The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

26 PREHISTORIC AND EPIC PERIODS
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cases the artists were trained in a guild tradition
of imparted knowledge and followed a system
of canonical proportion and technique, relying
on inspiration through meditation; and yet,
inevitably, their productions combine system
and freedom, dream and reality, to produce at
once works of individual genius and awesome
religious power.
The purpose of Indian art, like all traditional
art, is primarily to instruct men in the great
first causes, which according to the seers, govern
the material, spiritual, and celestial worlds.
Art is dedicated to communicating these great
truths to mankind and, by the architectural,
sculptural, and pictorial reconstruction of the
powers that maintain the stars in their courses,
magically to ensure and strengthen the endurance
of the conditions thus reproduced in material
form: in this way, every Indian religious
structure is to be regarded as an architectural
replica of an unseen celestial region or as a diagram
of the cosmos itself.
In traditional art the shape and colour of a
religious image, its conventions and proportions,
have depended not so much on the artist's
having an uncontrolled aesthetic inspiration
but directly on what the work of art is to express
to the worshipper. These were the medieval
and Oriental points of view which judge the
truth or goodness of a work of art according to
how it fulfilled this essential requirement. Like
the Church art of the Middle Ages, Indian
works of sculpture, painting, and architecture
were devoted to revealing the divine personality
of the gods and to increasing the dignity of the
Church. Just such bands of workers as served
the medieval cathedral were dedicated to the
Indian temple. These workers had for their
guidance whole manuals of aesthetic procedure,
the sdstras, devoted to architecture, sculpture,
and painting. Secular art as we know it did not
exist.
In India all art, like all life, is given over to
religion. Indian art is life, as interpreted by
religion and philosophy. Art was dedicated to
producing the utensils, the objects of worship
in a life ordered by belief. Because the deity was
thought of as present in man and in nature, the
artist in his activity of making a work of art was
regarded as sharing God's delight in creation.
The texts of Buddhism and Hinduism specifically
state that the making of images leads to
heaven. The artist was not an eccentric individual,
but a man trained to meet a universal
demand. His vocation and training were entirely
hereditary. The Indian artist was an indispensable,
if anonymous, member of society;
and, indeed, Indian art is more the history of a
society and its needs than the history of individual
artists. There never was in Indian art before
the intrusion of Western influence anything
corresponding to the copying of nature. The
Indian artist does not seek to rival nature by
imitation, but in a metaphorical sense creates
forms parallel to nature. Only that which accords
with the self-imposed canons of proportion and
harmony is beautiful in the eyes of the discerning.
In traditional art it is through the selection
of such symbols as are truer than nature that the
artist can hope to achieve a perfect work of art.
There is nothing to be gained by a photographic
imitation of something that already exists well
enough. In an art based on these premises there
is no room for the cult of the merely decorative
nor for the cult of unintelligibility which
dominates the modern field. It was the object of
the Indian artist to express only the essential, to
improve rather than to copy nature exactly. The
Indian artist never draws simply what he sees,
but rather, like the untutored but discerning
child, draws what he means.
The aim of the Indian artist may be illustrated
by his attitude towards portraiture. There
is nothing to be gained by making a replica of a
man's outward appearance. The aim would
rather be to make something corresponding to
that essential image of the man that the mind
has in its conception of him. Obviously, the