaling any incense but the smoke of the cigars, the most beautiful, and probably the most -ancient, of the Buddhas which it has ever been granted to me to encounter."
The photograph given of this work is strangely beautiful, obviously Greek in execution, but to the Olympian grace there is added a spiritual element unknown to the gods of Hellas. The sculptor was probably a Greek, but he had learnt something new in mystical India. With this as the origin of the type of Buddha we can easily trace its development till by degrees the Greek element disappears and the Oriental dominates.
In a study of the " Buddhist Madonna " M. Foucher gives another instance of the way in which Greek art gave form not only to Buddhist but also to Christian ideas. This was in the representation of the Madonna-and Child.. In both oases the Greek image came to give body to an idea aleeady formed. For the working out of this we must refer our readers to M. Fouoher's book, as well as for his account of Buddhist art in Java.
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