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

NOTES
Bold numbers indicate page reference.
CHAPTER I
24. 1. As an illustration of the probable influence of
climatic conditions on Indian culture and art, it has
been suggested that the shifting of the monsoons
leading to the desiccation of what is to-day the province
of Sind was responsible for the disappearance of
the early civilization of the Indus Valley.
2. Although in disrepute among anthropologists, the
terms Dravidian and Aryan are so generally used to
describe the two main divisions of Indian culture,
beyond the universally accepted linguistic grouping,
that it seems desirable and convenient to retain them,
even if from the ethnic point of view they may not
accurately describe the character of the early races of
India.
25. 3. Marco Pallis, Peaks and Lamas (London, 1939),
xvii.
27. 4. In further explanation of the practice of yoga, it
could be said first of all that it is an effort on the part
of the practitioner to clear his mind of all
superficial
sensory preoccupation in order to concentrate his
entire being upon a single crystallized object or idea.
The initiate in yoga, through the practice of certain
callisthenics and breathing exercises designed to concentrate
stores of vitality in the nerve-centres of the
body, is enabled to perform great feats of physical
endurance and to raise his mental efficiency to an
almost supernatural level. In advanced yoga meditation
the practice of concentrational discipline lessens
the attachment to self and emotions and enables the
yogin to concentrate with tremendous and undisturbed
intensity upon that single being or idea which
is
the focus of his unencumbered mind. In this state
the mind is no longer distracted by any perceptions
or idle curiosities, but draws to itself as from a vasty
deep the final form of the icon to which the concentration
was originally directed. We have, in other
words, a kind of identification of subject and object
that suggests a Western parallel in Dante's observation
that 'he who would paint a figure, if he cannot be
it, cannot draw it'. This is only one of many indications
in the writings of the medieval period in the
West that European artists and mystics intuitively
discovered a process which had for ages been the
property of Indian sages.
29. 5. A. K. Coomaraswamy, History of Indian and
Indonesian Art (New York, 1927), 178.
CHAPTER 2
31. i. For a complete report of the Indus civilization,
the reader is referred to the following publications:
Sir John Marshall, Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization,
2 vols. (London, 193 1); E. J. H. Mackay,
Further Excavations at Mohenjo-daro, 2 vols. (Delhi,
1937); M. S. Vats, Excavations at Harappd, 2 vols.
(Delhi, 1940); S. Piggott, Prehistoric India (Harmondsworth,
1950). A useful short account is E. J. H.
Mackay's The Indus Civilization (London, 1935 and
1948).
2. This script consists of pictographic signs some
386 in number. There are too many of these signs to
conclude that this script was phonetic, and too few to
suggest that it was an ideographic language like
Chinese. Attempts have been made, largely unconvincing,
to show that certain letters in later Indian
alphabets are derived from these signs, and certain
romantically minded investigators have attempted to
relate the Indus pictographs to the writing of Easter
Island.
3. For the latest discussion of the date of the Indus
culture, see Sir Mortimer Wheeler, The Indus Civilization
(Cambridge, 1953). 84 ff. and Piggott, 207 ff".
32. 4. The allusions in the Vedic Hymns to the storming
of cities under the leadership of the god Indra
might be regarded as references to the violent
subjugation of the Indus capitals by the Aryan
invaders. See Wheeler, op. at., 90-1.
5. A theory proposed by the French scholar, Charles
Autran {Mithra, Zoroastre, et le Christiantsme), identifying
the peoples of the Indus culture with the
Phoenicians is suggestive rather than convincing.
This proposition is based mainly on the resemblance
of certain Dravidian and Aegean place names, a
similarity which, although striking, is insufficient
evidence for identifying the Indus people with the
great traders of the Mediterranean world.