1. Indian Concept of The Beautiful University of Travancore Ramaswami Sastri K.S. Sri Vani Vilas Press

THE INDIAN CONCEPT

OF THE BEAUTIFUL

BY

K. S. RAMASWAMY SASTRI

UNIVERSITY OF TRAVANCORE

1947

THE INDIAN CONCEPT

OF THE BEAUTIFUL

BY

K. S. RAMASWAMY SASTRI

UNIVERSITY OF TRAVANCORE

1947

Travancore University Series—No. 5

THE INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

THE INDIAN CONCEPT

OF

THE BEAUTIFUL

By

Dewan Bahadur

K. S. RAMASWAMI SASTRI, B.A., B.L.

WITH A FOREWORD BY

Sachivottama Sir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar

K.C.S.I., K.C.I.E., LL.D.

Dewan of Travancore and Vice-Chancellor, University of Travancore

UNIVERSITY OF TRAVANCORE

1947

Printed by G. S. Press, Madras.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

PAGE

FOREWORD

vii

PREFACE

ix

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

xi

I. The Nature of the Concept of the Beautiful

1

II. The Concept of the Beautiful Through the Ages

10

III. The Concept of the Beautiful in Oriental Thought

32

IV. The Indian Concept of the Beautiful

38

V. The Evolution of the Indian Concept of the Beautiful

47

VI. Aspects of the Indian Concept of the Beautiful

54

VII. Indian Architecture

59

VIII. Indian Sculpture

80

IX. Indian Iconography

86

X. Indian Painting

95

XI. Indian Symbolism

109

XII. Indian Music

112

XIII. Indian Dance

122

XIV. Indian Poetry

129

XV. Indian Drama

156

XVI. The Future of the Indian Concept of the Beautiful:

Conclusion.

161

Index of Authorities Quoted

165

General Index

166

FOREWORD

Under the appropriate title of “ The Indian Concept of the

Beautiful,” Dewan Bahadur K. S. Ramaswami Sastri has brought

together a series of reasoned discussions on the nature and embodi-

ment of that concept ; and proceeding on the basis that “ every

work of art ”, in his own words “ has individual and national as

well as universal elements ”, he has outlined the evolution of the

idea of beauty in art and followed adequately in the footsteps of

Burke who was the author of “ The Sublime and the Beautiful ”

as well as a great orator and statesman.

Asserting that art is the realiser and the revealer of beauty

in its relative and absolute aspects, Mr. Ramaswami Sastri has dealt

specially with those elements that characterise Indian art. Basing

himself upon Ananda as the prime element of aesthetics as well

as of spirituality and dealing with the profound inter-relations

between the Hindu religious doctrine and Indian art, he has

described the outer expression of that art in life, in dress, decora-

tion and various forms of plastic and pictorial representation.

The book before us starts with Indian Architecture and Sculp-

ture, both Hindu and Buddhist, and combats the doctrine that the

“ race of master builders is an extinct species ”. Special attention

is paid to the indigenous architecture of Travancore exemplified

respectively in Suchindrum and Trivandrum as well as in Vaikom,

Ettumanoor and Ambalapuzha. He follows Havell in dealing with

Sarcenic architecture and sustains the thesis that it is not an

importation but a synthesis and development of Indian building

tradition.

The chapters on Indian iconography are specially noteworthy

for the analysis of the rules and canons underlying image-making

through the ages. He canvasses the view that images were unknown

at the time of the Vedas and his description of the place that

Dhyanaslokas occupy in iconography is provocative of thought.

In his lecture on the Ajanta frescoes and the later Hindu and

Muslim paintings, Mr. Sastri is rightly doubtful as to the place

occupied by modern Indian painting in the development of the

purely Indian spirit. He champions Raja Ravi Varma's art,

although he is not obvious of its limitations. Owing evidently to

viii

FOREWORD

want of space, the description and analysis of the Bengal and

Andhra schools of painting are very brief and condensed. He may

well devote a separate essay to the influence of Chinese and Japa-

nese masters on “ fin de siècle ” Indian painting.

The portions devoted to Indian dancing, poetry and music,

which do not eschew a reference to the recent controversies in the

musical sphere, are very illuminating. Mr. Sastri concludes with

a retrospect and a prospect of Indian poetry and Indian drama.

Throughout these lectures, which were originally delivered

under the auspices of the Travancore University, the aim

of Mr. Ramaswami Sastri has been to insist on the natural charac-

teristic of Indian art or its Swabhava and on the importance of

adherence to that nature, whatever contributions may be levied

from the doctrines and practice, of other countries and epochs. In

short compass, this volume exhibits varied erudition and manifests

the literary and artistic tastes of one, who has, throughout his life,

been a diligent and discerning student of philosophy and the fine

arts. The book will afford much instruction and enlightenment

to all lovers of artistic achievement in our country.

C. P. RAMASWAMI AIYER

30-12-46

PREFACE

James Fergusson says about India : “Its history is a mythic dream; its arts a quaint perplexity.” Such an opinion, coming as it does from so distinguished and acute a student and critic of Indian Art, shows the need of a book like the present work which seeks to interpret and reveal the true inwardness and the real values of Indian Art. The subject is vast and the limitations of the author and of the work are many. But the aim is to essay a task which has been as yet imperfectly done and which is meant to be the precursor of bigger works by others. This book consists of the lectures delivered by the author under the auspices of the University of Travancore. I am sincerely grateful to Sachivottama Sir C. P. Ramaswami Iyer, who is as eminent in the realm of the ideal as in the realm of the real, for his illuminating foreword to this work. I hope that my work will make the public realise that India is not only a shrine of spirituality but is also a home of beauty and romance.

Madras

14—1—1947

K. S. RAMASWAMI SASTRI

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Travancore Wood Carving .. .. Facing Page. 57

Sri Padmanabhaswami Temple Tower .. .. 64

The Five Pandava Rathas, Mahabalipuram .. 67

Golden Lily Tank and Gopurams, Meenakshi Temple, Madura .. 70

Amaravathi Sculpture .. .. .. 80

Amaravathi Stupa Slab .. .. .. 83

Sri Nataraja .. .. .. .. 86

Dancing Krishna .. .. .. .. 89

Sri Dakshinamurthi Image .. .. .. 90

Painting from Tirupandikkarai .. .. .. 95

Dancing Apsaras .. .. .. .. 122

Dancing Apsaras .. .. .. .. 124

Figure of Dancing girl on pillar of verandah, Sithannavasal rock-cut Temple Pudukotai State .. .. .. 127

CHAPTER I

THE NATURE OF THE CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

There cannot be a fitter introduction to this fascinating subject than the beautiful introduction by Bharata to his world-famous Nātya Śāstra. Indra and other gods felt the burdensomeness of their cosmic functions and asked the Creator to create something which would be an embodiment of the soul of play and the soul of joy (Kreedaneeyaka). Thereupon Brahma distilled the essence of the Vedas and created the Nāṭya Veda (the scripture of Dance-Drama) by taking words from the Rig Veda, gestures from the Yajur Veda, music from the Sāma Veda, and Rasa from Atharva Veda. He told the gods that Dance-Drama would be the means by which, through the beautiful and charming expression of what was beautiful and charming in the world of matter and in the world of mind, joy and love and right-eousness and self-control and heroism would be engendered in all beings, that it would delineate the totality of life, that it would convey a knowledge of life and superlife, that it would satisfy the impulse of play and the impulse of pleasure, that it would remove the disharmonies and agonies of life, and that it would take away the burden of work and toil from all beings and dower all with wonder and delight.

An even more apt and admirable idea is that expressed in a verse in the famous Lalitā Stavarāja which is a portion of the Lalitā Upākhyana in the Brahmanda Purana.

कोडा ते लोकसृचना सखा ते चिन्मयरिशव: ।

अहारस्ते सदानन्दो वासस्ते हृदयं सताम् ॥

(Thy sport is the creation of the worlds; Thy beloved companion is Siva who is Chit or Pure Noumenal Consciousness; Thy food is eternal and infinite Bliss; and Thy abode is the heart of the pure). Lalitā Devi is the Supreme Beauty cum Love cum Bliss aspect of the Absolute. She is called in the Lalita Sahasranama as

2

INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

चित्कलाडनन्दकलिकाप्रेमरुपप्रियङ्करी ॥

कलानिधि: काव्यकला रसज्ञा रसशेवधि: ॥

Thus the spirit of divine Leela (sport) creates (rachayati) the wonderful universe which has not only vastness and sublimity but also glowing and charming radiances and tints and colours. The spirit of divine vision and consciousness broods over such wonderful and graceful and sublime creation. The spirit of divine immanence permeates and vivifies it. The spirit of divine love nourishes it. The spirit of divine grace watches over it with affectionate care. The spirit of divine joy enjoys its loveliness. The fulfilment of all this is in the light of God and in the light of the God-created universe lighting up the dark cave of the human heart in which but for such light there would not be either the love of joy or the joy of love.

व | हृदयं यत् स तां (Thy home is the heart of the pure).

Once the light is lit and the seen beauty of the universe and the unseen beauty of God fill the heart and overflow, art is born. The artistic vision comes first and the human heart is thrilled in a manner which feels all artistic expression to be inadequate.

"The chords of the lute are entranced

With the weight of the wonder of things!"

But soon afterwards the artistic vision yearns for the artistic voice, because vision, albeit it cannot be fully rendered by expression, feels a sense of futility and frustration without expression. It is out of such inner psychic travail that art is born. If therefore we desire to know the very soul of art, we must not be content with the aspect of art as the expression of the spirit of play or of sport and as the reliever from fatigue and futility and frustration. Art is undoubtedly the manifestation of the spirit of play. Its essence is a spontaneous activity. But it is also an expression of the spirit of love and the spirit of joy. Tagore points out in his Sadhana that man is not essentially a worker but a lover. It is no doubt true that the determinism that governs his physical life—his urges and urgencies of hunger and thirst—make him work and earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. But beauty is the food of the soul. When he beholds it, he feels freed from all physical compulsions. "Consider the lilies of the field ! They toil not neither do they spin; yet even Solomon in all His glory is not arrayed like one of these". He feels his life to be full and rich only when he realises the supreme values of life, viz. Beauty and Goodness and Truth, and when he

THE CONCEPT OF BEAUTY

3

rises to the plane of the experience and enjoyment and expression of the Beautiful.

The distinction of human life lies in its boundless love of truth and goodness and beauty. The life of animals and birds is bounded by the urges of food and sex and is not irradiated by any passion for beauty. To them even tints and plumes have only a sexual charm. But man's love of truth is for its own sake; his goodness is based on the moral law felt within; and his love of beauty is disinterested and passionate and spiritual. But for the invasions of desire due to the gunas of Rajas (unregulated activities) and Tamas (inertia), his Sāthvic (pure and rhythmic) nature will lead him forth into adventures of truth and goodness and beauty. Of these basic natural emotions of man, the most basic is the love of beauty. Man had art even before he had law or philosophy. Art is thus the free play of the soul through the unobstructive and transparent medium of the Sāthvic state of the mind which is full of vision and bliss. The love of beauty and its expression in creative art are thus a spontaneous expression of pure and essential human nature.

Once the hunger and thirst for the excellent unseen things, for the ideal values of truth and beauty and goodness—begin in the soul, that exquisite mixture of ānanda and agony will allow no rest to the soul. New visions of life present ever-varying ethereal pageants before our inner eyes. Such inner experience pours itself out in expression just as a blossomed flower pours itself out in fragrance. The light of such a vision is like the potent sunlight before which even the strong searchlight of science begins to pale and flicker and die out. To vary the simile, the agitated ocean of the mind swells and yearns under the pull of the full moon of Spiritual Beauty. External Beauty—in the vast or in the little, in the Himalaya or in the lotus flower—is felt to be a limited expression of an infinite inner beauty and bliss. The sky, the stars, the hills, the seas, the streams, the trees, the flowers, the eyes of women and the faces of the children—are they not the faint and feeble expressions of the infinite ineffable beauty of Sachchidananda? When such inner vision dawns on us and glorifies the reports and records of our outer vision, there arises in us a natural creative passion to express such beauty in fresh incarnations of loveliness. The senses report the external beauty; the heart is enraptured by it; the mind interprets it; and the soul irradiates it with its inner inalienable effulgence. The infinite and eternal values of infinite and eternal truth and goodness and beauty and bliss are the contribu-

4

INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

tion of the soul. The ordinary mind's utilitarian outlook is tran-

scended by and lost in a higher realisation.

Thus aesthetic activity is enkindled by beauty which is the

expression of the bliss of the Absolute. When it begins to express

itself, the lower activity of mere utilitarianism begins to pall upon

us. It alone can elevate us to the highest height of our being.

Spiritual joy is far above the joy of mere sense-satisfaction. The

universe is not merely the storehouse of physical satisfactions but

is also and in the main the treasure-chest of spiritual joys. The

economic man is satisfied with currency notes but the æsthetic man

yearns for the cosmic notes of the music of the spheres. The scien-

tific mind probes and analyses and discovers but the aesthetic mind

observes and contemplates and synthesises and creates. The appeal

of the universe to the intellect is different from its appeal to imagi-

nation and emotion and intuition. The intellect reduces the appa-

rent multiplicity of things into orderly unity by the concept of law

but the aesthetic nature reduces the multiplicity to unity by the

concept of love. An architect has in his mind the creative plan

by which the multiplicity of stones becomes the unity of the Gopura

(temple dome). Why should we treat Nature as if it were a hostile

force to be combated and conquered? The aesthetic nature yearns

to mingle with the universe in the embrace of love. Nay, it even-

tually becomes sublimated into the spiritual nature by seeking and

finding the unseen eternal infinite love “whose smile kindles the

universe”. This latter attitude is called the mystic way. Each of

us has within him the, wonder lamp of Aladdin by rubbing which

he can see all the wonders of the world and create even greater

marvels.

We must not become intellectual slaves to realism or idealism

or classicism or romanticism. These are but passing fashions.

Realism aims at fidelity to nature but even in realistic art there is

the idealistic activity because the artist makes a selection out of a

mass of relevant and irrelevant details and recombines only the

relevant and significant details into an idealised portrait. Otherwise

poetry will not be different from biography or history nor will a

painting be other than a photograph nor will music be other than

a mimicry of nature's sounds. This is why Aristotle lays down that

poetry deals with the universal whereas history deals with the par-

ticular. Idealism in art aims at a purely imaginative creation of

what might be or ought to be. Shakespeare says that the poet's

imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown and gives to

airy nothing a local habitation and a name. Keats says :

THE CONCEPT OF BEAUTY

"Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone"

(Keats : Ode on a Grecian Urn).

Wordsworth speaks of "the light that never was on sea or land,

the consecration and the poet's dream". But the fact is that the

ideal world is not disconnected from the real world but is only a

sublimation of the real world. There is thus idealism in realism

and also realism in idealism in the highest art. Similarly in classi-

cism, we find the elements of restraint and order and economy of

means and moderation in ends. It emphasises the importance of

artistic traditions and conventions. It seeks the universal in expe-

rience and seeks patterns of elegant and flawless and restrained

loveliness. It aims at clarity of idea and lucidity of expression. But

unless there is a great imaginative passion, classicism becomes

degraded into cold and lifeless and insipid art. Romanticism, on

the other hand, rushes into expression under the stress of an over-

mastering imaginative passion. It seeks the strange, the unusual, the

novel, the remote, and the abnormal, and prefers the luxury of

freedom to the ascetic fare of flawless self-restraint. It delights in

the mystical, the mysterious and the supernatural. It seeks to

discard the artistic conventions and traditions and invent new

artistic forms and patterns. But unless the artist is vigilant and

self-controlled, romanticism may become mere eccentricity and

extravagance and caprice and chaotic form or even formlessness.

Here again the best artists leaven classicism by the best elements of

romanticism, and leaven romanticism by the best elements of

classicism. The right law of art, as of life, is neither slavery nor

rebellion but self-controlled self-regulated freedom which vitalises

convention by adventurousness and combines stability and sponta-

neity and fuses form and idea. Thus the artist, in the course of

his fusion of impression and expression, realises beauty and revels

in beauty and then reveals beauty and radiates beauty after vita-

lising his impressions of beauty by the irradiated beauty of his

own soul.

Beauty has thus swayed the human heart for untold ages and

is destined to have a perennial appeal. The finer faculties of man

have expressed themselves in Science and Art and Religion. The

faculty of knowledge in man expresses itself in Science; the faculty

of love and joy expresses itself in Art; the faculty of Truth ex-

6

INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

presses itself in Religion. His power of analysis blossoms as science;

his power of synthesis blossoms as Art; and his power of intuition blossoms as Religion. Blake says well: “Knowledge of Ideal

Beauty is not to be acquired. It is born with us.”

The value of art will be realised and artistic experience will

be attained and artistic expression will become an accomplished

fact only when we rise above a merely materialistic attitude towards the world. Emerson has well described such a materialistic

attitude as the ‘culinary’ use of the world as opposed to the ‘divine’

use of the world. In modern times the love of the utilities of life far

outweighs the love of the beauties of life or the sublimities of life.

That is why even the quickening of the world’s life by the Great

War of 1914 to 1918 did not lead to any great and signal achievement in literature and art.

The fact is that the mind of man is instinctively and irresistibly

drawn to beauty as the food of the soul. The soul’s hunger for

beauty is even more urgent and imperative than the hunger of the

physical body for food. Wordsworth says that “we live by admi-

ration, hope and love.” But though beauty is thus dear to the soul

and is sought and prized, very few know its nature or essence. Art

is not mere utility or adaptation to our physical needs. It is not

mere rhythm or harmony or proportion or symmetry or balance or

unity in diversity or colour and form and expression and brightness and grace. It is all these and much more. They form only

its body and its vesture but its soul is elsewhere. I shall show in

the succeeding pages how such essence has been found and

expressed in India.

If the essence of beauty is thus inadequately known, the

the essence of art which is the outer expression of beauty is equally

inadequately known. It has been said well: “The voluptuary has

made an art of sin and the Puritan has made a sin of art. And

between these two extremes stand arranged various grades of art

which, like so many other things that appeal through the sensuous

to the supersensuous, is indefinable.” We have had raging controversies about realism and idealism, classicism and romanticism,

to which I have referred above, as well as controversies about art

for art’s sake and art for God’s sake. Tolstoi says well: “Truth

will be known not by him who knows only what has been, is, and

really happens, but by him who recognises what should be according to the will of God.” The ethical ideals will certainly inspire

artistic expression but the main aim of art is emotion and creative

THE CONCEPT OF BEAUTY

7

imagination. A real work of art takes its stand on things as they are and adds to them “the light that never was on sea or land, the consecration and the poet's dream.” It brings men nearer to nature and to one another and to God. Art and egoism can never go together. It is free and creative and joyful and confers freedom and creativeness and joyousness. It is not a mere source of pleasure. It enables man to realise and reveal God as Beauty. It is “the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge” and “the impassioned expression which is the countenance of all science.” Its ambit is not the ambit of personal and selfish pleasure but the ambit of disinterested and unselfish delight in the beauty of Nature and the beauty of Art. The great artist Turner says: “When the great aritst speaks, whether in words or music, he speaks of a world that is beyond time and space and beyond all ideas of good and evil, of to-day or yesterday, and he speaks of the world because it is the world in which he dwells. It is the very essence of his nature that his mind does not dwell, as the minds of ordinary men do, chiefly upon the pleasures of the body or the satisfaction of social prestige. We demand of a great artist neither tricks nor the vivid expression of our own passions but a profounder and wider consciousness than we possess ourselves. The values here are entirely spiritual.” Well does Ruskin say that artists paint God for the world.

Art is thus the blossom of the human imagination. Every work of Art has individual and national and universal elements in it. The artist's individuality is in it; the national distinctiveness also is there; and it has also a universal appeal. Imagination is the subtle link between all the mental activities. R. G. Collingwood says well in his Outlines of a Philosophy of Art: “Art is the primary and fundamental activity of the mind, the original soil out of which all other activities grow.” It has been with man, like religion, from the most ancient times. Aesthetics and metaphysics are his ancient guardian angels whereas economics and politics are his recent guests. It is thus clear that Art is the imaginative enjoyment and expression of beauty. Collingwood says well : “Real beauty is neither ‘objective’ nor ‘subjective’ in any sense that excludes the other. It is an experience in which the mind finds itself in the object, the mind rising to the level of the object, and the object being, as it were, pre-adapted to evoke the fullest expression of the mind's powers. The experience of beauty is an experience of utter union with the object; every barrier is broken down, and the

8

INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

beholder feels that his own soul is living in the object, and that

the object is unfolding its life in his own heart."

Thus Nature is the Art of God; Art is the Nature of man; and

both Nature and Art are the mirror of God. But is that the case

to-day? If the essence of beauty is only inadequately known to-day,

the essence of art is even more inadequately known. Tolstoi

says that the ruination of art is due to "(1) the considerable remu-

neration of artists for their productions and the professionalism

which this has produced among the artists; (2) art criticism and

(3) schools of art." He says further : "A real work of art can only

arise in the soul of an artist occasionally, just as a child is conceived

by its mother. . . . . Art is not a pleasure, a solace or an amusement;

art is a great matter, an organ of human life. . . . The task for art

to accomplish is to make the feeling of brotherhood and love of

one's neighbour, now attained only by the best members of society,

the customary feeling of all men. . . . . The destiny of art in our time

is to transmit from the realm of reason to the realm of feeling the

truth that the well-being of man consists in being united together,

and to set up, in place of the existing reign of force, that kingdom

of God—that is, of love—which we all recognise to be the highest

aim of human life."

Thus professionalism and wrong æsthetics and want of

sympathy are the vital causes of our inability to enjoy and express

beauty and of our low types of art to-day. Unless we have a true

and noble Aesthetic, we shall never be able to realise beauty or to

express it. It is necessary to have right Aesthetics for the greater

glory of God and Man and for the salvaging of Beauty in modern

life and for preventing the perversion of Art. This is the real

justification for the present work. After a careful and comprehen-

sive study of beauty and art and æsthetics here and elsewhere

during the ages, I have come to the deliberate conclusion that

Indian Aesthetics holds the magical key to a new and pure and

holy æsthetic experience by humanity at large and that the reve-

lation of its vital affirmations will inaugurate a new era of artistic

experience and enjoyment and expression all over the world.

Aesthetics is thus the philosophy of the beautiful. Aesthetic

experience is the enjoyment of beauty. Aesthetic emotion is not

passion but a pure and calm feeling of delight. Other appetites

leave a sense of fatigue or surfeit or even disgust after their satis-

faction. But in the satisfaction of our æsthetic appetite the ele-

THE CONCEPT OF BEAUTY

9

ments of refinement and detachment and disinterestedness are

present and the elements of craving and possesiveness and attach-

ment are absent. Material satisfactions grow less by sharing them

with others; but æsthetic, like spiritual satisfactions, grow by such

sharing. In the latter the highest and most spiritual senses—sight

and hearing—are in operation along with a poised mind. In short,

æsthetics is the science of Art; Art is the expression of Beauty; and

Beauty is the expression of Bliss.

CHAPTER II

THE CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL THROUGH THE AGES

It is not fitting or possible that I should trace here in detail the evolution of ideas in regard to the concept of the Beautiful from ancient times until to-day. I wish to refer to them only to give a proper setting and framework to my exposition of the Indian concept of the beautiful, so that the back-ground and the foreground of the scheme of perspective and the light and shade and the multi-tinted glories of the colour-scheme might enable me to bring out the beauties and the central heart-ideas of my picture of Indian Aesthetics.

I have already shown that beauty is as much a vital element in life as utility. Nay, it is much more vital and valuable and essential than the merely useful elements of life and subserves the highest purposes of life in a larger and nobler measure. Man never was or is or will be mere tongue or stomach. He is eye, ear, mind, heart and spirit in the main. He is not a mere slave of the physical needs of food and sex. His gospel is not a mere gospel of pro-creation but is in the main a gospel of creation and re-creation. This is the reason why man never had a primitive pre-artistic state at all. The earliest races known to history show the possession of an artistic temperament and have artistic achievements to their credit. No doubt the earliest art is mere imitation of nature. The decorative elements came later. And yet later came the desire for transcending nature and the power of such transcendence. The primitive man’s earliest artistic achiements was probably the imitation of the songs of birds and the painting of animals in a rude and crude form. In spring and summer, when Nature is in her gayest and brightest mood, a responsive gaiety and brightness of mood would and did.come to Man as well. But the artistic mood is not a mere mood of pleasurable imitation. Its essence is selectiveness, creativeness, aspiration. It has been said well : “Works of art must have a rule of life, and he who speaks of life understands by it harmony, order, the co-relation of all the parts into a single whole.” The highest self-expression of the artistic spirit is there. Even in the sub-human kingdom, we find rudimentary and instinctive expressions of the beautiful, such as the song of a nightingale or of a kokila (cuckoo) or the movements of “an antelope in the

THE BEAUTIFUL THROUGH 'THE AGES

11

suspended impulse of its lightness." The movements of the fawn described in the opening scene of Kalidasa's Sakuntala are in their way as lovely as the movements of Sakuntala herself. But the songs and movements in the sub-human kingdom have no element of spiritual passion or a sense of the Beautiful. It is in human art that we find the principles of order and proportion and symmetry and harmony animated by spiritual feeling and creative transcendence of nature, whereas in the sub-human kingdom we find only the elements of play-impulse and spontaneity. Darwin says in The Descent of Man : "Birds appear to be the most æsthetic of all animals and they have nearly the same taste for the beautiful as we have." In many nests built by the bower birds of Australia, we see the elements of utility and decoration but we cannot see therein the architectonic power and the symbolism and the aspirational element of human architecture. In the songs of some birds we see the free outpouring of pleasant notes but we cannot have therein the time-element and the elements of concordant harmony and graduated ascent and descent of notes and expression of æsthetic feeling and spiritual emotion. During the pairing season we find dances by birds but we do not see any attempt to express by the rhythms of dance, the rhythms of music and the rhythms of emotion by a sort of trinity in unity and unity in trinity. Sculpture and Painting and Literature are of course exclusively human achievements. The sub-human kingdom has a mere life of sensation and lives in the mere present from minute to minute. It is man and man alone that "looks before and after and pines for what is not." He rises to the heights of concepts and even abstract ideas and links and the past and the present and the future and fuses sensation and intellection and emotion and intuition together and brings earth into contact with heaven and touches the lotus feet of God.

The earliest works of art left by primitive man are the rude stone monoliths known as menhirs and cromlechs and dolmens. They were probably tombs rather than temples. Were they regarded as symbolical of the immortality and eternity of the soul ? We do not know. Later on the temple is more in evidence than the tomb. The Egyptian temples were vast and wonderful. Nature dwarfed man in Egypt. The great rivers and the vast deserts made men realise their insignificance. The temples which were erected by man were on the same stupendous scale. The Sphinx is yet wonderful in its massiveness and its mystery. In ancient times the national religious festivals nurtured the artistic conscious-

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INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

ness, and such nurture evoked greater achievements of art and

enhanced the beauty and glory of the festivals.

Among the Hebrews also there was a sense of the sublime and

the beautiful. But Ethics appealed more to them than æsthetics

or metaphysics. They had a horror of "graven images" and hence

tabooed sculpture. But architecture and music flourished though

they did not attain a high degree of perfection, and high levels of

the literary art were reached in the Old and the New Testaments

and in the Koran.

It was, however, in Greece that the highest level was reached

in the west in art and æsthetics. Athens was "the mother of art

and of eloquence." Shelley says well in Hellas :

"Her citizens, imperial spirits,

Rule the present from the past,

On all the world of men inherits

Their seal is set"

Percy Gardner describes the eight lamps of Greek art as humanism,

simplicity, balance and measure, naturalism, idealism, patience,

joy, and fellowship. We see in Greek art the elements of ease

and freedom and lightness and grace and rhythm and proportion

and symmetry. Professor Knight says well : "The two great art-

periods in European history have been that of Greece in the age

of Pericles, and that of the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries". The Greeks had a nature finely and deli-

cately responsive to the call of the Beautiful. The serene and

sunny clime of Greece and the way in which the sea combined with

the land to charm and fascinate were responsible along with the

artistic endowments of the people for the remarkable efflorescence

of art in Greece. The Greeks felt the unity of the True and the

Beautiful and the Good. Their love of gymnastics and music and

dance made them strong and supple. Lucian says that the dancer

should be "nicely finished off at every point, fair of mien, full

of grace and symmetry, nowhere wanting, never less than

himself". Damon says : "The dance is a display at once of the

care the dancers bestowed on their persons and also of good

discipline". The Pyrrhic dance, well-known from its mention in

Byron's famous poem, consisted of feigned attack and defence to

the tune of songs or musical instruments. Such posture-dancing

consisting of pose and gesture and facial expression had a great

effect by way of stimulation on the fine arts of painting and

THE BEAUTIFUL THROUGH THE AGES

13

sculpture and led later on to the wonderful drama of Greece in

the Athenian theatre where the Greeks saw

"Gorgeous tragedy

In sceptred pall come sweeping by,

Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line,

Or the tale of Troy divine".

Greek architecture also attained a wonderful development. Greek

art had remarkable repose and dignity and perfection. "The ideali-

sation of Olympus was the religious counterpart of the artistic ideas

of Greece. Form and idea are in perfect unison and harmony in

the sculptured presentation of the pantheon of Greece. But the

Greeks humanised their gods too much and did not dwell in the

glory of the noumenon as much as amidst the beauty of

phenomena.

Aesthetical theory had as remarkable a career in Greece as

artistic achievement. Socrates taught that utility is the test of

beauty and that whatever is suited to the intended end is fair and

that "whatever is beautiful is for the same reason good, when suited

to the purpose for which it was intended". But he did not love

beauty for itself. The fact is that beauty is the essence of goodness

and the charm on the face of virtue. In Plato we have a wonderful

sensibility to beauty and a remarkable grasp of aesthetics. He

taught that our love of beautiful things on the Earth was due to

the search by our soul for absolute and archetypal loveliness. The

form leads to the idea and the phenomenon to the noumenon. He

says : "Beauty absolute, separate, simple and everlasting, which

without diminution and without increase, is imparted to the ever-

growing and perishing beauties of all other things .......... He

learns to use the beauties of earth as steps along which he mounts

upwards, going from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair

practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the

notion of absolute Beauty, and at last knows what the essence of

Beauty is. ...... This is man's true home with his vision of

absolute Beauty if we have in this life any home at all ...... If

man has eyes to see the true beauty, he becomes the friend of

God and immortal". (Symposium). Plato's vision is that of man

ascending from the beauty of the universe to the universe of

Infinite and Perfect and Eternal Beauty.

Aristotle did not accept the existence of an absolute Beauty

above and beyond phenomena. He saw and taught that artistic

14

INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

emotion is, unlike sense-desires, disinterested and pure and an end in itself. He says that Art is imitation of Nature and that the objects of imitation in Art are the Universal, not the particular. According to him order and symmetry are the essence of Beauty. Plotinus and other Neo-platonists carried Plato's ideas further and gave the world æsthetics of a very high order. They taught that we realise Eternal Beauty (Logos) by direct intuition and communion. Plotinus says: “Everyone must partake of the divine nature, before he can discern the divinely beautiful”. (Enneades). He says also: “The explanation of delight in sensible beauty, so far as it can be explained, is that when the soul perceives something akin to its own nature, it feels joy in it”.

Thus Greek art and æsthetic are of a very high order. But the mystic and symbolic and spiritual notes are but faintly heard in Greece. They would and could be heard only in moods of Yoga which were familiar only in India.

Rome gave nothing new to the world in regard to the concept of the Beautiful. Virgil says in his Aeneid: “Let others study Art; Rome has somewhat better in hand viz., Law and Dominion”.

We have in Rome great poetry and sculpture and architecture but Roman art and æsthetics were the camp-followers of Greek art and æsthetics and were imitative raiher than original.

I shall deal in the next chapter with the contributions of Christianity to art and æsthetics, because though Christianity conquered Europe, it is an oriental and Asiatic faith. In the Dark Ages there was no high art or æsthetics in Europe. St. Augustine defines beauty in terms of proportion and agreeable colour. After the Renaissance art and æsthetics came into Europe under the Greek banner. Italian painting soared to heights unknown before or since. There was an efflorescence of art all over Europe side by side with social betterment and political greatness.

In Germany Baumgarten (1714-1762) taught that Beauty is the Absolute visioned through the senses while Truth is the Absolute seen through reason and Goodness is the Absolute seen through the will. He was the first thinker to use the term “Aesthetics” and he described it as the contemplative enjoyment of beauty. He held that the highest aim of art is to copy Nature. According to Winckelmann (1717-1767) beauty is of three forms—beauty of form and beauty of idea, leading to beauty of expression. He says that Beauty is “like the best kind of water, drawn from a spring; the less taste it has, the more healthful it is, because free from

THE BEAUTIFUL THROUGH THE AGES

15

foreign admixture”. Mendelssohn (1729-1786) says that art is the

development of the beautiful, obscurely recognised by feeling, till

it becomes the true and the good. Kant (1724-1804) shows that

æsthetic pleasure is a disinterested pleasure and that the beautiful

is not the good or the true or the useful but is a spiritual experience

and that beauty is both individual and universal. He teaches that

beauty is what pleases us without satisfying any practical interest

and that the pleasure derived from beauty is the pleasure of con-

templation and that when we realise the vast power in Nature our

feeling of the sublime is profoundly stirred. His view that colour

is inessential and that form alone is essential seems however to be

an overstatement. Fichte (1762-1814) teaches that in nature we

see the sum of our limitations while in art we see the sum of our free

idealised activity. Beauty is an inner completeness and resides

in the soul, and Art is the manifestation of the beautiful soul and

should aim not at the education of the mind or the heart alone

but of the whole man. Goethe says that “beauty is inexplicable”

and that “the Beautiful is an elementary phenomenon, which

is never incorporated, but whose reflex becomes visible in a

thousand various revelations of creative genius, as various indeed

as Nature herself”. He says: “Art is called Art, simply because

it is not Nature”. According to Schiller (1759-1805) our love of

beauty is due to the play-impulse (spiel-trieb). He says : “That

only is play which completes man and evolves his double nature”.

Schlegel (1772-1829) says that Nature is inexhaustible and Art is

illimitable, and that beauty exists in nature and in art and in love

and that the truly beautiful is expressed by the union of nature

and art and love. Lessing distinguishes between the values of

architecture and sculpture and painting on the one hand which

deal with objects which co-exist in space and the values of poetry

and music which deal with what is successive in time. Humb-

oldt says : “Man belongs to a better world than that of reality, viz.,

the realm of ideas”. He says further : “He who would receive art

into himself with all his senses, must place himself in the midst

of them all; he must regard the work of the painter poetically, and

that of the poet with the eye of a painter”. Schelling (1775-1845)

says that beauty is the perfection of the Infinite in the Finite and

art is a hint of the Infinite in and through the Finite and bridges

the gulf between the self and the not-self and leads us from the

vestibule of knowledge into its shrine, and that the Absolute

reveals itself to the artist in his creative moods. According to him

art unites the subject and the object and is the mirror of the divine

and is a law unto itself. Tieck regards Beauty as “a unique ray

16

INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

out of the celestial brightness" and as becoming art when passing through the prism of the imagination. Adam Muller (1779-1829) says that a world in which all contradictions are harmonised is the highest beauty and that every work of art is a reproduction of this universal harmony and that the highest art is the art of life.

Professor Solger (1780-1819) teaches that Beauty is an immediate revelation of God and that in the beauty of the body we see the light of the soul. Beauty is of the essence of pure Being, and we discern the same by an intuitive act of our entire nature. Professor Knight says: "In reference to Art, he affirms that it is all symbolical, ancient Art dealing for the most part with objective symbols, and modern art with subjective ones. As a revelation of the divine idea, he held that Beauty is on one side essence, and on the other, appearance, and the arts of poetry and music disclose the former more perfectly, those of painting, architecture, etc., realise the latter". According to him it art is akin to creation. Krause (1781-1832) teaches that Beauty is an essential characteristic of the Infinite and Absolute and that Art is characterised by self-sufficiency and unity in variety and is the actualisation of the beauty existing in the free spirit of man and seeks to make life a beautiful home for the beautiful spirit.

The greatest name in German Aesthetics is, however, Hegel (1770-1831). According to him Beauty is the disclosure of Mind. Mind being a higher reality than Nature, the beauty of Art is superior to the beauty of Nature. Art thus gives to its representations the higher reality of Mind. Beauty is the shining of the Idea through Matter. The beauty of Nature is but a reflection of the beauty of the Soul. The True is the Idea and the Beautiful is the manifestation of the Idea. There is no beauty without proportion and appropriateness. Beauty is thus the Absolute realising itself in and through the relative. Art is not the imitation of Nature but is the transcendence of Nature. It is the palace of the soul on the basement of Nature. It stands on the actual and respires in the ideal. According to him Egyptian art was symbolic and suggested rather than expressed thought, and Grecian art was classical and suggested the perfection of the finite, whereas modern art is romantic and aims at transcendence of nature as contrasted with the anthropomorphism of Greece. In architecture the material is dominant. In sculpture it is less dominant. In it art represents life and takes a step towards the idea. In Painting colour is added to form. In Music and Poetry the romantic spirit has the freest expression. Music is the most subjective of the

THE BEAUTIFUL THROUGH THE AGES 17

arts and Poetry is the most universal and spiritual of the arts. The

appeal of music is mainly to the emotions whereas poetry appeals

more to thought than to emotion, though in it also emotion is a

vital element.

Weisse (1801-1867) says that art is the introduction

(einbildung) of the absolute spiritual reality of beauty into dead

matter and that beauty reconciles the individual and the universal.

According to Ruge (1802-1880) beauty is the Idea expressing

itself. The same truth is taught also by Vischer (1807-1887). The

artist should go to the core of Nature and see the Ideal. The

beautiful is typical and yet individual. He teaches that the highest

form of the Idea is personality and that therefore the highest art is

that which has for its subject-matter the highest Personality. He

tries to fuse the Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of beauty

and of art. The absolute Beauty is revealed in Nature and in the

Mind, and we should rise from mirrored beauty to the source of

beauty in the archetypal world. Each beautiful object has a hold

connecting it with Absolute Beauty.

Some German æstheticians like Herbart (1776-1841) did not

accept the Hegelian doctrine that Beauty is the manifestation of

the Idea. The great philosopher Schopenhauer affirms that we do

not know the Thing-In-Itself (Ding-an-sich) and that all that we

know is the Presentation (vorstellung). But by the Will we can

reach the Ding-an-sich. The essence of Matter is Force and the

essence of Force is Will. The universal Will is the archetype.

Individuals are beautiful to the extent to which they approximate

to it. The artist realises it by intuition and becomes one with it.

Then the petty individual self is annihilated and we realise a larger

self in the beauty of the world. In Schopenhauer’s æsthetical

theory we see that he emphasises that possessive desire has no part

in our intuition of the beautiful. The emotion of the beautiful is

disinterested and pure, and artistic ecstacy results in the outstep-

ping of the self. Schopenhauer goes so far as to say : “A work of

genius is not a thing of utility. To be useless is its very patent of

nobility. It exists for itself alone.” Art in his eyes a delightful

escape from the prison of life. It is liberation through contempla-

tive vision from the fetters of the will to Live.

Hartmann tries to co-ordinate the Hegelian Idea and the

Schopenhauẹrian Will just as he tries to co-ordinate the Platonic

and the Aristotelian teachings. According to him art is not a mere

imitation of Nature. “The discovery of the Beautiful and the

3

18

INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

creation of the Beautiful by man proceed from unconscious processes”, the results of which come within the range of consciousness and are apprehended as beautiful. According to him the Ding-an-sich is not beautiful but is transformed into beauty by the artist. He refers to what he calls schein (shine) which is neither in the objects or in the mind but is occasioned by objects in the mind. In every work of art as in every beautiful material object, there is something that we feel but do not know.

Lotze (1817-1881) says that what we call beautiful does not please us as individuals only but pleases the universal spirit in us. He refers to eastern vastness and Hebrew sublimity and Greek Beauty and Roman elegance and dignity. Schnasse (1798-1875) wrote a history of Art in seven volumes. He says that there is no perfect beauty in the world; that in nature, there is only an approach towards it; that art gives us what nature cannot give; and that in the energy of the free ego, conscious of a harmony which is not found in nature, beauty is realised and revealed. Helmholtz (1821-1894) deals with beauty in music. He says that the rules of Art are the result of the free effort of artists to shape forms of beauty and that they conform to law even when evolving new types. He says further that as in architecture we have the horizontal line of roof and later on the circular arch and later yet the pointed arch, so we have in music the simple melody of the ancients and the poly-tonic music of the middle ages and the rich harmony of the modern era. “Art creates, as imagination pictures, regularly without conscious law, designedly without conscious aim.”

I have dealt at length with the German æstheticians because in the west it is Germany that has contributed most to the evolu-tion of æsthetics. In France, however, we find more clarity of thought than in Germany. Amiel says : “The Germans gather fuel for the pile; it is the French who kindle it”. Pere Andre teaches in his Essai Sur Le Beau (1741) that there are three kinds of beauty—divine beauty and natural beauty and artificial beauty. Batteux (1713-1780) says that art consists in imitating the beauty of nature, its aim being enjoyment. D’Alembert distinguishes between primary beauties which are so sublime and striking as to appeal to all and secondary beauties which appeal to the national taste. Voltaire points out how taste enables us to realise the “nuances” of a work of art. Diderot says that Art must go back to Nature, and that Art cannot, however, imitate Nature exactly because Nature is always changing, and that Art suggests more than it can express.

THE BEAUTIFUL THROUGH THE AGES

19

A. C. Quatremere de Quincey (1755-1849) holds that beauty is a tangible form of the true and the good. Just as moral and philosophic truths are universal despite the knowledge or ignorance of particular individuals or nations, even so aesthetic truths are universal. Unity in variety and order and harmony are of the essence of beauty. Comte is of opinion that the personification in the early polytheism was favourable to Art while the monotheistic conception of the world was at first unfavourable to it. Cousin (1792-1867) follows the German idealists. He says that beauty is unity in variety and variety in unity. Guizot says that sculpture deals with static states whereas painting can represent emotion and dynamic action. Jouffroy (1796-1842) was the pupil of Cousin. He pursues the psychological method. The beautiful is different from the agreeable or the useful. Our love for it is disinterested and reverential. According to him, beauty is “the expression of the Invisible by the natural signs which manifest it”, and the visible world is the “garment we see it by”. He thus teaches the realisation of the ideal and the idealisation of the real.

Leveque says that beauty is something invisible behind Nature. Ravaisson says that beauty is the ultimate aim and purpose of the world. He says : “The whole world is the work of an absolute beauty, which is only the cause of things by the love it puts into them”. Taine seeks to explain art with reference to social and racial and geographical causes. The artist imitates but what he gives us is not a mere exact imitation. He selects, and he reveals only the essence. Theophile Thore (1897-1869) says that art is the human interpretation of Nature. Charles Blanc says that beauty is only in the mind of man, and that the artist who understands the beautiful is greater than Nature which only shows it. The artist purifies reality from all disfiguring accidents and sets the gold free from the alloy. The artist does not merely decorate life but realises the eternal and reveals it. Beauty in nature is liable to destruction. Art raises itself above time and death. The sublime in architecture should have greatness of dimension and simplicity of surface and continuity of line. Art in sculpture raises an individual truth to the height of a type, and the type itself to beauty. Painting expresses the conceptions of the soul through the realities of nature. Eugene Veron says in his L' Esthetique that art is “the manifestation of emotion”. Aesthetic pleasure is disinterested. Art is creative. It is either decorative or expressive. Its secret is the individuality of the artist. Vallet emphasises the element of splendour. Art must interpret and transfigure Nature. The five

20

INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

elements of beauty are variety, completeness, unity, proportion, and

eclat, i.e., the essence of the thing. Guyau (1854-1888) says that

art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life. Art is

not opposed to science nor science to art. Astronomy can never

kill the sense of mystery which is kindled by the skies. Art is

intensive and expansive and makes all to feel alike. He says :

"Life, morality, science, art, religion,—there is, as I believe, an

absolute unity, between these things. Great and serious art is

that which maintains and manifests this unity." Art is not life's

parasite but is the very flower of life.

Professor Knight, from whose valuable work on The Philo-

sophy of the Beautiful much of the information in this chapter

has been taken, gives us also the ideas of the Swiss writers on art.

Topffer says that the Beautiful is the splendour of the True and is

the absolute essence of God. God is beauty and the ideas of beauty

in us are divine attributes there. Beauty in art is superior to

beauty in nature and is independent of it. Pictel says that beauty

is a manifestation of the divine idea. Nature contains it but does not

possess it. It is to man that it appeals so that there may be a new

world of ideal creation by man. Our love of the beautiful is

impersonal and disinterested. He says : "Emanating as a pure ray

from the supreme Intelligence, this idea reveals itself in Nature;

thence reflected by Art, it shines under a thousand different forms

in the heart of humanity." Amiel (1821-1881) says that "there is

no repose except in the absolute, the infinite and the divine." He

says : "Heroism, ecstacy, love, enthusiasm, wear a halo round the

brow, for they are a setting free of the soul, which through them

gains force to make its envelope transparent, and shine through

upon all around it. Beauty is thus a phenomenon belonging to

the spiritualisation of matter. It is a momentary transfiguration

of the privileged object to remind us of the ideal. . . .The ideal is,

after all truer than the real; for the ideal is the eternal element in

perishable things, it is their type, their sum, their raison d'etre,

and the most exact and the most condensed expression of them".

Vinet (1797-1847) says that "at a certain depth the good and the

beautiful are one". He says : "If poetry was the philosophy of

early ages, philosophy is perhaps the poetry of our era; it is a new

method of recovering liberty".

Italy is surely the home of modern art as Greece was of ancient

art. Leonardo da Vinci expounds beauty of form and beauty of

colour. He says : "That drawing is the best which best expresses

that passion that animates the figure". Michel Angelo says that

THE BEAUTIFUL THROUGH THE AGES

21

"Beauty is the purgation of superfluities". Bellori (1616-1691) says that Nature never realises perfect beauty because of the imperfections of its material and that hence artists seek to realise the idea. "The idea, which we may call the goddess of Painting and of Sculpture, descends upon the marble and the canvas, and becomes the original of these arts". Art is higher than Nature. The artist paints men as they ought to be, and "advances Art above Nature itself". Raphael wrote to Castiglione about his Galatea : "To paint the fair, it is not necessary that I see many fair ones, but, because there is so great a scarcity of beautiful women, I am bound to make use of an idea which I have formed to myself of my own fancy". In the same manner, Guido Reni wrote thus in regard to his picture of Saint Michael : "Not being able to mount so high as to behold my Archangel I was forced to make an introspection of my own mind, and that idea of Beauty which I have formed in my own imagination". Pagano says that art consists in uniting the beauties dispersed in nature, and that beauty is goodness made visible and that goodness is inner beauty. Professor Knight points out that the chief philosophers of modern Italy are Rosmini, Gioberti, and Mamiani. Rosmini says that we discern beauty in the world of the real and then seek to transcend it in the realm of the ideal. Gioberti says that Being creates existences (Ens creat existencias). According to him the Sublime is merely the superior principle of Beauty. "The Sublime creates and contains the Beautiful". Mystery is necessary to Beauty and opens up an infinite perspective to the mind beyond the real world. Mamiani also points to the Absolute within the Relative. The greatest philosopher and æsthetician in modern Italy is Croce. He says that æsthetic enjoyment is feeling the universe sub-specie intuitiones, that art is independent both of science and of the useful and the moral," and that "the beauty of nature is the discovery of the human imagination". He teaches also that "art affirms itself as a manifestation of feeling and does not possess value save from its lyrical character and from the imprint of the artist's personality." Art is the spontaneous self-expression of the intuition of beauty which is unique and incommunicable.

English Aesthetics is not remarkable for range or depth or originality. In England the earliest writer to shed light on æsthetics is Bacon. He says : "That is the best part of Beauty which a picture cannot express; no, nor the first sight of the eye." There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion" (Essay on Beauty). As against the Aristotelian

22 INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

theory of art as imitation of nature, Bacon says that in Art we have “the shows of things submitted to the desire of the mind” and that art pleases “by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than the things themselves afford”. Dryden however says that “to imitate Nature well is the perfection of Art”. Shaftesbury says, in his turn, that “whatever in Nature is beautiful is only a faint shadow of the First Beauty” and “Beauty and Good are one and the same”. Francis Hutcheson (1694-1747) says that we recognise a Beauty in objects before we are aware of any advantage to be derived from them, and that there is a natural power of perception of beauty. Berkeley says that all minds have the ideas of order and harmony and proportion, and that beauty is that which pleases and that it consists “in a certain symmetry or proportion pleasing to the eye”. Joseph Spence says that the essence of Beauty is in colour and form and expression and grace. Hogarth says that it is in fitness, variety, unity, simplicity, intricacy and quantity. Burke’s essay on the Sublime and the Beautiful is valuable and profound work but does not contain the highest order of ideas on the subject. He says that the elements of beauty are smallness of size, smoothness of surface, and softness of colour. Hume affirms that the principles of taste are “uniform in human nature.” The great artist Sir Joshua Reynolds says that we must select the central and beautiful elements. He says : “Perfect Beauty, in my opinion, must combine all the characters which are beautiful in the species”. Coleridge says that beauty is harmony and results from a pre-established harmony between Nature and Man. “It exists pre-eminently where Life is superadded to Form, the freedom and movement of life in the confining form”. The Beauty of an object does not depend on its use or fitness or proportion. In an oyster the ugly shell is useful to it and the ‘pearl which is beautiful is due to disease. In the fine arts, the mental initiative must proceed from within and not from without.” Dean Milman says that the fine arts, though initiative in their origin, “become purely ideal, and present us with forms closely adhering to their types in Nature, but wrought to super-natural grandeur or beauty”, and there is in man an innate tendency towards the ideal. David Wilkie says that “art is only art when it adds mind to form”. John Flaxman gives us the dictum that “ Beauty is not merely an imaginary quality but a real essence may be inferred from the harmony of the universe”. Hogarth states the elements of Beauty to be the fitness of parts in the general design, variety, uniformity, symmetry, intricacy and

THE BEAUTIFUL THROUGH THE AGES

23

magnitude. Hazlitt says that the real function of art is “not in

making the eye a microscope, but in making it the interpreter and

organ of all that can touch the soul”, and that “beauty does not

consist in a medium but in gradation and harmony”. He says :

“Beauty consists in a gradation of colours, or symmetry of form;

sublimity arises from the source of power, and is aided by

contrast. The ludicrous is the incoherent, arising from weakness.

The ideal is not confined to creation but takes place in imitation.

Invention is only feigning according to nature”. He is a defender

of the imitative theory of Art. He says, however : “We still want

a Prometheus (in Art) to embody the inmost refinements of thought

to the outward eye, to lay bare the very soul of passion. That

picture is of comparatively little value, which can be translated

into another language........... for it is the excellence of every

Art to give what can be given by no other in the same degree”.

Henry Howard says that the perfections of Art are “deviations

from Nature” and that Art is “Nature rectified by her own per-

manent standard, and restored to her original perfection”, and

that proportion is the essence of beauty. According to Sir William

Hamilton æsthetic emotion is disinterested. He distinguishes

between Relative beauty which is a beautified utility and Absolute

Beauty which pleases us directly. George Ramsay says that asso-

ciation cannot create but can only arouse our sense of beauty and

that there is an original Cause or Source of Beauty in the world.

The views of Carlyle and Ruskin on the concept of the

beautiful are very valuable. Carlyle teaches that it is through

symbols that we pass from the visible to the invisible. He says :

“In all true works of Art we discern Eternity looking through

time, the Godlike rendered visible”.......a hierarch, therefore, and

pontiff of the world will we call him, the poet and inspired maker,

who Prometheus-like can shape new symbols and bring new fire

from heaven to fix it there”. (Sartor Resartus). He says in Latter

Day Pamphlets : “It is to the Fine Arts that the World’s chosen

souls do now chiefly take refuge, and attempt that ‘worship of the

Beautiful’ may thus be possible for them”. In Shooting Niagara

he says : “All real Art is the disimprisoned soul of Fact”. He says

again : “The Fine Arts divorcing themselves from Truth are quite

certain to fall mad, if they do not die”. He says elsewhere : “Ever

must the Fine Arts be if not religion, yet indissolubly united to it,

dependent on it, vitally blended with it as body is with soul”.

Ruskin shows the vitality interconnected character of art and

ethics and social life. To him beauty is spiritual and typifies the

24 INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

attributes of God. That Art is fundamentally beautiful is his gospel. But he has no clear philosophy of the Beautiful, though he makes us realise the unity of art and religion and morality. He says : “Life without industry is sin, and industry without art is brutality”.

David Scott says that “beauty is by itself and ultimate” and that there is no difference of opinion as regards beauty “except in the degree of perception or in the grounds of decision”. James Ferguson is of opinion that the beautiful is but an elaboration and refinement of the useful. George Butler says that in art “we look for something beyond the reproduction of the actual”. J. A. Symonds says that Art is nature and something more, and that it is the “synthetic, intellectual, spirit-penetrated beauty to which the arts aspire.” Professor Blackie and Professor Bain have each given an elaborate analysis of the æsthetic mood. W. B. Scott says that harmony and symmetry are of the essence of beauty, that “all architecture is the triumph of symmetry”, and that it is “not reproduction or imitation of Nature; on the contrary, it overcomes the law of gravitation by constructive devices”. He affirms the unity of the good and the beautiful and the true. The poet W. Barnes says that the beautiful in Nature is the result of God's creative will and that the beautiful in Art “is the result of the unmistaken working of Man in accordance with the beautiful in Nature”, and that we must have “an eye to see Nature, a heart to feel Nature, and boldness to follow Nature.” Miss Cobbe says that to the poet “creation itself is a divine drama of Prometheus unbound” and that “the poetry of Nature and the poetry of Art alike are God's revelations of the Beautiful”. Professor Seeley says that “Art is one of the natural forms assumed by joy” and that it is play or sport. But the play impulse becomes art only when there is order and symmetry and unity. Delight is expressed by rhythm and proportion. Rhythm is regularity in Time; and Form is regularity in Space. Imitation and Rhythm are the passive and the active principles in Art. E. J. Poynter is a realist in art but he says that the artist must see the deeper truths of Nature and reproduce them in art. Bradley considers that the Absolute transcends the Beautiful while Bosanquet hold that the Absolute is immanent in the Beautiful. Lawrence Binyon says : “We too should make ourselves empty that the great soul of the universe may fill us with its breath”.

We find that the scientific point of view is urged by Darwin and Herbert Spencer and Grant Allen. Darwin says that physical beauty is a factor in sexual selection and thereby in the propagation

THE BEAUTIFUL THROUGH THE AGES

25

of the species and that birds appreciate brilliant colours in their

mates and ornament their nests, and that some animals have a

higher sense of beauty than some men. He says also that music is

a peculiar human faculty and has little or no connection with the

stress of natural evolution. Herbert Spencer takes his stand on

the doctrine of play or sport. But art is not mere relaxation from

work but is intense imaginative activity. Spencer points out that

man, unlike the animals, does not allow his energies to be absorbed

by the hunt for food and sex. The eye and the ear are less life-

serving than the tongue which is the organ of taste and have hence

got an æsthetic character. The love of possession is unconnected

with the æsthetic impulse. Freud takes his stand on psycho-

analysis and regards art as the imaginative fulfilment of repressed

sexual desire. But this attitude exalts sex which is only one aspect

of life to the height of the supreme aspect of life. Grant Allen says

that the æsthetically beautiful is that which affords the maximum

of stimulation with the minimum of fatigue or waste. He says

further that when gratification is connected with our own person-

ality the pleasure is "too monopolist to reach the æsthetic level, but

when it is unconnected in thought with our own personality, it be-

comes a subject of æsthetic enjoyment." He says that man's taste for

bright colours was derived by him from his frugivorous ancestors.

A. R. Wallace attacked this theory. But Grant Allen replied in his

book on The Colour Sense that the highest works of art are only

"the last link of a chain whose first link began with the insect's

selection of bright hued blossoms". But on the whole the biolo-

gical view of beauty and art is onesided and defective. It regards

beauty merely as a factor conducive to the development of the

species and as being related to the vital functions and the animal

impulses. But beauty need not be co-existent with youth and

health and has an origin and a value all its own.

John Todhunter says that the beautiful is the infinite loveliness

which we realise by reason and by love, "knowing and feeling being

necessary to each other." Form is static while rhythm is dynamic.

What is beautiful is symmetrical form and harmonious rhythm. The

seven colours of the spectrum are related to the seven notes of the

musical scale. Beauty resides in order and proportion and is an

expression of the Invisible. Beauty is joy and not mere pleasure. It is

a disinterested pleasure, a sympathetic pleasure, a spiritual pleasure.

It is "a rapture of love, like that of Endymion for his goddess, of

a mortal for an immortal, who perpetually melts from his embrace".

It is "the revelation of a more perfect order of things". Canon

4

26

INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

Mozley says that Beauty in Nature is the visible disclosure of Reason. “The glory of Nature resides in the mind of Man” . . . . . Nature is partly a veil and partly a revelation”. Tyrwhitt points out that animals and birds are not affected by the glories of the skies and that the sense of beauty in man is “a spiritual supplement to the sense of sight”. In nature structure discloses mind and design whereas form and colour reveal beauty. William Morris says that the function of art is “to make work happy and rest fruitful” and that the haste of modern life and its stress and strain are alien to art. “The monster who has destroyed Beauty is Commercial Profit”. Miss Lucy Crane says that “art is a universal language intelligible to the whole world alike”. Professor Ker points out that art is a revelation and vindication of freedom and cannot be explained by physiological factors which refer only to its conditions of self-expression. Pater says that all the arts tend “towards the principle or condition of music”, wherein the distinction between matter and form is obliterated. He makes the sensuous element the dominant factor in æsthetics. E. S. Dallas says in his work on Poetics that art is the harmonious and unconscious activity of the soul. Professor Knight says that beauty is the union of the subject and the object, the drawing forth from nature of that which is cognate to man, and the recognition in oneself of what is common to all nature.

American æsthetics is not of a striking order of merit and is a comparatively obscure descendent of British Æsthetics. But Emerson and Santayana have given us valuable and fruitful æsthetic ideas. Emerson says that Nature “satisfies us by its loveliness” without any reference to its utility. Beauty is “a mark set upon virtue”. “Truth and goodness and beauty are but different faces of the same All.” “For beauty, truth and goodness are not obsolete, they spring eternal in the breast of man. And that eternal spirit whose triple face they are, moulds them for ever, for his mortal child, images to remind him of the Infinite and Fair”. “From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing but the light is all”. G. S. Morris says that art is not “the representation of something seen, but the representation of something to see, which is akin to our nature, towards which truest being strives.” “The truest art is the interpreter of true, real and essential being, and “our inner selves art at home, however unconsciously to ourselves, in an ideal realm of perfect being”. Professor Dewey says that æsthetic feeling excludes the feeling of ownership as well

THE BEAUTIFUL THROUGH THE AGES

27

as utility and is characterised by harmony and creativeness. George Santayana says in his Reason in Art : "The artist, being

a born lover of the good, a natural breeder of perfections, clings to his insight". Art is superimposed on Nature and is an addition

to the animal impulse.

Even more than the noisy critics and æsthetic theorists, who often show more verbosity than insight, the artists and the poets

have indicate the really vital nature and elements of æsthetic feeling and delight. I shall show presently how admirably the

Indian artists and poets, even more than the great Indian æstheticians, have done the work. It is hardly possible in this brief book

to set forth the various admirable expressions of the æsthetic mood and spirit by the western artists and poets. I can but give a few

indications here. The Greek conception of the three Graces—Aglaia and Thalia and Euphrosyne who are the charming and

beautiful attendants of Venus,—the concept of the Muses, and the Homeric description of the award of the queenship of loveliness by

Paris as between Here and Pallas and Aphrodite are among the finest of the western concepts of the beautiful. The concept of

Apollo "god of the golden bow and of the golden fire and of the golden hair and of the golden fire" and god of prophecy and song,

and the stories of Amphion whose harp-music made the stones move of their own accord and build the city wall, and of Orpheus

whose lyre won back Eurydice from Hades and of Memnon's statue which gave forth music when touched by the first rays of

the sun, are other fine ideas. Probably the Greek ideas which are the finest and the richest in suggestion are contained in the

stories of Cupid and Psyche and of Endymion and Cynthia—which suggest the mutual seekings of the human soul and of Eternal

Love, and the self-dedicated search of the æsthetic spirit for the vision and experience of Perfect Beauty. It is these and similar

rich æsthetic ideas and concepts that hold the world's imagination captive even to-day though ancient Greece and her culture have

vanished for ever and are shadows more shadowy than the fabled souls ferried over by Charon into the under-world.

Among the modern painters who have given us a presentation of the nature of beauty and art, I may refer here to the great

painters, E. Burne Jones and Turner. E. Burne Jones says : "Realism ! Direct transcript from Nature? I suppose by the time

the 'photographic artist' can give us all the colours as correctly as the shapes, people will begin to find out that the realism they

28

INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

talk about is not art at all but science; interesting no doubt, as

a scientific achievement, but nothing more. . . . . . Transcripts from

Nature ! What do I want with transcripts? I prefer her own

signature; I don't want forgeries more or less skillful. . . . It is the

message, the 'burden' of a picture that makes its real value." He

says further : "You see that it is these things of the soul that are

real. . . . the only real things in the universe". As stated above

already, the supreme artist Turner says : "When the great artist

speaks, whether in words or music, he speaks of a world that is

beyond time and space and beyond all ideas of good and evil, of

today or yesterday, and he speaks of the world because it is the

world in which he dwells". . . . . . We demand of a great artist

neither tricks nor the vivid expression of our own passions but

a profounder and wider consciousness than we possess ourselves.

The values are entirely spiritual."

Among the modern poets, Dante says that the poet is "the

scribe of Eternal Love". Shakespeare says that

"as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shape and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name".

He says also:

"O'er that art

Which you says adds to nature, is an art

That nature makes".

Pope says that "all Nature is but Art unknown to thee". Young

says : "The course of Nature is the art of God". Thomson says :

"But who can paint

Like Nature? Can imagination boast,

Amidst its gay creation hues like hers"?

Wordsworth says about the artistic and poetic mood :

"In such access of mind, in such high hour

Of visitation from the living God,

Thought was not, in enjoyment it expired".

THE BEAUTIFUL THROUGH THE AGES

29

He teaches that artists add

"the gleam

The light that never was on sea or land

The consecration and the poet's dream".

Coleridge says : "Poetry is essentially ideal; it avoids and excludes

all accidents". He defines beauty as the plastic moulding of

matter by the spirit into a symbol or shrine of the spirit.

Shelley describes the poet thus :

"Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses

But feeds on the ærial kisses

Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses

But from these create he can

Forms more real than living man,

Nurslings of immortality."

He describes Music as "revealing

A tone

Of some world far from ours

Where music and moonlight and feeling

Are one".

He says that "Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of Divi-

nity in Man". His Prometheus Unbound describes the married

harmony of the Spirit of Man and the Spirit of Nature. His

Epipsychidion attempts to describe the quintessential spirit of

Beauty in quivering words. Keats, the most Greek of English

poets, has sought to express in Endymion the passionate and

absorbed quest for Beauty, and proclaims in Hyperion that "it is

the eternal law

The first in beauty should be first in might".

In his Ode on a Grecian Urn he teaches that

"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty—that is all

Ye know on earth and all ye need to know".

Goethe says :

"Each age has sung of beauty—

He who perceives it is from himself set free".

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INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

Mathew Arnold says that poetry is a criticism of life and “that the grand power of poetry is its interpretative power” and that it must have natural magic as well as moral profundity.

Lowell says :

He gazed on all within him and without him,

He watched the flowing of Time’s steady tide,

And shapes of glory floated all about him

And whispered to him and he prophesied”.

I have thus far tried to achieve the impossible task of compressing Homer in a nutshell. I have tried to compress twenty-five centuries of western æsthetics into as many pages. I have had to draw largely on Professor Knight’s admirable work on The Philosophy of the Beautiful, because though I have studied some of the leading æsthetical works from Plato to Croce, it is not possible to give the results of a first-hand study of all the works of all the æstheticians of the world. It is clear from the above review, brief and unsatisfactory as is, that man’s æsthetical impulses have a two-fold urge. This is because on the one hand man is a denizen of the relative and phenomenal world with all its finiteness and limitations and its mingled fascinations of loveliness and repulsions of ugliness and its incessant and insistent and persistent alternations and successions of joy and grief and pleasure and pain, whereas on the other hand he is related by psychic ties to the over soul, the Absolute, the Infinite, the Eternally Beautiful, the Perfection of Grace and Love, the Akhanda Sachchidānanda (the Infinite Being and Consciousness and Bliss). Browning says well :

“On the earth the broken arcs, in the heaven the perfect round”.

Art is the fusion of sensuousness and spirituality and sees the world of sense transfigured in the light spiritual. Thus in the world citizenship of art we have both rights and privileges. Hence in some moods we love the imitation of nature and in other moods we love the creativeness which brings before our mind’s eyes a fairer and finer realm of being. Nature reveals beauty but the evocation of feeling by it varies with the attitude of purity and disinterestedness and æsthetic fitness attained by us. The soul’s prerogative of investiture of Nature with meaning and emotional appeal is, perhaps, next to the rapturous realisation of God the noblest and highest and sublimest of human realisations.

THE BEAUTIFUL THROUGH THE AGES

31

It has been well said

"On Earth's there's nothing great but Man.

In Man there's nothing great but Mind".

Relative Beauty in Nature and Absolute Beauty in God are both realities to which the mind of Man is attuned. Beauty resides not in mere order or symmetry or balance or proportion or rhythm or unity in variety. These are all the garments and the jewels and decorations of the Goddess. Her mind is in Unity and Imagination and Emotion. But her soul is elsewhere. I shall show presently how the æstheticians outside India have not been able to see the essential soul of the Goddess of Beauty. The central glory which flashes as light from world to world and vibrates as harmony in the spheres is re-born as the arts of space and the arts of time. Art is thus the realiser and the revealer of the soul of Beauty in its relative and absolute aspects.

"She comes like the hushed beauty of the night

That looks too deep for laughter,

Her eyes are a reverberation and a light

From worlds before and after".

Chapter III

THE CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL IN ORIENTAL THOUGHT

After endeavouring to present the evolution of the concept of

the beautiful in western thought, I proceed to deal with the general

aspects of the concept as evolved in eastern thought, before I

take up the Indian concept of the beautiful. I do not mean by

this that love of beauty is a peculiarly western or eastern pheno-

menon. It is inborn in humanity, and no people have been

without it. But the forms and formulæ of the concept vary in

the west and in the east.

In Asiatic culture we find three unique elements—kinship

with nature and a sense of the sanctity of life and a clear spiritual

vision. Swami Vivekananda said in a memorable passage :

"There is another type in Asia. . . . . . In the midst of all these

surroundings, the oriental love of the beautiful and the sublime

took another turn. It looked inside, and not outside". This

power of introspection is the most important characteristic of the

oriental concept of the beautiful. By it man was able to turn

his gaze inward and Godward, and have visions of a new conse-

cration of life. It brings us, as described in Wordsworth's famous

Ode,

"Obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things",

and

"High instincts before which our mortal Nature

Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised".

Its voice is the other voice as described in Tennyson's The Two

Voices

"Who forged that other influence

That heat of inward evidence,

By which he doubts against the sense?

THE BEAUTIFUL IN ORIENTAL THOUGHT

33

The type of Perfect in his mind

In Nature can he nowhere find.

He sows himself in every wind”.

In this view it brings to us again and again “a little flash, a mystic

hint”.

In fact the mystic feels the majesty and beauty and glory of

the Soul even more than the majesty and glory and beauty of

Nature. But mysticism is not mere piety. It does not rest in

creed or dogma or ritual but moves into the sanctuary of emotion.

It seeks grace by prayer but loves more the way of adoration to

attain union with the Beloved. It is full of humility at one time

and of self-exaltation at another time, according as it is in a state

of separation from, or of union with, the object of its search and

worship. It recognises and realises and reveals the immanence

and the transcendence of God. At one and the same time it

recognises and realises and reveals the identity of Man and God

(Tat Twam Asi). To it Nature is the manifestation and the mirror

of God. It thus rises to the fusion-point of Beauty and Love and

Bliss. This mood is beautifully expressed by Plato and Plotinus.

Plato says : “For he who hath thus far had intelligence of love,

and hath beheld all fair things in order and aright, he drawing

near to the end of things lovable shall behold a Being marvellously

fair. ...... Beauty only and alone and separate and eternal,

which, albeit all other fair things partake thereof and grow and

perish, itself without change or increase or diminution endures for

everlasting”. Plotinus says with equal truth : “Often times when

I awake out of the slumber of the body and come to a realising

sense of myself, and retiring from the world outside, give myself

up to inward contemplation, I behold a wonderful beauty. I

believe then that I verily belong to a higher and better world, and

strive to develop within me a glorious life, and become one with

the Godhead. And by this means I receive such an energy of

life that I rise far above all other things, even the intelligible

world. What then must he experience who now beholds the

absolute beauty in and for itself in all its purity, without corporeal

shape, freed from all bondage to time and space? And this there-

fore is the life of the gods and of divine and happy men, a liberation

from all earthly concerns, a life unaccompanied with human

pleasures, and the flight of the alone to the Alone”. Thus the

mystic’s sense of the contact of the human spirit with the divine

is an intense inner realisation. He ascends to this realisation by

5

34

INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

transcending the life of sense-delights and of mental desires. This

transcendence is not by destroying them but by refining and trans-

muting them. His renunciation and service are due to an outflow

of love which itself is due to an outflow of Bliss.

I shall show this full glory of this consecrated introspection

in India in the next chapter. But it is inherent in the Orient as a

whole. There need be no wonder in our finding it in Buddhism which

is the daughter of Hinduism. It is felt in the famous Om mani

padme hum (I am the jewel in the lotus). We find it also in

Zoroastrianism but not in abundance because it stresses more the

moral aspect of the divine order than the beauty aspect and the

love aspect and the bliss aspect of God and broke away from

Hinduism before Hindu thought blossomed into its fairest flowers.

We find it in Sufi poetry which is a fragrant flower of Islamic

feeling. Jami sings in his poem Yusuf-u-Zuleika :

"His Beauty everywhere doth show itself

And through the forms of earthly beauties shines

Obscured as through a veil".

He says again :

"Each speck of matter did he constitute

A mirror, causing each one to reflect

The Beauty of his visage".

Hadland Davis thus sums up the Sufi thought : "Love God's light

in men and women and not the lanterns through which It shines,

for human bodies must turn to dust; human memories, human

desires fade away. But the love of All-Good, All-Beautiful remains,

and when such is found in earthly life it is God finding himself in

you, and you in Him. That is the supreme teaching of Sufism, the

religion of Love". We find the introspective note also in

Christianity and especially in the Psalms and the Proverbs and the

Song of Solomon and in Christ's teaching and in the utterances

of Christian mystics and saints.

"Thou visitest the earth and waterest it;

thou greatly enrichest it with the

river of God which is full of water.

... they shout for Joy, they also sing" (Psalms)

THE BEAUTIFUL IN ORIENTAL THOUGHT

35

"Then I was by Him, as one brought up

with Him; and I was daily

His delight, rejoicing always before Him". (Proverbs).

"His left under my head, and His

right hand doth embrace me".

"My beloved is mine and I am His,

He feedeth His flock among the lilies".

(The Song of Solomon).

The wonderful mystic note in Christ's teaching has not yet been

well understood and loved in the west, though twenty centuries

have passed since His blessed feet trod His beloved earth. I

firmly believe that India will reveal Him in full to the world,

though India will not regard Him as the only saviour or as the

only son of God. To adopt the title of Stanley Jones's famous

book, Christ is now the Christ of the Indian Road. It was Christ

that took western thought and art beyond Egyptian outer vastness

and Grecian outer loveliness into the sublimities and sanctities of

inner life. Lord Lindsay says in his Sketches of the History of

the Christian Art : "It is the depth, intensity, grandeur, and

sweetness of the emotions at the command of the Christian artists

as compared with those of the ancients". In ancient western art

pain and sorrow were taboo. It was Christianity that taught man

how to sublimate and sanctify pain. Oscar Wilde says : "Not

width but intensity is the true aim of modern art". Christ further

led the human spirit out of mere formalism and ritualism and

and Pharisaism into God's open air and beautiful creation. Oscar

Wilde points out in his De Profundis that "Christ's place indeed

is with the poets". He says : "His miracles seem to me to be as

exquisite as the coming of Spring and as natural. . . . If His place

is not among the poets, he is the leader of all the lovers. . . . Indeed,

that is the charm about Christ, when all is said he is just like a

work of art. He does not really teach one thing, but by being

brought into his presence, one becomes something. And every-

body is predestined to his presence". He says about his own inner

yearning : "The Mystical in Art, the Mystical in Life, the Mystical

in Nature—that is what I am looking for. It is absolutely neces-

sary for me to find it somewhere". It is the glory of Christ that

he taught man that the Kingdom of God is within and that "blessed

are the pure in spirit for they shall see God".

36

INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

The introspective mood is found abundantly in Thomas á Kempis's Imitation of Christ but such abundance is really due to the Bible. It is the most famous devotional book in modern literature. Fontenelle calls it "the finest work that has proceeded from the pen of man, the Gospel being of divine origin". It begins with the blessed words of Christ that "he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life". Kempis says : Come then, believing soul, to work, and employ all thy diligence to prepare thy heart for thy Beloved. . . . This One is enough, for He is all the world." He says again : "O thou overflowing spring of endless love ! How shall I worthily magnify Thee, how can I forget Thee?" He says again : "For Thou my God, art the best and most excellent being; in Thee alone is plenty and fulness, sweet refreshment, peaceful comfort, and ravishing delights, the perfection of Beauty and charming graces, true honour and adorable greatness. . . . And I have found by long experience that all Thy other favours, nay, all Nature, is too short and narrow to satisfy my soul, whose unbounded desires exalt and stretch themselves far beyond all present enjoyments, and can be filled and rest contented with nothing less than Thee. . . . . O my beloved Lord, King of the Universe, knit me to Thee with the bands of an entire and holy affection. Let me at liberty from this clog of earth, and give me wings of ardent zeal and pure devotion, that I may soar aloft, and take my flight higher than heaven itself, and find my rest in Thee". He says again : "Unite me to Thyself with inviolable bonds of holy love; so shall my soul be satisfied; for Thou alone canst answer all my longings, and the whole world without Thee is trifle, and emptiness and nothing." Similarly in St. Francis de Sales, Tauler, Madame Guyon, Saint Teresa, and other Christian mystics, we meet tha same sense of ecstatic devo-tion to God.

I have dealt thus far with the mystical and introspective note in the Oriental concept of the Beautiful, because it is the most vital element in that concept. A symbol is not a cold formula or even a pictorial and imaginative condensed representation. It is electrical; it has magical powe.; it palpitates with a life divine. Holmes says in The Professor at the Breakfast Table : "When a given symbol which represents a thought has lain for a length of time in the mind it becomes magnetic in its relations, it is traversed by strange forces which did not belong to it. The world, and consequently the idea it represents, is polarised". Such polarised sounds and words and ideas which are full of the divine

THE BEAUTIFUL IN ORIENTAL THOUGHT

37

life are found in plenty in the Orient. European and American literature and art have to go to dead Greek symbols and ideas for presentation and representation. The Orient has a wealth of living symbols of its own. The Dhyani Buddha and the Cross and the Crescent are only the highest of the innumerable oriental symbols which are of the essence of the essence of the oriental concept of the Beautiful and which are intimate inner realisations and not mere formulæ or condensed statements.

Equally important is the wealth of the imagery. Nature was beautiful in Greece, and it is the imagery adopted by Greece that now pervades western literature. But in the Orient Nature is both beautiful and sublime. In Asia we have tropical splendours of vegetation and vivid pageants of the skies. The highest mountain range is here. There are broad life-giving rivers bearing the blessings of God to Man. There are also rolling and barren deserts and vast stretches of dense jungles and forests. We have not mere creeks and gulfs and bays but illimitable storm-tossed oceans full of terror and vastness beneath the calm canopy of heaven. Hence we find in the Bible and in the Koran, no less than in the Veda and the Zend-A-vesta and the Buddhist gospels as well as in oriental poetry and drama and art, a varied and vivid splendour of imagery.

Though there are also various other aspects which deserve attention, I would mention only one more aspect here. It is the living power and desire to express the essence of the beautiful in simple parables and stories. This power is hardly known in the west. In Greece it was practically non-existent, and for the same reason it is non-existent in its intellectual descendants Europe and America. The essential nature of the oriental concept of the beautiful which led to its exaltation of simplicity and humility and meekness and purity as the openers of the door of mystic and introspective vision and delight led also to the external means of revealing and communicating the concept by the simple and democratic agency of stories and parables. Europe and America are democrats in politics but aristocrats in art and religion. But the oriental peoples are full of the truest and most vital democracy in literature and art and religion. The use of parables and stories as means of broadcasting the fundamentals of the oriental concept of the Beautiful are found in the Upanishads and the Zoroastrian and Buddhist scriptures, in the Bible and in the Koran, and in the utterances of great saints like Sri Ramakrishna and of great poets like Tagore even to-day.

Chapter IV

THE INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

I have thus far given the setting in which my brief exposition

of the Indian Concept of the Beautiful will become easy of com-

prehension. In the later chapters, I shall deal with details and

ramifications. Here I shall deal only with the mainspring and the

general aspects of the Indian Concept of the Beautiful. Art and

religion are in close union in India. Grunwedel says well: “The

religious character so deeply rooted in the national life of the

Indian races has also continued as the guiding principle in their

art”. The most vital element in the Indian Concept of the Beauti-

ful is the truth taught and reiterated in the Bhagavad Gita and

in the Upanishads that the core of being is Bliss (Ananda).In the

Bhagavad Gita we are shown the full octave of this core of Bliss

in life. How it pervades the universe of life and non-life is shown

in Chapter VII. How it pervades Paradise is shown in Chapter VIII.

How to realise it by Love is shown in Chapter IX. How the

infinite white light of Divine Bliss is broken into the coloured

splendours of its supreme manifestations is shown in Chapter X.

Let us ever remember the fact that the Vibhutis (manifestations)

of God among mountains and rivers and trees are said to be our

Himalaya, our Ganga, and our Aswathha. Nay, other and higher

Vibhutis also belong to our beautiful and blessed land. Of all

words He is Pranava. Among sages He is Bhrigu and Vyasa and

Usanas. Among Vidyas He is Adhyatma Vidya. Among

metres He is Gayatri. Among warriors He is Rama. We

can rightly behold and realise and enjoy the multi-tinted glory of

the universe only if He gives us the vision divine (divyachakshus)

which he gave to Arjuna as described in Chapter XI of the Gita.

न तु मां शक्यसे द्रष्टुमनेनैव स्वचक्षुषा ।

दिव्यं ददामि ते चक्षुः पश्य मे योगमैश्वरम् ॥

(Chapter XI Verse 8).

The Gita is the essence of the Upanishads. Sri Shankara states

the essence of both of them as Eternal Purity and Wisdom and

Freedom. (Nityashuddha Buddha Mukta Swabhāva). The concept

of Bliss is worked out in great detail in the Upanishads. In the

THE INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

39

Taittiriya Upanishad it is stated that Brahman is Ānanda (Bliss,) and that all things live and move and have their being in Bliss. It is stated there that the experience of beautiful and enjoyable things is the head of the bliss-aspect of the soul and that the enjoyment of beautiful and enjoyable things is its right wing and that the expression of beautiful and enjoyable things is its left wing and that the element of bliss is its soul and that the Over-soul is its eternal basis and support. It is further stated there that the prismatic splendour of the joy of the artist is one of the high levels of bliss and is far higher than mere sense delights though it is far below the plane of the white light of spiritual bliss. Aesthetic experience has been well described as “a many-coloured episode in eternity”.

Thus the concept of Ānanda is an æsthetic concept as well as a spiritual concept. In the same manner the concept of Rasa (the sweetness of Art) also is an æsthetic concept as well as a spiritual concept. In the Taittiriya Upanishad God is called Rasa (Rasō vai sah). He is the supreme delectable sweetness. The word rasa refers also to the physical aspect of taste, the æsthetic delight, and the science of alchemy. Thus the word Rasa is charged with the element of taste and the element of charm and the element of alchemy and the element of divinity. I have shown these truths in my work on Indian Aesthetics wherein I have given citations and illustrations from Sanskrit poems and works on Aesthetics and Art from Bharata to Appaya Dixita. In this work which is meant also and in the main for readers unacquainted with Sanskrit works and the intricacies of Indian æsthetical doctrine, I shall refer only to general features and ideas.

The æsthetic concept of rasa (aesthetic sweetness) and the cognate concept of bhāva (æsthetic emotion) will be dealt with by me in detail in a later chapter. I wish however to state here that India is unique in linking the spiritual concepts of Ānanda and Rasa with the æsthetic concepts of Ānanda and Rasa. I have already stated how all nature has three states of being: Sattva (equipoise), rajas (activity) and tamas (inertia). The soul has three bodies and five sheaths, viz., the gross body and the subtle body and the causal body, the first comprising the gross sheath of the physical body and the subtle sheath of energy and the second comprising the mental sheath and the intellectual sheath, and the last comprising the sheath of bliss. In art we find the pure sāttvic state full of disinterested æsthetic knowledge and

40

INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

delight, and in it we function in the sheath of bliss (the Ananda-

maya kosa). When rajas and tamas intervene—and they intervene

in all ordinary minds—the quality of the pleasure is lessened by

the influx of desire and even that lessened pleasure is chased by

pain. But in the truly artistic mind, we find a pure sāttvic content

and hence there is a deep and disinterested delight.

The highest æsthetical doctrine in India has been coloured by

Sri Sankaracharya's Adwaita philosophy. The great æstheticians

teach that in æsthetic rasa, as in spiritual rasa, the clamorous

sense-delights are stilled and the bliss-element (Ānandâmśa) of

the soul is liberated by the breaking down of its barriers (Āvarna-

bhanga). In æsthetic rasa, the bliss of the soul is coloured by the

emotional states of love (rati) etc., whereas in the spiritual rasa,

it is pure and complete and infinite. This aspect is well brought

out in Jagannatha Pandita's famous work Rasagangâdhara. Thus

the æsthetic delight is a reflected bliss (Pratibimbânanda). Vis-

wanatha calls it in his Sâhityadarpana as the brother of the bliss

of God-realisation (Brâhmananda sahodarah). Dhananjaya says

in his Dasarupaka that it is born of the bliss of the soul (âtma-

nanda Samudbhava). Manmata says : “Pleasure which is the

crown and glory of all its purposes, which is produced

by the enjoyment of Rasa, and which so fills the mind

that for the time being one is aware of nothing else”. सकलप्रयोजनमौलि

भूतं समनन्तरमिच रसास्वादनसमुद्भूतं विगलितवेदान्तरमानन्दं

The glorious manifestations (Vibhuthis) of God in the universe and the even

more glorious realisations of God in our heart kindle our love and

quell our desires and enable the bliss-element of the soul to rush

impetuously into self-realisation and self-expression. Achyutarâya

says in his Sahitya Sara that the bliss of the soul is reflected in

such a calm emotional state just as the loveliness of a beautiful

maiden is reflected in a pure and polished mirror. Ânandavardhana

says in his famous Dhvanyâloka that familiar things have a new

manifestation of glory in the light of rasa just as in the spring

trees put on fresh and fair and fragrant flowers. In the enjoyment

of the beautiful we find freedom, disinterested delight, perfect

harmony and peace, and a setting free of the real nature of the

soul owing to its vision of a glimpse of God. The Child-heart is

as much needed to enter the Kingdom of Beauty as it is needed

to enter the Kingdom of God. Egoism and desire must go before

vision and delight can come in.

THE INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

41

Thus our great æsthetians teach that the bliss of the soul shines as love in the plane of the mind and as beauty in nature and in art and in men and women in the plane of vision, and as melody in the plane of sound. Beauty is thus the self-expression of Bliss in the realm of the senses just as love is the self-expression of Bliss in the realm of the mind. Far from the concept of the beautiful being unknown to India, there are many words conveying it, such as soundarya,ramaniyatā and chāruta. A Sanskrit verse says that beauty is that which reveals new and charming aspects every instant. Who that has seen the ever-changing and ever-new, and ever-beautiful aspects of nature by sun-light and by moon-light and by star-light, and the charming waves of feeling reflected in a beautiful woman's face can demur to such a description of the essence of Beauty?

All beauty is in the fact but a glimpse of the Absolute and Infinite Beauty of God. Sri Madhusoodana Saraswathi describes Sri Krishna as Soundarya sāra sarvasva (the supreme treasure of quintessential beauty). As stated above, in the loveliness of Nature and in human loveliness we see but His glory broken into many-tinted prismatic radiance. In yogic realisations we see the forms of glory—surpassing nature's splendours and human beauty—assumed by God out of the abundance of His grace to show us the self-veiled higher splendours of the Infinite so that we may eventually reach and attain the Infinite Beauty and Bliss. Beauty is thus the perfection of the Noumenon expressing itself in terms of the phenomena. Music is the incarnation of the Nāda-Brahman. Architecture and sculpture and painting are incarnations of the Ineffable Beauty of the Light of Lights.

Thus beauty is one of the ultimate imperishable values of life. Infinite Beauty and Goodness and Truth are absolute values and belong to the supra-temporal and hence eternal plane of being. Dean Inge says in his Outspoken Essays : "There are no other absolute values besides Goodness, Beauty, and Truth. Happiness for example, is not another absolute value, but is attached to the possession of any of the three". This, according to Indian thought, is faulty logic and imperfect realisation of Truth. It is Infinite Bliss (Ananda) that is the ultimate absolute value. It is the same as Truth (Sat) and as Consciousness (Chit). In relation to the world of phenomena it is Beauty and Love and Goodness, and is also omnipotence and omniscience and omnipresence. It is the ultimate unity of the Spirit that India was unique in realising and

6

42

INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

revealing to the world. The great and vital question is, whether consciousness or matter is the prius and the matrix. India affirms that consciousness and bliss from the prius and the matrix and form the ultimate absolute reality.

I have referred above to Yoga. I recur to it because the essence of the Indian æsthetic and spiritual experience is there. The modern man has but a half faith or an honest (?) doubt in regard to God. He is of course against God being endowed with human form. In this connection we may remember Mr. Gladstone's wise words uttered in March 1876 : “Here lay the secret of the paramount excellence of the Greek, that his art was ever aiming at the ideal and the infinite. And the true cause of this remarkable direction of the artist's purpose was and is to be found unless I am much mistaken in the specific character of his religion. Humanising the god, he was constrained to divinise the man, to invest his form, the central type and form of Beauty, with the strength, the majesty, the beauty and the grace of the superhuman. The effect was that he was always seeking something more than he had reached; like in this to the miser and to the saint, in both of whom the appetite grows with what it feeds upon”. The Indian mind has carried out in all its implications its central concept which is analogous to the idea of Christ that man is made in the image of God. The soul and the Oversoul being in a state of identity according to one school of Indian thought or in a state of an inseparable relation of union according to other schools, it is no wonder that they are alike in grace and glory. The soul, however, in its embodied state has limitations of knowledge and power and wisdom and bliss. The Oversoul takes human forms because that is the means by which it draws the soul unto itself so that the soul may realise its divine nature. Such wondrous names and forms and functions of the Oversoul are realised in Yogic experience and form the basis of Indian iconography and image-worship against which iconoclastic thought and effort here and abroad have dashed in vain like waves beating on a jutting sky-pointing rock. The average man has sight, but the yogi has insight. The average man has the tuitions of nature, the yogi has the intuitions of God. The Greek mind, merely by the stress and power of imagination which as Wordsworth calls is only “reason in its most exalted mood”, humanised God and divinised man. But the Indian mind, by its yogic realisations, born of power-imbued sounds and of tranquilisation of desire and of com- plete concentration of mind resulting in illumination from a

posture and concentration of mind resulting in illumination from a

THE INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL 43

superterrene source, revealed to the world the glory of the Infinite

self-veiled in finite forms of dazzling beauty and dreaded power.

In such æsthetic and spiritual concepts as Lakshmi and Saraswathi

and Venugopala and Seshasayana and Nataraja, India has given

to the world her visions of the God-filled heart,—visions of beauty

and power and glory, finite yet infinite, visible yet supreme. The

Greek vision of human beauty was an abstraction, being a combi-

nation of the best elements found in many forms. The Indian

vision of human beauty was an inner realisation of the ever-true

and immortal forms of the divine in exalted moods of yogic medi-

tation where the subject and the object blend into something

higher than both. Mohendra Nath Dutt, who is a brother of the

great Swami Vivekananda, says in his Dissertation on Painting :

"In representing an ideal the painter really represents his own

spirit, his dual self, through the medium of exterior objects. In

a profound state of identification the inner and outer layers of the

spirit are separated; the external layer or the visible part of the

spirit is identified with the object observed, and the constant or

unchanging part remains the serene observer. The one is Lila

(the play), the other Nitya (Eternity). We cannot see what is

beyond, for it is Avyaktam, the inexpressible state". Commenting

on this passage, Romain Rolland says : "It is not astonishing that

many great Indian artists, who have passed through this discipline,

finally become saints".

Another special feature of the Indian concept of the beautiful

is the result of Indian psychology. Western psychology has not

till this day clearly differentiated between the soul and the mind.

Indian psychology alone has made such a clear differentiation. The

mind is the organ of knowledge and pleasure and pain, and the

soul is in its nature pure consciousness and bliss. The concept of

pleasure (sukha) and of bliss (ānanda) are quite separate and

desperate altogether. Pleasure is selfish and individual and pheno-

menal and relative but bliss is absolute and infinite. Pleasure is shot

through with pain and is often preceded and followed by pain and is

of the nature of agitation of mind but bliss is unalloyed and unlimit-

ed and is full of composure and peace. Tagore calls such a feeling

of infinite bliss as Sarvānubhuthi or viswabōdha (realisation of the

infinite). Our ancients called it as the akhanda sachidananda

sākshātkāra (realisation of the infinite being and consciousness

and bliss).

A further element of new and original truth has been intro-

duced into the Indian concept of the beautiful by the Indian

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INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

doctrin of Karma. Kalidasa says in verse 2 in the Fifth Act in Sakuntala that the reason why, on seeing beautiful objects and hearing harmonious sounds, even a happy man becomes full of longing and melancholy is that he remembers, without the experience rising to the surface of the waking consciousness, the companionships which he had in previous birth and which are rooted in his emotional nature. Our realisations of the beautiful and our powers of expression of beauty in art are carried from birth to birth, and the fitter we become to behold the Ineffable and Integrate Beauty the more vividly do we realise it in life and in Art. While Indian aestheticians were quite aware of the importance of rhythm, harmony, proportion, order, symmetry, balance, unity in variety, colour, form, brightness, and grace, they were acute and careful enough to affirm that the most vital elements are intentive vision (yoga), joy (ānanda), emotion (rasa), creativeness, suggestiveness and spirituality.

Thus art, according to the Indian theory and practice, should be idealistic and creative and suggestive and serene. The stories relating to the birth of the Ramayana and the Bhâgawatha are wonderfully sweet and suggestive both in themselves and in regard to the purpose of art. The story of the origin of the Ramayana shows that poesy was born out of pity when Valmiki chided a hunter whose cruel arrow pierced and killed a male bird leaving its mate fluttering in grief and agony. The story of the origin of the Bhâgavatha shows that even after all the ideals of the worldly life were described, Vyasa felt a void in his heart until he wrote a work devoted solely to the description of the Eternal Beauty and Bliss of God. Both in the Ramayana and the Maha Bharatha the poems do not stop with the vanquishment of the unrighteous and the victory of the righteous but move on towards the fulfilment of life by relation to the super-life. The goal is not the attainment of an earthly throne but the attainment of perfection. In Sakuntala the great poet Kalidasa suggests that art, like Sakuntala, is the child of earth and heaven, of bhoga (pleasure) and tyaga (renunciation). It is the son of Sakuntala—the soul reborn in Art—that is worthy of having the widest and highest earthly power.

The Indian concept of the beautiful did not merely shine in the realm of the ideal but pervaded real life as well. The Indian refinements of dress and decoration, and the delicate graces and sanctities and polished elegances of Indian erotics should be borne in mind. The graceful costumes of the Indians, and especially of

THE INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL 345

Indian women, are well-known and universally admired. Though the love of jewellery has been carried to excess, there is no doubt that the eye was well trained to realise the heightening of natural charm by appropriate decoration, though, as Kalidasa says in Sakuntala, it was well-known that anything will set off and heighten perfect loveliness. Vâtsyayana says in his Kâmasutra that a knowledge of sixty-four kalas or arts is necessary to a refined enjoyment of the joys of life.

In short the Indian concept of the beautiful turns on the twin poles of ânanda and rasa, and the very essence of beauty has nowhere been better expressed than in India. Indian art is the expression of the Indian concept of the beautiful. It is creative, suggestive, devotional, and serene. Sri Sankaracharya says again and again that a kavi is a krânta darsi, i.e., a person who sees far and wide and deep and knows and reveals the truth of things. Aesthetics have always been highly prized in India. It is described by two expressive words—Alamkâra and sâhitya (the decorator of life and the comrade of the soul). The Indian mind has always been able to link life and super-life, body and soul, earth and heaven, and has always belonged to the

"Type of the wise who soar but never roam, True to the kindred points of heaven and home."

I have thus far dealt with some of the vital and central and general aspects of the Indian concept of the beautiful. I shall go into the details later on. I wish however to point out that in the Indian concept of the Beautiful there is much that is not found in western aesthetics and is of enduring value. Of course in the Greek aesthetics and in modern aesthetics there are elements which are of great value and which are not so prominently found in India. In the element of fidelity to nature, in mass effects, in the combination of anatomical correctness and artistic representation, and in romantic love and its artistic expression the west has explored new avenues of aesthetical expression. The Parthenon and the Gothic spire Apollo de Belvedere and Venus of Milo, the Madonna in the Sistine Chapel, the Symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven, the dramas of Shakespeare, etc. are achievements which fill us with a profound admiration. The concepts of Prometheus and of Endymion and Diana and of Cupid and Psyche, and the concepts of Christ and Madonna have a wonderful power of enrapturing and elevating our hearts. But at the same time it must be realised with equal force here and abroad that the wonder-

46

INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

ful and vital central aesthetic ideas and concepts in India, the

unparalleled architecture and sculpture of India, the yogic visions

of gods and goddesses rendered into art-representations, the art-

ideas cognate to the spiritual ideas contained in such concepts as

Nataraja and Venugopala and Saraswathi and Lakshmi, the con-

cepts about the origin of poesy and its destiny, the concepts which

have led to that “linked sweetness long-drawn-out” which is known

as Indian music have a complementary value and

are needed to-day in modern aesthetical life, which, with all its

distorted evolution of art in the forms of its bizarre architecture

and sculpture and its funtastic cubism and post-impressionism in

painting and its crude realisms in literature and its amorphous

cacophonics in jazz music, is breaking away from all sane standards

and ideals in aesthetics and is hugging ugliness in its frenzied

passion for loveliness.

CHAPTER V

THE EVOLUTION OF THE INDIAN CONCEPT OF

THE BEAUTIFUL

I have thus far dealt with some of the vital elements of the

Indian concept of the beautiful. It is not widely known that the

evolution of the Indian concept of the beautiful is itself a beautiful

and vast concept. The history of such evolution extends over

twenty centuries and cannot be compressed within the limits of

a brief chapter. Further, new treasures are being unearthed and

revealed from musty manuscripts found in unexpected places. The

materials for a thorough and complete study of such history are

yet incomplete. I have tried to sum up elsewhere my estimate of

such evolution. I shall briefly show here only the general trend

of the evolution of the concept of Beauty in India.

Some of the finest gems of the Indian concept of the beautiful

are found in the Upanishads. In the Brihādāraṇyaka Upanishad,

spiritual bliss is compared to the bliss of human love. The vedic

concepts of ānanda and rasa have, as shown above, profoundly

influenced Indian aesthetical evolution. The Ushas hymns and

the Savitar hymns, etc., in the Rig Veda, the songs of the Sāma

Veda, the dialogues and stories scattered throughout the Vedas,

and the ecstatic descriptions of the Oversoul in the Upanishads

contain the basic poetic and artistic ideas which blossomed forth

abundantly in later poetic and dramatic literature and pictorial

and musical art. For instance the famous simile in the Kato-

panishad about the body as the chariot and the senses as the

horses and the mind as the reins and the intellect as the charioteer

and the soul as the owner of the chariot is a figure of speech that

has gone into the very heart of Indian literature.

The really vital sources of the vast science of Indian aesthetics

are the three great epics—The Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhāratha

and the Srimadbhāgavatha—and especially the Ramayana. Valmiki

is the poet's poet, the aesthetician's aesthetician, the sage of the

sages, and the saint of the saints. His similes and metaphors are

among the most famous and picturesque in the world's literature.

Even Kālidasa pays the highest homage to his genius. In Kāli-

dasa's own works we have brief and illuminating references to arts

and aesthetics. I have dealt in detail with them in my two volumes

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INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

on Kalidasa: His Period and Personality and Poetry, and the

Genius of Kalidasa: He is a famous master of upamâ (simile).

His poems and plays are replete with alamkâra (aesthetic

ornamentation) and guna (aesthetic quality of style) and rasa

(aesthetic emotion) and dhvani (aesthetic suggestiveness) and

auchitya (aesthetic appropriateness) and chamatkâra (aesthetic

originality). In his Vikramorvasîya he refers to the eight rasas

adumbrated by the sage Bharata in his famous Nâtyashastra.

The earliest and the best formal treatise on the concept of

the beautiful is Bharata’s Nâtyashâstra. As Kalidasa refers to him,

with great respect in his Vikramorvasîya as Bharata Muni, he must

have been long anterior to Kalidasa. In my volumes on Kalidasa,

I have shown that Kalidasa belongs to the first century B.C. It

was Bharata that elaborated the theory of rasa,. In a very famous

verse he points out that Rasa (æsthetic sweetness) is the

sthâyibhava (the dominating emotion) which is kindled by

vibhâvas—which are divided into Âlambana vibhavas (principal

exciting and stimulating causes, being the human factors in emo-

tion such as the lover or the beloved) and the uddeepana vibhâvas

(the accessory stimulating causes such as the moon, etc.)—and

which is manifested by the anubhâvas (external manifestations,

such as coy and shy and sidelong glances, smiles, etc.) and which

is intensified by vyabhichâribhâvas or Sanchâri Vibhâvas (ever-

changing and ever-rising and ever-setting minor collateral feelings

of pleasure and pain). This analysis is able and complete and

comprehensive. I shall elaborate these ideas further in a later

chapter. The prominent rasas (or moods of aesthetic emotion) are

sringâra, hâsya, karuna, raudra, vira, bhayânaka, bhibatsa and

adbhuta (love, the comic, pathos, fury, heroism, terror, disgust,

and the marvellous). The deities presiding over these rasas are

said to be Vishnu, Pramatha, Yama, Rudra, Indra, Kâla, Mahakâla,

and Brahma. These and other truths are described with a great

wealth of detail by Bharata. Among later writers, Bhoja thinks

that sringâra (love) is the primary rasa and that the other rasas

are derivative, whereas Visvanatha says in his Sâhitya Darpana

that the Adbhuta rasa (the Marvellous) is the basic rasa. I shall

deal with this topic also in extenso later on. I may mention also

that later aestheticians added Sânthî Rasa (peace). Rudrata men-

tions a tenth rasa viz. preyas (friendship). Viswanatha mentions

Vâtsalya (love for the young) as the tenth rasa. Thus rasa means

a primary and basic and pervasive æsthetic emotion which kindles

a feeling of disinterested delight. The theory and practise of

art led in India to the increase of the number of rasas and the

THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT

49

amplification of the content and application of each rasa. Sringâra (love) became amplified into bhakthi (love of God). Vira (heroism) was extended from mere yuddhavira (heroism in battle) to dharma vira and dâna vira and dayâ vira (heroism of virtue and heroism of munificence and heroism of compassion). This rasa was amplified also in satya vira (heroism of truth), vidyâ vira (heroism of knowledge), tapo vira (heroism of austerity), yoga vira (heroism of yoga), kshamâ vira (heroism of forgiveness, etc). Modern India is surging with patriotism and nationalism and is full of the cult of ahimsa and satyâgraha. It may add the heroism of patriotism (Desabhakti vira), the heroism of non-injury (Ahimsâ vira), etc. Thus the evolution of Art and Aesthetics has kept pace with the evolution of India's mind and soul, and Indian Aesthetics has been a growing art.

I do not propose to enter into details in this work in regard to the historical sequence of the great Indian writers on Aesthetics, their chronology and succession, their works and their ideas. Such a work has been done elsewhere by me and will swell the size of this volume very much, if I go into it in detail here, especially as there are many debated points of chronology in regard to the writers and their works. I may however state in general way the great writers on Aesthetics in their historical order and their works, tracing only the evolution of aesthetical ideas with some elaboration.

Bhatti belongs to the fifth century A.D. The tenth canto of his Bhatti kâvya contains illustrations of thirty-eight alankâras or figures of speech. The next great figure is Bhâmaha who was the author of the famous work Kavyalamkara and who propounded the view that the vital elements in poetic beauty are the figures of speech (alamkâra). An equally great aesthetician is Dandin who was the author of Kavyâdarsa. Udbhata belonged to the 8th century and was the author of Alankârasâra sangraha. Vâmana belonged to the same century. He is the author of Kavyâlankara sutra vritti and propounded the view that Riti (style) is the soul of poetry. Rudrata's Kavyâlankâra belongs to the 9th century A.D. Anandavardhana who is one of the greatest of the world's aestheticians belonged to that century. His famous work Dhvanyâloka has an equally famous commentary called Lochana by Abhinavagupta. He showed that dhvani (suggestiveness) is the soul of art. Rajasekhara belonged to the 10th century and was the author of Kâvya Mimamsa. Dhananjaya's famous work on dramaturgy (Dasarûpaka) and Mukula Bhatta's Abhidha

7

50 INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

vritti Matruka belong to the 10th century A.D. To the same century belongs the great work Vakrokti Jivita by Kuntaka who held that vakrokti (charming and figurative and unfamiliar description) is the essence of poesy. Mahima Bhatta's Vyaktiveka, Bhoja's Sarasvathi Kantabharana, and Kshemenḍra's Auchitya vichara charcha and Kavi Kanthabharana belong to the 11th century A.D. Kshemenḍra held that auchitya (appropriateness) is of the essence of Rasa. To the same century belonged Mammata who is one of the greatest of the æstheticians of the world and whose great work was Kāvya Prakasa. Ruyyaka, Hemachendra, and Vāgbhata are great aesthetical writers belonging to the 12th century. Amarachandra, Deveswara, Bhanudatta and Vidhyādhara belonged to the 13th century. To the same century belonged the famous works on aesthetics—Jayadeva's Chandrāloka and Visvanatha's Sāhitya darpana. Appaya Dixita's famous commentary Kuvalayānanda was written to elucidate Jayadeva's Chandraloka. He belonged to the 16th century. He discussed nearly 124 figures of speech—which is the largest number discussed in any work on poetics. Vāgbhata's Kavyānusāsana and Vidyanatha's Pratāparudriya belong to the 14th century. The last great classical writer on Aesthetics is Jagannatha who wrote Rasagangādhara in the seventeenth century. Later writers are Govinda the author of Kāvya Pradipa, Singabhupala, who is the author of Rasārnava Sadhakara, Rupa Goswami who is the author of Nātaka Chandrika and Ujjvala Nilamani, Kavi Karnapura who is the author of Alamkara Kausthubha, and others. Rajachudamani Dixita, the author of Kāvya Darpana, belonged to the 17th century A.D. The Sāhitya Sāra of Achyuta Raja belongs to the 18th century A.D. The names of nearly 900 works on Aesthetics are known but many of the works are not extant and available.

Thus the evolution of Sanskrit Aesthetics is a most remarkable chapter in the evolution of universal aesthetics and has had no peer or parallel anywhere else in the world. Aesthetics are known as Alamkāra and Sāhitya. I have shown how the Rasa school was the earliest to rise. Then came the emphasis on Alamkāra by the alamkāra school (consisting of Bhamaha and Dandi and Rudrata and Prateeharenduraja), the emphasis on riti (style) by the riti school of Vāmana, and the emphasis on Vakokti by Vakrothi school of Kuntala. The gamut became complete. It was reserved for Ānanda Vardhana to complete the octave in his emphasis on Rasa-Dhvani. Suggestiveness of rasa was shown by him to be the soul of art.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT

51

The vernaculars of India have been dominated by Sanskrit even in the realm of aesthetics, as Sanskrit is the real thread of the garland of the living languages in India. In Tamil Nād aesthetics (ani) are elaborated in a work called Dandi Alamkāram which is based on the Sanskrit work of Dandi. We do not find in it any new fruitful idea as regards the soul of Art. The entire possibilities of aesthetic experience had been charted already in Sanskrit.

Just as Indian metaphysics and Indian life felt the pressure of inner evolution and outer impact, so also did Indian æsthetics feel the forces and give responses in adequate measure. Buddhism and Islam and Christianity brought their quotas of æsthetical ideas which were gladly accepted. The Dhyâni Buddha, the Stupas and the Viharas, Islamic architecture culminating in the Taj, the evolution of the North Indian music, the Gothic architecture of the churches, and other manifestations of æsthetical evolution have become integral portions of the Indian concept of the beautiful. English literature has had a great effect on the Indian vernacular literatures. The modern æsthetic movements in the west have had their repercussions here and will give us that hold on reality and that love of external nature which in the later centuries seem to have been becoming less and less in Indian literature and art. But all the same the ancient and fundamental elements of the Indian concept of the beautiful are powerful even to-day and shine out in the poetry and music of Tagore and in the paintings of the Bengal school and in the yet vital architecture and sculpture and iconography of South India and her wonderful and divine music as given to the world by Dixitar and Tyagaraja Swami and must be preserved and perfected for the happiness and glory of India and for the enrichment of universal thought.

I may refer in conclusion to what is as yet an obscure chapter in the chapter of universal art, viz., the influence exercised by Indian art outside India. I shall show in later chapters how in Java, in Bali, in Cambodia, and in Eastern Asia generally Indian art-concepts and art-motifs had a dominant influence. Even distant China and Japan felt the influence of Indian Art. Dr. A. K. Coomaraswamy says : "The leading motifs of Chinese and Japanese building art of the pagoda and torii—are also of Indian origin." (The Arts and Crafts of India and Ceylon page 117). The Greek art certainly influenced Indian art to some extent in technique and in execution though not in regard to its vital art-ideas. It certainly influenced Gândhâran art. But the debt which Europe

52

INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

owes to Indian art is greater than India's debt to Greece in respect

of art. Not only did Persia in the time of Darius import Indian

artists to design and build and decorate his palace at Susa. Not

only were Indian artists sent by the Pāndyan king to Ceylon.

Mr. Havell points out how when the Huns and Mongols overspread

Asia and Europe they took Indian craftsmen abroad. He says:

"Indian idealism during the greater part of this time was the domi-

nant note in the art of Asia which was thus brought into Europe;

and when we find a perfectly oriental atmosphere and strange

echoes of Eastern symbolism in the mediaeval cathedrals of Europe

and see their structural growth gradually blossoming with all the

exuberance of Eastern imagery, it is impossible to avoid the

conclusion that Gothic architecture and Gothic handicraft owe very

much to the absorption by the bauhiitten of Germany, and

other Western craft-guilds, of Asiatic art and science, brought by

the thousands of Asiatic craftsmen who entered Europe in the first

millennium of the Christian era". He says further : "Byzantine

art and Gothic art derived their inspiration from the same source

-the impact of Asiatic thought upon the civilisation of the Roman

Empire. The first shows the effect upon the art of the Greek and

Latin races, the other its influence upon the Romanesque art of

Teutonic and Celtic races. The spirit of Indian idealism breathes

in the mosaics of St. Mark's at Venice, just as it shines in the

mystic splendours of the Gothic cathedrals; through the delicate

tracery of their jewelled windows, filled with the stories of saints

and martyrs; in all their richly sculptured arches, fairy vaulting

and soaring pinnacles and spires. The Italian Renaissance marks

the reversion of Christian art to the pagan ideals of Greece, and

the capture of art by the bookmen, leading to our present

dilettantism and archæological views of art. When a new inspi-

ration comes into European art it will come again from the East;

but what irony there is in the present spectacle of the Christian

nations of Europe, in the twentieth century, unconsciously using

their influence to paganise the art of Asia!"

How does Indian Art stand to-day? In architecture we have

arrived at the age of confusion of styles and crudeness of idea and

execution. The Indian towns and cities of to-day take pride in

having buildings constructed in the European style which is not

calculated to bring into being comfort or loveliness. Mr. Havell

says : "If art is the mirror of the age, it must always be humiliat-

ing to any artistic Englishman to contemplate our miserable make-

believe Gothic and make-believe classic cathedrals, churches,

THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT

53

colleges, schools, offices of state, and historical monuments, and compare their banality, ugliness and squalor with the dignity, strength and greatness revealed in the splendid memorials of the Moghul Empire”. The best architects and sculptors yet existing in India were not utilised in constructing the Victoria Memorial at Calcutta or the New Delhi buildings. It is not only architecture and sculpture that are in such a pitiable plight. Indian painting was in an equally bad plight and is only now, after Ravi Varma brought a new passion for Indian subjects and Rabindranath Tagore revived the ancient spiritual suggestiveness, holding out a promise of great days yet to come. Indian music has fortunately been preserved pure and undefiled even to this day, mainly owing to the birth of a succession of geniuses of the first order in recent times. But Indian poetry is in a very bad way indeed. The great traditions and the wonderful æsthetics of India have been forgotten. Sanskrit and the vernaculars are woefully neglected. The Indian universities of to-day do not foster Indian poetry or art Mr. Havell says : “Indian art was born in the pilgrim’s camp and nurtured by the highest spiritual ideals; it can never thrive in the sickly artificial atmosphere of the European drawing-room. We have driven it from the great cities of India, it has no part in our civic life, and its last refuge is now in the villages and towns remote from European influence. But this last refuge will always be its surest strong-hold; when art in Europe gets back to the villages the real Renaissance will have begun. In the villages of India the true artistic spirit still survives, and, if we and educated Indians would know what true Indian art is, we must go there, where the heart of India beats, where the voices of her dead myriads still are heard, and learn a lesson that neither London nor Paris can teach”. Emerson says that art does not come at the call of a legislature. But in India life as well as legislature must combine to call Art in a devout spirit and then surely Art will come and rekindle beauty and power in our motherland.

CHAPTER VI

ASPECTS OF THE INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

I have thus far shown the essence and the evolution of the Indian concept of the beautiful. Before I proceed to take up the discussion of the fundamentals of the various fine arts in India and especially of Poetics which had the highest degree of elaboration in India, I shall describe the various aspects of the arts in India and the various directions in which our sense of the beautiful expressed itself in memorable and admirable ways. The Indian concept of the thirty-two śāstras (sciences) and the sixty-four kalās (arts) is an inclusive idea, the figure sixty-four being merely illustrative and not exhaustive, and shows to what a height of development India carried her evolution of the useful and decorative and fine arts by attaining equal excellence in the industrial arts and in the imaginative arts.

The various aspects of art are the useful or industrial arts, the decorative arts, and the fine arts. In industrial arts beauty is present but the primary consideration is utility. In decorative arts utility is present but the primary consideration is beauty. In the fine arts we have the worship of beauty for its own sake, and utility may be a bye-product. If we study the various industrial and decorative arts of India such as gold and silver and brass and copper and bellmetal work, carpets, woven stuff, wood work, inlaid work, enamelling, ivory work, jewellery, lacquer work, plates, pottery, etc., we find a fine sense of loveliness and a rare power of design and inventiveness and a remarkable deftness and delicacy of touch.

I shall take here only a few of these arts by way of illustration because it will require many volumes to deal with them fully and the main aim of this work is to deal with the Indian fine arts. In respect of woodwork, the Indians excelled in wooden domestic architecture, sculpture, image-making, etc. Travancore excels in this work. Roofing is often highly elaborated in structure and ornament with carved rafters and lovely pendants. It is however on pillars that the artists have lavished their skill. Dr. A. K. Coomaraswamy says : “The capitals or brackets are shaped into pendant lotus and tasselled forms, often massed one above the other, and sometimes provided with lateral struts carved

ASPECTS OF THE CONCEPT

55

as figures or horsemen or elephants. Similar forms are characteristic of doorways" (Arts and Crafts of India and Ceylon,

page 164). We find elaborately carved and panelled doors in

Punjab, Rajputana, Gujarat, Mysore and Travancore. We find

excellent carving in the balconies and window frames also. The

art of perforated windows was developed as it was desired to have

light and art without destroying privacy. The perforated designs

are geometrical or floral or include animal figures. 'The Indians

made also wooden bridges and excelled in the construction of

wooden ships. They excelled also in the making of wooden

chariots and cars. They did not make much domestic furniture

as the people generally squatted on the floor. But cots and swings

of wood were often made and used. The most remarkable

examples of woodwork were, however, the musical instruments

such as vina, tambura, drums, etc. Equally remarkable is the art

of inlaying wood with brass and ivory.

Ivory work was equally ancient and excellent. Mrichchakatika

refers a high ivory portal in the house of Vasantasena. Ivory

pillars decorated with rows of images are referred to in the Mahâ-

vamsa. Ivory puppets are stated in Vatsyayana's Kâma Sutra

and in the Bhavabhuthi's Mâlatimadhava. The latter work also

describes the cheeks of Kerala women as being fair like cut ivory.

Travancore is the home par excellence of ivory art work even

to-day. The Sinhalese ivory art is similar to the Travancore art.

In the Tanjore palace there is a small car with ivory rails and

overlaid with ivory plaques. The Tanjore artists decorate vina

and tambura by running coloured lac into engraving work done

on an ivory surface. In Vizagapatam and Mysore we see veneered

ivory work and ivory-staining. In Rajputana and in Kandy ivory

boxes, etc., are decorated with lines, circles and dots. Lac inlay

is used to decorate shell and ivory bracelets and shell conches.

Mysore has got ivory inlay art work and black lac inlay work.

Ivory is used to decorate doors. Ivory bangles are made in

Jodhpur. Ivory inlaid on wood is a Punjab art as well. The most

beautiful examples of this work are the inlaid doors of the main

entrance to the Golden Temple at Amritsar.

Even more remarkable is the Indian skill in polishing and

piercing precious stones. The Indians excelled also in the making

of beads of ruby, sapphire, crystal, etc. We find also painted

unglazed and glazed earthenware. In South India we find

especially in the groups of Pândava heroes huge earthenware

figures of horses and elephants. The art of decorating wooden

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INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

and other surfaces with gesso is also interesting. Artistic lac-work is found in coloured toys, etc. In Jaipur a coating of several layers of lac of diverse colours is laid on, thus enhancing the colour effect. In Ceylon coloured lac is drawn out by the finger-nail into long threads and applied to a warm surface, so as to create patterns of intricate loveliness. The artists in metal work also have achieved excellent results in India. The art of carving steel attained great excellence in Tanjore and in Rajputana. The art of encrusting, i.e., the art of inlay and overlay of one metal on another flourishes in Travancore and in Punjab. Dr. A. K. Coomaraswami says : "Gold or silver on steel, and silver or brass on copper, are the usual combinations." Bidri ware made of an alloy of zinc and lead and tin is another artistic type. Very beautiful copper and brass and bell-metal vessels and brass toys have been produced down to this day. Brass lamps of a very artistic workmanship are very common. Silver plates, jugs, trays, tumblers, bowls, etc., are equally common. Bronze, copper, brass, silver and gold images are made. The enamelling art also flourishes in India. Gold and silver jewellery also is often work of great artistic loveliness. Sir George Birdwood says that the Hindus "by their consummate skill through knowledge and appreciation of the conventional decoration of surface, contrive to give to the least possible weight of metal, and to gems, commercially absolutely valueless, the highest possible artistic value. '. . . This character of Indian jewellery is in remarkable contrast with modern European jewellery, in which the object of the jeweller seems to be to bestow the least amount of work on the greatest amount of metal." The Indian artistic technique, on the other hand, is to bestow the greatest quantity of work on the least quantity of surface".

Quite as excellent work has been done in weaving, embroidery, etc. Cotton and silk and woollen fabrics are mentioned even in the Vedas. The cotton fabrics were woven so fine that the finest muslins were called by such poetic names as "running water" and "woven air" and "evening dew". In South India muslins and silks woven with gold thread are made for turbans and scarves. Excellent dyeing has been long known in India. Mr. Elphinstone says : "The brilliancy and permanency of many of their dyes are not yet equalled in Europe". We have had also dye-painting and cotton printing, the former flourishing in Masulipatam. Mention should also be made of Kashmir shawls and wonderful carpets manufactured by Indian workmen.

TRAVANCORE WOOD CARVING

ASPECTS OF THE CONCEPT

57

This is hardly the occasion to go in detail into the history of the development of these arts but anyone who studies it will find that the arts and handicrafts of India have had a remarkable growth and evolution. The Indian eye is very sensitive to colour and design and the Indian finger is deft at giving expression to mental creations of loveliness. But unfortunately the Indian intelligentsia, despite their protestations of patriotism, have no real and practical love for the Indian arts and industries. The result is that one by one these great industrial and decorative arts of India are dying from lack of nourishment and encouragement. The Europeans are coming to realise that their tendency to overdress needs to be curbed and that their dress lacks fine curves and flowing grace and is more sombre than gay. The dress reform movement is active there. Professor Ross calls the Indian saree as “one of the beautiful types of women’s garbs” and hopes that “Indian women will never yield to the blandishments of western fashions”. But the Indians—even women—go in more and more largely for the European styles of dress which are being outlived and modified or discarded there. The reactions of this suicidal policy on our sense of beauty and on our weavers and their ideals are better imagined than described. I have taken dress only as an illustration. The degradation and deterioration of taste that is proceeding apace in all directions is visible to all and is lamentable in the extreme.

But I am specially concerned here with the Indian fine arts and the fundamental aesthetic concepts underlying them. Even in the fine arts there is a hierarchy. They have been classified into representational arts like sculpture and painting and poetry and non-representational arts like music and architecture. They have been classified also as spatial arts like painting and sculpture and architecture and temporal arts like literature and music. In architecture and sculpture the medium is intractable and stubborn, and hence in them the conquests of soul over matter, though wonderful, are not complete. In painting the medium is line and colour and the instruments are the canvas and the brush. Hence it has a subtler medium and a wider range. In music form and idea are in a state of perfect identity. In it we have the most intangible and subtle medium, i.e., the medium of sound. Carlyle says well : “Music is a kind of inarticulate unfathomable speech which leads us to the edge of the infinite and lets us for moments gaze into that.” It can bear the soul on its wings to the very throne of Grace. It can express, however incompletely, the inexpressible. But it is in poetry that we find the utmost expres-

8

58

INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

siveness. It can be architectonic and statuesque and pictorial and

musical and yet be more and be itself. Its power depends on its

vision and expression of the Ideal. Its medium is words which

are charged and electrified by contact with the hearts of generations

of men and women who were dynamos of emotion. Walter Pater

says that “painting, music and poetry, with their endless power of

complexity, are the special arts of the romantic and modern ages”.

Architecture and Sculpture and Painting are the arts of the

eye. Music is the art of the ear. Poetry is the art of the mind.

Out of the human senses, the most spiritual are the ear and the

eye. The eye has a wider range than the ear. It is a larger

window for looking at the multi-coloured and variegated and

wonderful universe. Though the ear is a window nearer the

sanctum sanctorum of the soul, the range of its outlook on the

universe is less than that of the eye. The phenomena of sight

kindle a wider range and variety of emotions, though the pheno-

mena of hearing can bring into existence a subtler and higher

order of feelings and realisations. In poetry the appeal is to the

mind which is both the inner eye and the inner ear and is yet

very much more. It has memory and anticipation and it can vision

the Ideal and it revels in creativeness. To the joys of sight and

sound, the poet adds the joys of the soul,

“The light that never was on sea or land

The consecration and the poet’s dream”.

I shall deal in the coming chapters with the Indian fine arts

as the manifestations of the Indian concept of the beautiful and

especially with its manifestation in Indian Poetry and Drama.

Each fine art has had a vast development and can be adequately

dealt with only by an elaborate treatise. But even in a tiny work

enough indications could be given to show how in every one of

the fine arts in India we have a remarkable blossoming of the

deepseated and fundamental æsthetical ideas of India. I may here

refer to the evidence given by Robert Richards about the Indians

before the British Commission in 1831 : “Let it be recollected that

in many branches of art their skill is absolutely unrivalled. Several

of their fabrics, such as muslins, shawls, embroidered silks, hand-

kerchiefs, etc., together with examples of workmanship in gold,

silver and ivory have never yet been equalled by British architects.

Their architecture, though peculiar, is of a superior order, and in

the construction of great buildings, they have exerted powers of

moving and elevating large masses, which are unknown to European

architects”.

CHAPTER VII.

INDIAN ARCHITECTURE

Ruskin’s Seven Lamps of Architecture is even to-day one of

the greatest books on the significance of the art of Architecture.

He says : “Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns

the edifices raised by men, for whatsoever uses, that the sight of

them may contribute to his mental health, power and pleasure.”

He describes the Seven Lamps of Architecture as Sacrifice, Truth,

Power, Beauty, Life, Memory and Obedience. It is not the test of

utility that is of importance in a fine art. It is the test of Truth

and Beauty that is the vital test in regard to it. Art is prepared

to use the best and most precious things for producing pure and

disinterested delight in man by using them for the service of God.

Ruskin says well that “domestic luxury must be sacrificed to

national magnificence.” That has been the secret of the greatness

of the Indian Art of Architecture. It is not that God wants a

grand house to live in but it is that man finds his truest happiness

only in dedicating his best work to God. Ruskin says well : “The

Church has no need of any visible splendours; her power is inde-

pendent of them; her purity is in some degree opposed to them.

The simplicity of a pastoral sanctuary is lovelier than the majesty

of an urban temple, and it may be more than questioned whether,

to the people, such majesty has ever been the source of any increase

of effective piety; but to the builders it has been, and must ever be.

It is not the Church we want, but the sacrifice; not the emotion

of admiration but the act of adoration; not the gift but the giving”.

It was the true spirit of intense and concentrated and combined

devotion that was responsible for the vast extent and unparalleled

richness of decoration which are characteristic of ancient Indian

temples. Such faith and devotion are hardly seen to-day. As

Ruskin says modern builders are capable of little and do not even

do the little that they can. Where are there to-day the architectural

achievements which he called “fair fronts of variegated mosaic”,

“those vaulted gates trellised with close leaves, those window-

laybrinths of twisted tracery and starry light, those misty masses

of multitudinous pinnacle and diademed tower?” He says well :

“They have taken with them to the graves their powers, their

honours and their errors; but they have left us their adoration”.

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INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

To-day that spirit of adoration is dwindling and disappearing. Private edifices are cared for more than the house of God.

Every nation has its special styles of architecture. While learning elements of beauty and power from other styles attained by other nations, it must preserve its own innate power and loveliness, “all the borrowed elements being subordinated to its own primal unchanged life.” It must aim also at perfect finish. Only then can it be what Ruskin calls a living architecture. He says well : “We have certain work to do for our bread, and that is to be done strenuously; other work to do for our delight, and that is to be done heartily; neither is to be done by halves and shifts, but with a will; and what is not worth this effort is not to be done at all”.

Thus the element of adoration and the element of originality are of the essence of great architecture, and characterise Indian Architecture. The great Indian builders of the past were not, like the men of to-day, obsessed by their own petty conflicts and pleasures, but they, while they had their own share of the frailties of life, thought of the future and thought and worked greatly for its sake. Ruskin says well that “the earth is an entail, not a possession”. But modern man neither realises this truth nor acts upon it. Ruskin says : “Every human action gains in honour, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test. Therefore when we build, let us think that we build for ever”. It was this spirit which inspired Indian architecture in the past and led to its peerless achievements. Ruskin says well : “The greatest glory of a building is not in its stones nor in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condescension, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity”.

It seems to me that of all the Seven Lamps of Architecture, the lamp that illumines Indian Architecture most is the Lamp of Obedience. Modern life neither understands nor values it because of its blind worship of so-called liberty. Ruskin deprecates what he calls as “that treacherous phantom which men call liberty”. Obedience is not the negation of freedom but is the harmony of law and liberty. It is not the negation of originality but is the

INDIAN ARCHITECTURE

61

harmony of originality and convention. Self-expression is not

opposed to self-discipline. It is because of this great quality of

Obedience that Indian architecture is so great and withal so Indian

to its very core. Well does Ferguson say in his History of Indian

and Eastern Architecture : "By rising to this wider range we shall

perceive that architecture is as many-sided as human nature itself,

and learn how few feelings and how few aspirations of the human

heart and brain there are that cannot be expressed by its means".

Architecture is the mother art. The other fine arts (sculpture,

painting, music, dance and poetry) were born in it and live around

it. From the earliest times architecture outgrew utilitarian limits

and lived in the realm of the beautiful. Temples, palaces and

tombs took on a grandiose aspect, and aimed at mass and stability

and achieved grandeur of dimensions. Even in the ancient Crom-

lechs and Dolmens of imperishable stone, often sublime by sheer

weight and size, we find a desire to lift art above the decree of

the short duration of life. It is very likely that the central idea of

immortality, which filled the mind of Egypt, inspired her archi-

tecture and sculpture as well and gave the world the Sphinx and

the Pyramids. The Greeks threw their colonnades around the

shrine with a remarkable and perfect sense of proportion. Within

the porch of the Delphi national temple are found two mottoes

comprising four words which show the essence of the Hellenic

mind. They are: Know thyself, and in all things moderation. This

quality of self-realisation by harmony and measure is the vital

quality of Greek architecture and sculpture.

After the advent of Christianity, a new sense of the soul's

adventurous quest filled the minds of men and found a suitable

artistic expression in the Gothic spire. Great schools of sculpture

and painting arose. The Renaissance, however, brought the

Greek note in again. In Gothic architecture the spire and the

arch brought new elements to the beauty of straight lines and

pillared columns so characteristic of Greek art. The result was a

vast and complex and superb style of architectural art. The

Saracenic style combines columns and arches and domes in a way

of its own. But its profusion of ornamentation excluded every

sort of animal representation and depended for effect on its variety

of lines and forms and colours. In modern Europe and America

we do not see any clear or fine notes in the arts of architecture

and sculpture. We have more massive edifices than were ever

known to the ancient and mediæval world. American skyscrapers

seem to take heaven by storm. There is an utter confusion of

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INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

standards and traditions and values and ideals in those arts in

the west to-to-day.

In regard to Indian Art Dr. Ananda Coomaraswami classifies

them into six schools, viz., (1) Early Buddhist (B.C. 300 to 50 A.D.)

consisting of pillar edicts and stupas and railings and Mathura

fragments and Amaravati and Bharhut stupas and Sanchi gates ;

(2) Kusan or Graeco-Buddhist Art (50 to 320 A.D.) consisting of

Gandhara sculptures and early painting at Ajanta and in Orissa;

(3) Gupta Art (320 to 600 A.D.) consisting of stupa, etc., at

Sarnath and sculpture and painting at Ajanta and painting and

secular architecture at Sigiriya in Ceylon; (4) Classic Indian

(600 to 850 A.D.) consisting of the latest and best paintings at

Ajanta and sculpture and architecture at Ellora and Elephanta

and Mahabalipuram and Anuradhapura (Ceylon) and Borobudur

(Java); (5) Mediaeval Art (9th to 18th centuries) in Rajputana,

Travancore, Ceylon, etc., consisting of Tanjore sculpture and

architecture (10th to 12th centuries), Halebid (12th and 13th centu-

ries), Vijayanagar art (14th to 16th centuries), Madura (17th cen-

tury), Mughal painting and architecture (16th to 18th centuries),

Rajaputana painting and architecture (upto 19th century), (6)

Modern Art.

In Indian architecture, as in architecture elsewhere in the world,

the “wood age” preceded the “stone age,” and religion was the

builder of the building art. Travancore has attained special

artistic achievements in constructions made of wood. The Rig

Veda refers to iron towers and to “a house made of a hundred

stones.” Probably India began with cave shrines. She then

passed on in course of time to the grand palaces and temples

described in the epics of India. The Ramayana refers to Devatâ-

yatanas (temples) and assembly halls (Sabhas) and palaces

(Prâsadas). It refers also to Chaityas (relic shrines). The

Mahabharata refers to a Jatugriha (a pavilion of lac). It refers

also to a Sabha (Palace audience hall) built for the Pandavas by

Maya who is the reputed author of a famous work on architecture

(Silpa Sastra) and who is said to be the architect for the Danavas

or Asuras and the father of Mandodari who was the Queen of

Râvana.

It is not possible to refer here to the Sumerian architecture and

the architectural and other remains found in Harappa in the Punjab

and in Mohenjo-Daro in Sind. The recent researches in Indo-

Sumerian antiquities show that the Sumerian culture was born in

INDIAN ARCHITECTURE

63

the Indus valley. Marshall says that “there the possibility is

clearly suggested of India proving ultimately to be the cradle of

their civilisation, which in its turn lay at the root of Babylonian,

Assyrian and the Western Asiatic culture generally”.

Fergusson, whose works on architecture in general and on

Indian architecture in particular, are famous and well-known;

speaks about “the architectural magnificence of the Hindus” and

refers to “the extraordinary elegance of detail and propriety of

design which pervades all the architectural achievements of the

Hindus”. He says in his history of Indian and Eastern Architec-

ture, Volume II, pages 184-5 : “Like all people untrammelled by

rules derived from incongruous objects, and gifted with a feeling

for the beautiful, they adorn whatever they require, and convert

every object, however utilitarian in its purposes, into an object of

beauty. They long ago found out that it is not temples and palaces

alone that are capable of such display, but that everything which

man makes may become beautiful, provided the hand of taste be

guided by sound judgement and that the architect never forgets

what the object is and never conceals the constructive exigencies

of the building itself. It is simply this inherent taste and love of

beauty, which the Hindus seem always to have possessed, directed

by unaffected honesty of purpose, which enables them to erect,

even at the present day, buildings that will bear comparison with

the best of those erected in Europe during the middle Ages.”

Regarding Buddhist architecture, James Fergusson says: “India

owes the introduction of the use of stone for architectural pur-

poses, as she does that of Buddhism as a state religion, to the

great Asoka”. Buddhist architecture consists of Stambhas or lats,

Stupas (relic mounds), rails, Chaityas (assembly halls) and

Viharas (monasteries). The Asoka Lats or pillars bore inscrip-

tions conveying Asoka’s edicts to his subjects in regard to Buddhist

Dharma and especially in regard to tenderness to animal life.

Many Stupas have now ceased to exist. Fergusson says when

speaking of the Amaravathi Stupas and rails and the sculpture

therein : “The degree of perfection reached by the Art of Sculpture

at Amaravathi may probably be considered as the culminating

point attained by that art in India”. He says about the rail at

Barhut that it “is perhaps the most interesting monument—certainly

in a historical point of view—known to exist in India.” Equally

interesting are the rails at Mathura and Sanchi and Amaravathi.

The Chaityas correspond to the Christian churches. The oldest

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INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

caves are in Bihar near Rajagriha (now Rajgir) which was the capital of Bengal at the time of the advent of Buddha. There are six or seven important Chaitya caves in the Bombay Presidency. 'They were all excavated before the Christian Era. The oldest of them is at Bhaja which is four miles south of the great Karle cave in the Bor Ghat. The Chiatya caves at Bedsa and Nasik and Ajanta and Junnar are wonderful but the best of all are at Karle and Elura and Kanheri. Buddhist Vihâras or Sanghârâmas are monasteries. The best of them are found in Nasik and Ajanta. The latter have got the world-famed frescoes which represent the Buddhist stories "on a scale and with a distinctness found nowhere else in India". Fergusson says : "Caves Nos. 1 and 2 are among the most richly sculptured of the caves. The facade, indeed, of No. 1 is the most elaborate and beautiful of its class at Ajanta and, with the corresponding caves at the opposite end, conveys a higher idea of the perfection to which decorative sculpture had attained at that age than anything else at Ajanta". Mention may also be made here of the Buddhist monuments at Anuradhapura and Polannaruva. As Fergusson says : "The Buddhist architecture, with its sculptures and paintings remain, and bear the indelible impress of the thoughts, the feelings and the aspirations of those who executed them".

While speaking about Buddhist architecture, I may say a few words about Gândhâran architecture. I shall discuss Gândhâran sculpture in the next chapter and show that the view which says that it vitally influenced Indian sculpture is wrong. In Gândhâran monasteries, we find the traces of the Greek influences. Fergusson says that the Hellenic influence prevailed strongly in Gândhâra in the first few centuries after Christ. But the main stream of Hindu architecture flowed in its own way uninfluenced by Gândhâran motifs and methods and was not influenced for better or for worse by Greek artistic methods and ideals.

There are also Jaina caves and temples. There is an old Jaina temple at Lakkundi. Fergusson says: "The grouping together of their temples into what may be called "Cities of Temples" is a peculiarity which the Jains have practised to a greater extent than the followers of any other religion in India". There are nearly five hundred temples in the two summits of the Satrunjaya or Palitana Hill. "In 1889 the number of separate images counted was 6449 exclusive of smaller ones on slabs". None can eat or drink or sleep on the sacred hill. The chief temple is dedicated

SRI PADMANABHASWAMI TEMPLE TOWER (Travancore)

to Rishabhanatha who was the first of the twenty-four Jaina Tirthankaras. In the hill of Girnar, near Jonagadh, we have the Jain Temple dedicated to Neminatha. The two white marble Jain temples in Mount Abu are “unrivalled for minute delicacy of carving and beauty of detail.” We see modern Jain temples at Sonagarh near Datia in Bundalkhand and at Mukhtagiri, near Gawilgarh, 13 miles north-east of Elichpur in Berar. In regard to South Indian Jaina architecture Fergusson says : “The first peculiarity that strikes one as distinguishing the Jaina architecture of the south from that of the north, is the division of the southern temples into two classes, called Bastis and Bettas. The former are temples in the usual acceptance of the word, as understood in the north, and, as there, always containing an image of one of the twenty-four Tirthankaras, which is the object there worshipped. The latter are unknown in the north and are courtyards usually on a hill or rising ground, open to the sky and containing images, not of a Tirthankara, but of Gomata or Gomateswara so-called, though he is not known to the Jains in the north”…… The statues of this Jaina Saint are among the most remarkable works of native art in the south of India”. The image at Sravana Belagola is 58 feet high; that at Karkala in South Kanara, is 41 feet 5 inches in height; and that at Yenur in South Kanara is 35 feet high. The images belong to the Digambara sect of the Jains and are entirely naked. They have twigs or creeping plants round their arms and legs and have also got serpents at their feet. They symbolise the ideal ascetic “standing in meditation until the anthills arose at his feet and creeping plants grew round his limbs”.

I must however point out that Fergusson is in error in treating Buddhist architecture and Jain architecture as being essentially different from each other or from what he is pleased to call Hindu architecture. All of them are branches from a parental stem and have too many common characteristics to justify the theory that they are divergent and separate styles of architecture. “The craftsmanship (viz. the principle of construction) and even the symbolism and suggestiveness were essentially similar and even identical in all the styles. Mr. Havell says with truth and perception : “Buddhist art was at the same time and place also as Jain art and Brahminical art. India has never known any style that can be called architectural but one and that is Indo-Aryan.” He points out further that “the styles of Fergusson, whether they are labelled Buddhist, Jaina, or Hindu or Indo-Aryan, Chalukyan, or

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Dravadian, are classifications all more or less false as history and misleading as indications of derivation." He says : "Fergusson's great pioneer work was fatally biassed by the fundamental mis-conception that the history of Indian sculpture, which is the history of the Indian temple building, from the third century A.D. was 'written in decay' and by his total failure to read the symbolical language of Indian Art". Fergusson was further in error in treating Buddhist art as more ancient than Brahminical art instead of treating it as a derivation from the latter and in dating the history of Hindu temples from about the seventh century A.D. Mr. Havell himself has in his turn fallen into many wrong assumptions and patent errors. He imagines a cleavage between Aryans and Dravidians and between Kshatriyas and Brahmins and did not possess the key to the comprehension of Indian symbolism in art. Dr. A. K. Coomaraswami also has fallen into a fatal error in assuming that the Indo-Aryans borrowed most of their architectural ideas from the Non-Aryan tribes. The fact is that though a great mass of materials has accumulated we are yet waiting for the arrival of the genius who will be able to master them and show in a natural and unbiassed manner the historic evolution of the arts of architecture and sculpture in India.

Hindu temples in North India are numerous and elegant but are small and have not got the massive architectural beauty of the Hindu temples in South India. It is preferable to use the terms North Indian style of Architecture and South Indian style of architecture as I do not believe that it is correct to speak of Aryans and Dravidians as separate ethnic stocks. Fergusson says that the Jains adopted the North Indian style of architecture. He says : "It still remains to be ascertained from what original form the curvilinear square tower could have arisen. There is nothing in Buddhist, or any other art, at all like it". The Silpa Sastras (or books on architecture) refer to three distinctive types of temples, viz., Nāgara, Drāviḍa, and Vesara. In the Nagara and Dravida types, there is a sikhara (tower) over garbhagriha or sanctum sanctorum, but the Vesara type has a barrel roof and is probably derived from the Buddhist rock-cut cave temples. The Nāgara type has a curvilinear sikhara ending with a kalasa and a spire. Fergusson calls it the Northern or Indian Aryan type. The North Indian style is seen best in Orissa, because in Benares which is the most sacred city in India no vestige of ancient Hindu temples exists owing to the destruction of temples and idols by Muslims. Fergusson says that the great temple at

D.1665

THE FIVE PANḌAVA RATHAS (GENERAL VIEW), MAHĀBALIPURAM.

CHINGLEPUT DISTRICT

(Copyright, Archaeological Survey of India)

INDIAN ARCHITECTURE

67

Bhuvaneswar and the temple at Kanatak and the temple of

Jagannath at Puri are three of the landmarks in the North Indian

style.

In Western India we find the meeting of the North Indian

style and the South Indian style. The rock-cut temples at Badami

and Ellora and Elephanta are very remarkable. They contain very

beautiful sculptures of various Hindu deities. In regard to the

temples in Central and Northern India Fergusson says : “There

are certainly more than one hundred temples in Central and

Northern India which are worthy of being described in detail, and

if described and illustrated, would convey a wonderful impression

of the fertility in invention of the Hindu mind and of the elegance

with which it was capable of expressing itself. None of these

temples can make the smallest pretension to rival the great

southern examples in scale; they are all, indeed smaller even than

the greater of Orissan temples; and while some of them surpass

the Orissan temples in elegance of form, many rival them in the

profuse elaboration of minute ornamental details”.

In regard to North Indian civil architecture Fergusson says :

“Another feature by which the northern style is most pleasingly

distinguished from the southern, is the number and beauty of

the palaces, which are found in all the capitals of the Native States,

especially in Rajputana. These are seldom designed with much

reference to architectural symmetry or effect, but are nevertheless

always picturesque and generally most ornamental objects in the

landscape where they are found. As a rule, they are situated on

rocky eminences, jutting into or overhanging lakes or artificial

pieces of water, which are always pleasing accompaniments to

buildings of any sort in that climate; and the way in which they

are fitted into the rocks, or seem to grow out of them, frequently

leads to the most picturesque combinations”.

In South India the science of architecture, like the science of

Grammar and other signs and instruments of civilisation, is attri-

buted to Agastya. The story about Agastya having been ordered

by Lord Siva to go south when the north was overweighted by

the assembled divinities on the occasion of the marriage of Siva

and Parvathi shows the southward flow of cultural life in ancient

India. I do not hold that this means that there was a separate

northern Aryan India and a separate southern Dravidian India.

If anything is definitely established by tradition and literature and

anthropology and anthropometry and confirmed by history and

68 INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

archæology and philology, it is the unity of the Indian people both

in respect of racial origins and in respect of the present national

life. Agastya's coming southwards just like Sri Ramanuja's

influencing the thought of Ramananda and Chaitanya shows the

forward flow of cultural currents southward and northward in

India in the course of the centuries. I have shown this elsewhere

with a wealth of detail and demonstration which is necessarily

foreign to the scope of this work.

Thirty-two works are ascribed to the sage Agastya. In the Tamil

work Agastya Jnâna, which is found in the Madras Government

Oriental Library, it is said that Lord Siva ordered Agastya to

reveal various sciences (sastras) to the Tamil world and that

Agastya wrote a work on Alchemy in 100,000 verses, a work on

Medicine in 200,000 verses, and a work on Brahma Vidya in

100,000 verses. A work on worship (Pujavidhi) is also attributed

to him. His work Sakalâdhikara is a work on sculpture. Among

the subjects treated in it are Mânasangraha (Measurements),

Sthala Pariksha (choice of site), Pratima lakshana (images),

Darusamgraha (the selection of wood), Mritsangraha (the selec-

tion of mud) and Varnasamskara (mixing of colours). There is

another work on sculpture in South India called Kasyapiya which

is found in the Government Oriental Library at Madras and in

Saraswathi Mahal Library at Tanjore. To Maya, about whom I

have referred already, is attributed the work called Mayamata or

Maya Silpa. In the Ramayana (51st Sarga in the Kishkinda

Kanda) there is a reference to Maya's architectural exploits. In

the Brihat Samhita and in the Matsya Purana Nagnajit is referred

to as an authority in architecture and iconography. The Sthapati's

of the Tanjore District refer also to a tradition about three

renowned artists named Jaya and Parajaya and Vijaya but nothing

is known about their works.

The South Indian Shrines are some of them Siva shrines and

others Vishnu shrines. Many of them have been in existence from

ancient times and have been added to from time to time by kings

after kings until we have many peerless and stupendous temples

in South India which easily carries off the palm in regard to

universal architecture. The Ellora cave temples were cut and

formed in the eighth century, while the rock-cut temples there,

three of which are Saivite, came into existence in the 6th and

7th centuries.

The South Indian Style of architecture has two forms or

aspects to which Fergusson has given the names Dravidian and

INDIAN ARCHITECTURE

69

Chalukyan. It is unfortunate that he chose the former name which is connected by modern scholarship with a supposed Dravidian race whereas we have in South India not a separate race but only the Hindu people occupying the portion of India known as Deccan or Dravida. This is not the proper place to go into that question and I have done it elsewhere. The Dravidian style includes the Pandya, the Chola, the Pallava, the Vijayanagar and the Naick styles. The name Chalukyan is derived from a royal dynasty. Fergusson says that "it is only a conventional term, derived from the principal known dynasty ruling in that country, applied to a style occupying a borderland between the other two (i.e., the north Indian style and the Dravidian style)".

In the Dravidian style of temple-building, the principal portion is the Vimâna which is square in plan and surmounted by a pyramidal roof of one or more storeys containing kalasas (gold-plated prominences) at the top and in which is the garbha griha containing the sanctum sanctorum. We have in front of it the ardhamantapam and Mahamantapam which are porches leading to the Sanctum Sanctorum. We have also the towers (gopurams) over the entrance gates and various pillared halls used during various festivals. Every temple has got also a prâkara or circumambulatory way and a tank.

Fergusson says : "It is this horizontal or bracket mode of construction that is the formative principle of the Dravidian or Southern style of Hindu architecture, every form and every ornament depending almost wholly upon it. In the north, however, another development of the same principle is found in the horizontal dome which is scarcely known in the south, but which has given a new character to the style". An early Nagara type of the temple and an early Dravida type of the temple occur side by side at Pattadakal known as Virupaksha, in the south of the Bombay Presidency.

The Pallava rock-cut temples at Mamallapuram or Mahabalipuram and the temples at Ellora have been referred to above and are very remarkable. But even more remarkable are the structural temples at Vijanagar, Vellore, Conjeevaram, Chidambaram, Kumbakonam, Tiruvarur, Tanjore, Trichinopoly, Srirangam, Madura, Rameswaram, Tinnevelly, Suchindram and Trivandrum. The typical Chola tower (Vimâna) is found in the Brihadeeswara temple at Tanjore (*1000 A.D.) and in the Gangaikonda Cholapuram temple built about 1025 A.D. Special mention should be

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made of the Tadpatri temple which has got minute and beautiful

ornamentation and of the Subramania shrine (in the Tanjore

Temple) which is an exquisite piece of decorative architecture and

about which Mr. O. C. Gangoly says that "for its minute decora-

tive craftsmanship it has justly been compared to the work of

goldsmiths in stone".

Quite as remarkable, in their own way, are the palace of

Tirumal Nayak at Madura and the Tanjore Palace. But what is

the present state of secular and sacred architecture in South India?

Let Fergusson answer : "Sometimes, it must be confessed, the

buildings are imposing from their mass, and picturesque from their

variety of outline, but the details are always detestable; first from

being bad copies of a style that was not understood or appreciated,

but also; generally, from their being unsuited for the use to which

thev were applied. To these defects, it must be added, that the

whole style is generally characterised by a vulgarity it is difficult

to understand in a people who have generally shown themselves

capable of so much refinement in former times. In some parts

of the north of India matters have not sunk so low as in the

Madras Presidency, but in the South native civil architecture as

a fine art is quite extinct, and though sacred architecture still

survives in a certain queer, quaint form of temple-building, it is

so low a type that, as exemplified especially in the temples which

Nattukottai Chettis are engaged in renovating or reconstructing,

it would be no matter of regret if it, too, ceased to exist, and the

curtain dropped over the graves of both, as they are arts that

practically have become extinct".

I am of opinion that the above view of Fergusson is too severe

and too pessimistic. It is not true that all the Nattukottai Chettis

build temples without a sense of the beauty of the Indian styles

of architecture. Nor is it true that the race of master-builders

and great architects of the old type is an extinct species in India.

I know that there are Nattukottai Chettis whose piety and zeal

are equalled by their knowledge of architectural tradition, though

of late Nattukottai Chettis have taken to building costly palaces

for themselves in an odd and fantastic mixture of styles and are

beginning to turn away from temple construction. I know also

that there are yet living, able and learned Sthapathis who know

well and can carry forward the great architectural traditions and

performances of the past. At the same time they have to remem-

ber the wise warning that "of all destructive manias thàt of resto-

ration is the frightfullest and foolishest"

GOLDEN LILY TANK AND GOPURAMS, MINAKSHI TEMPLE, MADURA, MADURA DISTRICT

(Copyright, Archaeological Survey of India)

INDIAN ARCHITECTURE

71

What Fergusson calls the Chalukyan style of architecture is really a mixture of the North Indian (or Nāgara) style and the South Indian (or Dravida) style, with some special and distinctive and original graces of its own. Its birth-place is the Kanarese country including Mysore. Dr. A. K. Coomaraswami points out that its chief traits are “the high and very richly carved plinth, the star-shaped ground plan, and low pyramidal roof”. Mr. Gangoly says : “It is identified by some scholars as representing the Vesara class of the Silpa Sastras. The principal features of the style are the relatively low elevation and wide extension, star-shaped plan, and grouping multiple shrines, and its new forms of pillars. The tower has a distinctive character, in its pyramidal shape, almost circular in form, and as distinguished from the Dravidian towers, the storeys of the towers are not emphasized. The general effect is that of a ribbed cone, very minutely carved. Indeed this inclination to carve and decorate every surface of the temple is sometimes taken to tiresome extremes and injures the effect of the general design and the silhouette.” Fergusson says : “The Sikhara and roof soon lost the distinctively southern storeyed form and became stepped, forming pyramids of different heights, with breaks corresponding to those of the walls, and with broad bands up the sides of the Sikhara answering to the larger face in the middle of each side of the shrine. Later, the plan often became star-shaped, the projecting angles lying in circles whose centres were in the middle of the shrine and Mandap respectively.

……A favourite arrangement in the later temples was the grouping of three shrines round a central mantap or hall._ The pillars are markedly different from the Dravidian type; they are massive, often circular, richly carved and highly polished. They are usually in pairs or fours of the same pattern, the whole effect being singularly elegant”. The Dharwar District is the cradle of the style. Temples belonging to the earlier phase of the style (10th and 11th centuries A.D.) are found in Ittagi and Kukkanur and Gadag and Lakkundi and Dambal and Kuruvatti. The style attained its highest achievements in Mysore under the Hoysala Dynasty. The chief temples there are those at Somnathpur, Belur and Halebeid. They show intricate and delicate and marvellous chiselling leading to minute and elaborate ornamentation of the surface. Fergusson refers to “the infinite beauty and variety of design” and says : “Some of these are carved with a minute elaboration of detail which can only be reproduced by photography, and may probably be considered as one of the most marvellous

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exhibitions of human labour to be found even in the patient East".

Strangely enough even such discerning students and critics of Indian Art as Mr. Fergusson and Mr. Gangoly have shown defective sympathy and comprehension. In regard to the sculptures of Vyālis or monsters of the lion type trampling on an elephant or of warriors sitting aside rearing horses, etc., Fergusson says : "As works exhibiting difficulties overcome by patient labour, they are unrivalled, so far as I know, by anything found elsewhere. As works of art, they are the most barbarous, it may be said the most vulgar, to be found in India, and do more to shake one's faith in the civilisation of the people who produced them than anything they did in any other department of art." This only means that he did not understand the art-motifs which inspired such works. Mr. Gangoly says that the South Indian Temples "overawe one by a crude impressiveness rare in the temples of the north" and opines that they are "generally lacking in an unity of design," and that they "make up in their magnificence and stupendous scale for their poverty of elegance and dignity". This again shows an inability to realise the beauty of some of the architectural marvels of the world. It is the South Indian architecture that bears away the palm for grandioseness of conception and magnificence of execution.

Though thus far I have adopted, with some modifications, Fergusson's nomenclature and treatment in regard to Indian architecture, I must deprecate any attempt by western savants and connoisseurs to introduce a novel kind of caste system into Indian Architectural art. Mr. Gangoly rightly urges : "Thus it is a misnomer to designate any type of Indian architecture as specifically Buddhistic, Jain or Brahminical. It is Indian Architecture for the time being in the service of one or other religion prevailing at a particular place or time." The Vedic mounds developed into the Buddhist Chaityas and Stupas. The Nāgara and Dravida and Chalukyan styles are seen in Jain temples as well as in Siva and Vishnu Shrines. There is in Mannargudi in the Tanjore District a beautiful Jain temple which is exactly like any South Indian Hindu Temple. The Vesara style is seen in many Buddhist as well as some Hindu temples.

I may mention here a few noteworthy aspects in regard to Travancore temples. Tantrasamuchchaya is the authoritative work in regard to such temples. In addition to the famous Siva shrines

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at Suchindram and Vaikom and Ettumanoor and the Vishnu

shrines at Trivandrum and Tiruvettar and Varkalay and Ambala-

puzha and Neyyattankara, a special mention should be made of

the famous shrine of Devi at the extreme end of the Indian penin-

sula at Cape Comorin (Kanya Kumari). A peculiarity of Malabar

worship is the worship of Sāstha. The most famous of the Sāstha

temples is that at Sabarimalai on the top of a steep hill in the

Chenganur Taluq of Travancore. There are also temples of

Brahma at Tiruvallam and Valia Chalai near Trivandrum and at

Mitranandapuram within the Trivandrum Fort. The Travancore

style of temple architecture is plainer than the style in the east

coast of peninsular India and the structures are much smaller.

The Kerala temples contain abundant carvings in wood and stone

and some of them contain mural paintings. The temples have a

square or circular form and a conical top, the whole roof having

a copper covering with a gold or silver or copper gilt stupa. They

have ample provision for light and air, and the worshippers worship

standing outside the threshold. Each temple consists of (1) the

Srikoil containing the Garbha Griha (the holy of the holies)

wherein only the priest (sāntikaran) can enter. (The Garbha Griha

is raised a few feet above the surrounding level and its door is

reached by a sopana or flight of steps). The idol is placed in the

centre on a stone platform. (2) Makhamantapam or raised plat-

form supported by pillars in front of the Srikoil; (3) Nālambalam

which consists of the corridors or pillared halls all round the

Srikoil and the Mantapam; (4) Balikalpura in the outside portico

where stands the altar-stone at which rice is offered; (5) Dhwaja

or flag-staff; (6) Gopuram or towers containing the entrances to

the temple grounds which are enclosed by high walls all round.

In the bigger temples the Nālambalam is surrounded by a similar

structure. There is a narrow passage between them. It contains

columns of iron or brass lamps (vilakkumāḷom) which are lit

on special occasions. Malabar being the land of elephants, the

temples have also an ānakottil (a covered elephant shed) between

the flag-staff and the Gopuram. The Sivalimantapam is the covered

porch for the procession of the deity. A special feature in regard

to the worship in Malabar temples is the Naivedyam or food

offering to the deity. Besides the offering of boiled rice, there

are also the offerings of Pāyasams (rice boiled in milk or cocoanut-

milk with ghee and sugar or molasses added), of the Tri-madhuram

(the three sweet things, viz., honey and sugar and plain fruits

with the addition of a little ghee) and of the appam or sugared

cakes fried in ghee and malar or fried rice.

10

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INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

Mr. Gangoly points out further that a peculiar characteristic of Indian architecture is "its innate inclination to transcend its structural form." He says well : "An Indian temple, be it Buddhist, Jaina, or Hindu, is a monument par excellence, rather than a mere utilitarian covering, or a shelter from heat and rain."

The temple is invariably sublimated into an image in itself. The Buddhist Stupa itself looks like a Dhyâni Buddha and the Vimana of a Siva Temple itself looks like a Linga. Mr. Gangoly well describes this trait as "this sculpturesque treatment of the structural form." He says "The æsthetic beauty of Indian Architecture derives its quality from the expression of a plastic idea—the result of an image-making—an idolatrous instinct—rather than that of a purposeful structural design."…….Indian Architecture is thus a monumental expression of metaphysical symbolism." Other equally wonderful traits of Indian architecture are its profusion of minute and elaborate ornamentation of the surface and the way in which architecture and sculpture form an inseparable unity in India. These traits can be brought out and illustrated with convincing aptitude only in a book separately devoted to such an aim but Indian sacred and even secular architecture in North India and especially in South India contains so many perfect illustrations of the above truth that it is not necessary to go into this matter in greater detail here.

When the Hindu Religions including Buddhism spread in Eastern Asia, Hindu Architecture also went there. Burma became Buddhist in faith at a very early period and borrowed also many of the Indian styles of architecture though with differences. The Europeans in Burma applied the term Pagoda indifferently to bell-shaped Sthupas on a series of platforms and to square temples with a pyramidal roof crowned with the curvilinear Sikhara of the North Indian style. The Shwe Hmandun (Golden Great God) pagoda at Pegu and the Shwe-Dagon pagoda at Rangoon are remarkable structures. The square temples are as remarkable as the circular pagodas or chaityas. The vast temples at Angkorvat and Bayon and Beng Mealea in Cambodia —out of which the temple at Angkorvat alone is in a state of preservation—are even more remarkable. Fergusson says in regard to the Angkorvat temple that the only other temples wherein sculpture is used in the same profusion are those at Halebid in Mysore and at Boro Budur in Java. In the wonderful temple at Boro-Budur the Buddhist sculptures which line its galleries extend to a mile in length. These are in a perfect state of preservation

INDIAN ARCHITECTURE

75

because the Javanese, even when they became converts to Islam,

had no iconoclastic zeal. Two and a half miles from Boro-Budur

is a small and beautiful temple called Chandi Mendut, the walls

of which are decorated with bas-relief figures of Hindu deities.

Twenty-four miles south-east of Boro-Budur is the vast and

wonderful Hindu temple at Prambanam.

It is not possible to go in detail in this work into the art of

farther India and Indonesia and Ceylon. It shows a fine spiritual

temper kindled and kept aflame by Indian influence. Mr. J. F.

Scheltama says well: "Java's ancient monuments are eloquent

evidence of that innate consciousness of something beyond earthly

existence which moves men to propitiate the principle of life by

sacrifice in temples as gloriously divine as mortal hand can raise."

In Java, even to-day, Sri Rama and the Pandavas are national

heroes. The Boro-Budur temple is as yet a monument of a living

culture. It has been well called by Mr. Havell as the Parthenon

of Asia. Mr. J. F. Scheltama says well about the Boro-Budur

temple in his work on Monumental Java: "Adorned with that

priceless jewel of sanctity, the plain lifts its sensuous loveliness to

heaven as the bride meets the caresses of her wedded spouse, trem-

bling with love." Such wonderful Art will, even if it yields to the

destructive power of Time, be an inspiration and a bliss for ever

and ever. Ruskin says finely : "It is the crowning virtue of all

great Art that, however little is left of it by the injuries of time,

that little will be lovely".

I shall now proceed to describe briefly the evolution of Muslim

architecture in India. The Indo-Saracenic architecture shows how

the Saracenic architects adopted to a large extent the styles pre-

vailing in the various localities. Fergusson refers to no less than

thirteen important and distinctive styles of Indian Saracenic

architecture. Minarets and mosques and tombs were constructed

on a lavish scale, many of them built with the ruins of destroyed

Hindu and Jain temples. The Hindu artisans contributed a lace-

work of intricate and delicate carving. The Qutb Minar is a

unique construction. Fergusson says: "It is probably not too much

to assert that the Qutb Minar is the most beautiful example of its

class known to exist anywhere."

The speciality of Saracenic architecture is thus described in his

work on Indian Architecture by Mr. E. B. Havell: "All Arab

design, whether in architecture, or in the forms of domestic utensils,

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INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

or in surface decoration, was distinguished by this feeling for pure outline and colour, rather than by a plastic treatment of surfaces or the massing of forms for contrast of light and shade in which the Hindu architectural genius especially asserted itself." He points out that even the pointed arch, which is one of the chief differentia of Saracenic architecture, was adopted from India, and that the Mihrab of Muhammadan mosques—the niche in the wall of the sanctuary—was a bequest from Buddhist architecture, and that the Muhammadan dome in India is only a simplified Hindu dome. He demonstrates the error of Fergusson’s assumption that Saracenic architecture in India is an importation and proves that it is only a development of Indian building traditions. He says :

"The oft-quoted phrase that ‘the Pathans built like Titans and finished like goldsmiths’ conveys an historical fallacy. The Pathans were fighting men, not builders. The building traditions they brought with them into India, called Pathan by Fergusson, were those which Mahmud of Ghazni and his descendents had borrowed from India." In fact Mahmud of Ghazni took Indian craftsmen to build the great mosque at Ghazni. Timur took them to build a mosque at Somarkand.

As Muslim sculpture is opposed to the representation of human or animal forms in art, Muslim artists specialised and excelled in perforated stone-work of the finest tracery. Fergusson says : "After a century’s experience they produced forms which as architectural ornaments will, in their own class, stand comparison with any employed in any age or in any part of the world; and in doing this they invented a class of window-tracery in which they were also unrivalled." The mosques at Delhi, Agra, Bijapur, etc., are wonderful in beauty and finish. Fergusson calls the Mosque at Fatehpur-Sikri as “a romance in stone”. The Muslim artists excelled also in the art of inlaying marble with precious stones. The Moti masjid at Agra and the Jami musjid at Delhi are wonderful. But the gem of all gems is of course the Taj Mahal.

I must refer also to the ancient Parsi temples and also to the White Jew synagogue at Cochin as factors contributing towards the enrichment and variety of Indian Architecture. Further, after the advent of the British power into India great and lofty churches belonging to the Protestant as well as to the Catholic faiths have been built. In fact the hospitality of India to the forms of architectural beauty has been an index and a measure of the hospitality of India towards the faiths and cultures of mankind. All the same

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India has impressed her own sign-manual of calmness and composure and charm and unity and spirituality on indigenous as well as imported aspects of culture.

I must bring this chapter to a close lest it should swell to the size of a book by itself. In fact Vāsthuividya (called the Pāli as Vatta Vijja) or Silpa Sastra is a well-known branch of Indian Art. The Matsya Purana refers to Vasishta, Viswakarma, Maya and fifteen others as founders of the Vāstu Sastra. Maya Silpa Sastra, Kasyapiya, Manasara, Silparatna, Brihat Samhita, Viswakarmavatara Sastra, Samarangana Sutradhara, Manasollasa, Sanatkumara Vastı Sastra, Saraswatiya Silpa Sastra, etc., are of great antiquity and value. Mānasāra refers to 32 expounders of the Vastı Sastra. It is said that there existed 32 Mukhya Sastras (Standard works) and 32 Upa Sastras (subordinate works). Maya Mata and Silpa Ratna have been ably edited and published in the Trivandrum Sanskrit series. It is not possible to go in detail here into the details contained in them as well as into the directions contained in the Samhitas and Tantras and Agamas such as the Kāmīkāgama, etc., and in Vishnudharmottara and in Hemadri's Chaturvaragachintamani and Gopala Bhatta's Haribhaktı Vilāsa and Krishnananda Agama Vageesa's Tantrasara, etc., about the construction of temples and images and in the various Niti Sastras and Artha Sastras and in the Tamil classics about the construction of temples. The various village plans such as Nandyāvarta, Padmaka, Swastika, Dandaka, Sarvatobhadra, Prastara, Karmuka, Chathurmukha, Prakirnaka, Sampatkara, Paraka, Sripratishtita, Srivatsa, Kumbhaka, Vaidika, etc., are of great interest as they show how the townplanning experts in ancient India knew how to lay out villages and towns. The Silpa Sastras mention also about the functions of Stapathis (architects proper), Sutragrahis (measures), Vardhakis (Joiners) and Takshakas (Carpenters). They refer to Māna (longitudinal measurements), Pramāna (breadthwise measurements), Unmāna (measurements of heights), Parimāna (measurements of depths), Upamāna (measurements of slopes and curves), and Lambamāna (measurements of verticals). They describe Vāsthu or sites suitable for villages, buildings, etc. They refer to forty-five types of houses and palaces. They refer to bhu-pariksha or examination of sites and soils, preparing and levelling the ground Sankusthāpanam (the fixing of a peg for determining the cardinal points), pada vinyāsa (the arrangement of plans), grāma vinyāsa (village and town planning), etc. They contain minute directions as to how to build bases and pedestals

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and pillars and pavilions and entablature and roofing and towers (vimanas). It is not possible to go into further details here but it may well be said that the Silpa Sastras are a mine of valuable rules about town-planning and about secular and sacred architecture.

Mr. Havell says about ancient Indian Village life : “The village in ancient India represented a highly organised social community, far removed from the decadent modern type. The Aryan, jealous of his tribal honour and proud of his social privileges, was, as the name implies a born aristocrat; but his ideal of Government was essentially democratic.” (A study of Indo-Aryan civilisation, page 4). The Mānasara Silpa Sastra says that for choosing the sight of a village we must examine its soil and position and that the best site is that which slopes towards the east so as to get the full benefit of the first rays of the morning sun. Mr. Havell says : “The easterly axis of the plan ensured that the principal streets were purified by the rays of the sun sweeping through them from morning till evening; while the inter-section of main streets by shorter ones running north and south provided a perfect circulation of air and the utmost benefit of the cool breezes. The two principal streets which formed the arms of the cosmic cross were broad avenues, probably planted with umbrageous trees.” Here again Mr. Havell is in error in his reference to ‘the cosmic cross’ which is only the Hindu Swastika—a symbol which Hitler improperly annexed like other annexations by him.

Most of the Indian towns and cities grew round temples. They grew naturally and from within. Much importance was attached to tanks and gardens, and it was deemed to be a pious act to dig tanks and plant groves. The ideal of Indian town-planning was that of garden villages and garden cities. Houses were built with court-yards and pials and gardens so as to be suitable to a tropical climate, and so as to combine light and shade and coolness and ventilation. The pials were intended for the convenience of strangers and wayfarers. In Travancore and Cochin and Malabar and Canara every house is a garden house. In those portions of India the Nālukattu type of house is a rectangular structure comprising a central courtyard. Mr. Havell says : “It will probably be a revelation to modern architects to know how scientifically the problems of town-planning are treated in those ancient Indian architectural treatises.”

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Modern architecture in India is an odd mixture of styles. It has no clear-cut style or definite expression or appeal. It is very largely imitative—imitative not of indigenous beautiful styles but of exotic ugly styles. The rich men of to-day do not give scope to the architectural traditions of the Indian architects. We must certainly have buildings suited to our new notions of comfort and convenience. But that need not involve any lapses from artistic taste. The old styles of architecture should be preserved and adapted to modern needs by combining strength and utility and beauty. In the words of Sir Henry Wotton : “Well building hath three conditions : Commodity, Firmness and Delight.”

A country which has produced the Stupas at Sanchi and Sarnath, the cave architecture and sculpture of Ellora and Elephanta, the Mahabalipuram Rathas and Stone Temple, the wonderful temples at Conjeevaram and Kumbakonam and Tanjore and Trchinopoly and Srirangam and Madura and Rameswaram and Trivandrum and Suchindram and the Tirumal Naik’s palace at Madura and the Jain temple at Mount Abu, and other peerless structures can well claim to lead the world in the art of architecture. As shown above, Indian architecture travelled beyond India. The architecture and sculpture at Boro Bodur and the temple at Angkor-Vat are among the architectural glories of the world. Well does Mr. O. C. Gangoly say : “The richly carved mantapams with their monolithic pillars and the facades of the temples broken into exquisitely carved niches invest Indian architecture with a new plastic quality and entwine architecture and sculpture into one indissoluble unity. The gift of India is indeed a rich and a valuable one to the architecture of the world.” Such wonderful architecture was carried to new heights of achievements by our Muslim brethren who introduced Saracenic architecture with its wonderful dome, and the imperial love of Shah Jehan for his queen has given to the world what is at once the tomb of his beloved and the shrine of the Goddess of Beauty—that full moon in the firmament of universal architectural achievement—the unique and the wonderful Taj Mahal.

CHAPTER VIII

INDIAN SCULPTURE

In sculpture art becomes more vocal than in architecture. It takes unto itself all the varieties of bird life and animal life and human life and brings out all the universal and representative and ideal aspects thereof. Nay, it aims at a higher achievement as well. It seeks to bring before our eyes the figured realities of the ideal world.

In all countries the power that quickened all the arts came from the national festivals in ancient days. By such festivals the individual was carried out of the narrow circle of his ordinary life of toil and trouble. Mr. G. B. Brown says : “It (the festival) called the artist, so to say, into being, gave him breath and nurture, surrounded him with exquisite forms and glowing colours, and with everything that could quicken the activity of eye and hand.”

In Greece the festal dance was a spur to the attainment of a high level of excellence by many arts. The Greek dances were diverse and beautiful. The Greeks set much store by the comeliness of the human body and added strength and suppleness to comeliness and grace by means of gymnastic exercises. The poised poses of the dance gave new suggestions to the sculptor’s imagination. I shall deal in a later chapter with dance as a fine art in India. In Greece the influence of the dance on Sculpture was very great. The modern sculptor’s imagination feels clipped if professional models are not before his eyes. Mr. Brown says about the Greek sculptor : “The artist would hardly need professional models, when the beautiful highly-trained human form both of man and woman, not in rest only but also in motion, was so freely displayed before his eyes. The close connection between the pose and movement of the living form and its crystallisation in marble or bronze was noticed by the ancients, and Athenaeus remarks that there were ‘relics and traces of the ancient dancing in some statues made by statuaries of old, on which account men at that time paid more attention to moving their limbs with graceful gestures.’

In Greek sculpture we find perfection of form and remarkable repose and dignity. The Olympian Pantheon gave the artists fine

AMARĀVATHI

SCULPTURE

(Madras

Government

Museum)

yet varied, typical yet individual, aspects of the beautiful to express

in marble in an artistic manner. It has been said well : “Each

form was individual in its force and freshness and look of reality

but general in that, as we now know, it was not a mere portrait or

character study from Nature, but the presentment of a typical

personage of the Hellenic world.” The figures were thus indivi-

dualised though typical, and show how the Greeks combined clarity

of thought, fine sense of form, simplicity and grace of presenta-

tion, and vision of the ideal world. Phidias and Praxiteles are

among the world’s greatest sculptors. After Christianity came,

the story of Christ’s nativity and crucifixion and ascension gave

the added grace of poignant passion to the perfect poise of Greek

sculpture. Italy attained in her medieval sculpture heights which

were even grander than the heights won by Greece. Much of its

finest work centred round the Madonna and her Child. The

greatest figure in Italian sculpture was Michael Angelo. Modern

sculpture is more varied and has brought political and patriotic

concepts into art but has not got the firm yet fine achievement of

Greek sculpture and Italian sculpture.

If we view the graces and excellences of Indian sculpture in

such a setting of the achievements of universal sculpture, we can

understand and appreciate and admire it aright and not otherwise.

It did not like Saracenic art taboo living forms as fit subjects of

art. Nor did it content itself with mere natural forms as modern

art does to-day. Greek art occupied a high altitude because of

its power of presentation of the typical and essential graces and

attributes of things. Indian sculptural art did this and more. The

divine figures in Greek art are only perfect men. In Indian art

we find a successful effort towards vision and expression super-

human beauty and glory. The Greek artist brought God near to

man. The Indian artist took man near to God.

But it is just this extra quality that art critics of the west

do not understand at all. Ruskin, great art-critic as he is, shows

his lack of comprehension and his defective sympathy when he

tries to appraise the art-motifs of India. He says : “The

love of subtle design seems universal in the race, and is

developed in every implement that they shape and every building

that they raise.” But here is his bill of indictment : “It is quite

true that the art of India is delicate and refined. But it has one

curious character distinguishing it from all other art of equal

merit in design—it never represents a natural fact. It either forms

its compositions out of meaningless fragments of colour and flow-

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82 INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

ings of line; or, if it represents any living creature, it represents the creature under some distorted and monstrous form. To all the facts and forms of nature it wilfully and resolutely opposes itself; it will not draw a man but an eight-armed monster; it will not draw a flower, but only a spiral or a zig-zag." This criticism is ardently based on defective comprehension and sympathy in regard to the aims and achievements of Indian sculpture. Similar views were expressed by Dr. Anderson and Professor Westmacott. It is difficult to understand why an art-critic who is not offended by the concepts of a satyr and a centaur should feel angry with the art-concepts of India. Let Oscar Wilde answer : "The whole history of these (decorative) arts in Europe is the record of the struggle between orientalism, with its frank rejection of imitation, its love of artistic convention, its dislike to the actual representation of any object in nature—and our own imitative spirit. Whenever the former has been paramount, we have had beautiful and imaginative work in which the visible things of life are transmuted into artistic conventions, and the things that life has not are invented and fashioned for her delight. But wherever we have returned to Life and Nature, our work has always become vulgar, common and uninteresting. Modern tapestry with its faithful and laborious realism has no beauty whatever. The pictorial glass of Germany is absolutely detestable. We are beginning to weave possible carpets in England, but only because we have returned to the method and spirit of the East. The aim of the Indian artist is not to depict an athlete but a divinity." The great sculptor Rodin says : "It is the adoration of the unknown force which maintains the universal laws and which preserves the types of all beings; it is the surmise of all that in nature which does not fall within the domain of sense—of all that immense realm of things which neither the eyes of our body nor even those of our spirit can see."

I have referred to these views only to show that very few know as yet the art-motifs of India. Even in India there is a dense mass of ignorance about them. The fact is that Indian sculpture has been true to the vision of yoga and has always paid homage to the Vedas and has hence been a divine as well as human art. It does not matter whether foreign critics admire or decry the many-headed and many-armed gods and goddesses enshrined in Indian sculpture. We know the meaning and value of such concepts and symbols and of the mudrâs (finger-poses) and weapons and ornaments of the objects of our worship. I shall refer to these later on in some detail.

AMARAVATHI STUPA SLAB (Madras Government Museum)

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On the other hand Dr. A. K. Coomaraswami goes too far when

he says: “Possibly no Hindu artist of the old schools ever drew

from nature at all. His store of memory pictures, his powers of

visualisation and his imagination were for his purpose finer means,

for he desired to suggest the Idea behind sensuous appearance;

not to give the detail of the seeming reality, that was in truth but

māya, illusion.” The fact is that the Hindu artist is at home both

in the natural and in the supernatural. He excels in revealing

the generic and representative aspects of various created forms in

natural and animal and human life. His aim is not photographic

accuracy and the lower realism. But it is the expression of the

dominant mood or passion (rasa). Even when the artist depicts

the lion or the horse, he seeks to bring out the soul of the lion

or of the horse and not to give as a mere imitation of the animal

as if he is illustrating a work on natural history. He cared for

essential truth and not for mere imitative realism. But his special

delight is in realising the revelations of yoga or vision of God and

giving them complete adequacy of artistic representation. Dr.

Coomaraswami says well: “It is for the artist to portray the ideal

world of true reality, the world of imagination, and not the pheno-

menal world perceived by the senses. ...... India is wont to

suggest the eternal and inexpressibly infinities in terms of sensuous

beauty. ...... In this religious art it must not be forgottan that

life is not to be represented for its own sake, but for the sake of

the Divine expressed in and through it.” In the Buddhistic concepts

Dhyani Buddha, Prajnāpāramita, Avalokiteswara, etc., and even

more, in the Hindu concepts of Muralidhara, Seshasayana, Nata-

raja, Neelakanta, Dakshinamoorthi, Gangadhara, Laxmi, Saras-

wathi, Rajarajeswari, etc., we find the ne plus ultra of artistic idea

and achievement. Some of the finest Indian sculptures are found

in Indian temples and especially in the famous temples at Chidam-

baram and Madura and Rameswaram and in the unknown temples

at Dadikombu near Dindigul and at Krishnapuram in the Tinne-

velly District. The sculptures at Ellora and Elephanta and Mahā-

balipuram are universally famous and admired. The Indian artists

were inspired more by a passion for creative self-expression than

by a passion for personal fame and we do not know the names of

these great geniuses at all.

The aim of art everywhere is not to merely imitate nature

but to interpret and express the significance of things. But in the

west to-day nature is regarded as something to be conquered by

Science and to be imitated by Art. But to the Indian mind nature

is something to be loved as a kindred power. It strives to see the

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unseen in the seen and the infinite in the finite. The Greek artist arrived at his idealisation of the human form by selecting what appeared to be the most lovely and admirable traits in many forms. He visioned the type as a combination of the best of the seen things. But the Indian artist believes that the highest type of beauty is not a selection and re-combination of the best in human or natural forms but is the beauty of the divine as visioned in yoga. The form of the God may not be in accord with our knowledge of human anatomy but it is the accord with the yogic realisation. The highest artists of India knew human anatomy well enough but they went further than a mere superficial fidelity to human anatomy. Mr. E. B. Havell says well : “Indian art is essentially idealistic, mystic, symbolic, transcendental. The artist is both priest and poet.” This truth may not be to the liking of the modern artist who is helpless without his studio and his professional models but it is a great truth all the same. The ideal man in India is the yogi and not the soldier. The yogi has as much courage as the soldier but it is the dauntless and indomitable courage and the spirit that knows and feels and says that the body is but the temporary and imperfect vehicle of the spirit.

These lofty ideals inspired as deeply Buddhism which revolted against Hinduism as it had inspired pre-Buddhist Hinduism and was to inspire post-Buddhist Hind´uism. Mahayana Buddhism was based on the model of pre-Hīnayana Hinduism. The Dhyân´i Buddha, Bodhisattwa, Avalokites´wara, Maitreya, Tara, Manjusri, Prajnaparamita (the shakti of the Âdi Buddha), etc., form a wonderful galaxy of Buddhist art-concepts. Each is full of ideal spiritual beauty and superhuman calm. When the treatises on art say that a figure is lion-waisted, they mean that the perfect yogi, given to moderation and rhythmic breathing and meditation, will have a broad chest and a narrow abdomen. The fact that some may prefer a broad abdomen will not take away the value of the yoga ideal. The yogi’s body is a supple and strong and spiritualised body and not a body merely emaciated by starvation. The sculptures at Bharhut and Sanchi and Amaravati show a wonderful level of attainment in art. Even more wonderful is the sculpture at Boro Budur in Java, which Mr. Havell describes as “the most magnificent monument of Buddhist art in the whole of Asia.”

Some of the western savants say that it was the sculptors of Gandhara that created Indian sculpture. This is a thoroughly mistaken view. The Indian sculptors had made images of the

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85

Hindu deities long before the Gandharan sculptors, who were inferior craftsmen, came east from Greece. Mr. E. B. Havell, to whom modern Indian art owes so much by way of interpretation as well as inspiration, says :— “The Gandharan school is not an example of Hellenestic influence upon Indian art, but the reverse ; it shows Graeco-Roman art being gradually Indianised”. He refers also to “the insincerity and want of spirituality typical of nearly all the art of Gandhara”.

The highest Indian sculpture is to be found in post-Buddhist sculpture in India which tried to embody the Puranic concepts of Divinity. As stated already the West finds it difficult to appreciate many-headed or many-handed Gods. It is rather strange that eyes which are not shocked by nimbus or wings (which no human being has had or has or will have) should be shocked by many heads or hands. Here again the explanation should be sought in yogic realisation. If we have the necessary view-point, the significance of such art-concepts will become clear. Ruskin says well :—“The arts, as regards teachableness, differ from the sciences in this, that their power is founded not merely on facts which can be communicated but on dispositions which require to be created.”

The living power of such reborn Hinduism was manifested not only in India but also in trans-India. In Java the Prambanam sculptures depict the Ramayana story. The temple sculpture in Angkor vat in Combodia is even more remarkable. The outer wall on each side is two-third of a mile in length. The walls of the temple are decorated by sculptures illustrating the two immortal epics of India—the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

CHAPTER IX

INDIAN ICONOGRAPHY

Allied to Indian sculpture but yet separate from it is Indian Iconography. It is another declining art which is allied to sculpture and which deserves to be kept alive if the integrity of Indian culture is to be preserved and conserved and carried to the loftiest heights of achievement hereafter. Though Mr. T. A. Gopinatha Rao and Mr. O. C. Gangoly and Mr. H. Krishna Sastri and Mr. B. C. Bhattacharya and Mr. J. N. Banerjea have done much preliminary spade work in the matter of revealing its specialities and graces, much more work yet remains to be done. They have not had the advantage of studying in a synthetic way Indian literature and Indian art-traditions in the light of the inadequately known secrets of Indian symbolism to which I am making a brief reference in a later chapter.

Sukra Niti and Rupāvaliya and the Puranas and the Saiva and Vaishnava and Sakthi Agamas and Mayamata and Mānasara and Silparatna and Jeernodhara Dasaka and Visvakarmasastra and Sritatwanidhi and Vishnu Dharmottara and Rupa Mandana and Chapter 57 of Brihat Samhita and other works give us minute details about making images in gold and silver and bronze and panchaloha (a mixture of five metals, the predominant metal being copper). It is stated in Sukra Niti : “Let the builder establish images in temples by meditation on the deities who are the objects of his devotion; for the successful achievement of this Dhyāna yoga (yoga of contemplation) the elements and characteristics of the image are described in books to be dwelt upon in detail. In no other way, not even by the direct and immediate vision of an actual object, is it posible to be so absorbed in contemplation as thus in the making of images.” Sukra Niti says also that divine images, even if they are not beautiful, bring auspiciousness, whereas human images, though beautiful, have no such effect,

अपि श्रेयस्करं नूणां देवबिम्बमलक्षणम् । सरक्षणं मत्यैबिंवं नहि श्रेयस्करं सदा ॥

Agni Purana directs in Chapter 43 that the sculptor or image-maker should purify himself during the night before his work and

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pray, thus : “O God, Teach me in dreams how to execute the

work which I have in my thoughts.” I learn that even now the

artist fasts and prays during the night prior to his forming the

eyes of the divinity in the image or in sculpture or painting. The

Indian mind knew how from a contemplation of the divine and per-

fect and beautiful and eternal forms of God we can rise to the reali-

sation of the name-transcending, form-transcending and blissful

Absolute. In recent times Mr. T. A. Gopinatha Row's Elements

of Hindu Iconography and O. C. Gangoly's South Indian Bronzes

and other works help us to understand the magnificence and value

of Indian Iconography. Mr. Gangoly has, however, uttered a

cheap gibe (deserved no doubt to some extent but not coming

within any grace from North India which has been quite as philís-

tine and denationalised as South India) when he says: “Unfortu-

nately the modern educated South Indian to whom one looks

forward to a complete and scholarly survey of the artistic treasures

of their country still continues to cultivate a philistine indifference

to the masterpieces of their ancestors.” Much certainly yet

remains to be done. Sir John Woodroffe has sounded the right

note when he deprecates the putting apart of the North Indian

and the South Indian schools and styles of sculpture and says that

they are “related to one another by that idealism of form and

conception which undoubtedly constitute India's chief contribu-

tion to the Art of the World.” He says further : “Indian sculpture

is not a freak of Asiatic barbarism, but is a worthy representative

of a school of æsthetic performance as logical, articulate and

highly developed as those of any country in Europe, ancient or

modern.” We are all to blame for our philistine neglect of Indian

Sculpture and Iconography. Meantime the master-builders

(Sthapathis) and sculptors and image-makers are fast disappearing

from modern India which is ignorant and sceptical and whose

artistic taste has been either left undeveloped or has been vitiated

to a degree. Here again we await an Indian of genius who will

save Indian sculpture and iconography for India and for the world.

The modern educated Indian is so proud of the little smattering

of second-rate and second-hand western scientific knowledge and

his power of handling the English tongue that he regards himself as

superior to the Indian craftsman. Mr. E. B. Havell rightly says :

“Even at the present day the Indian craftsman, deeply learned in

his silpa-sastras, learned in folklore and in national epic literature,

is, though excluded from Indian Universities—or rather on that

account—far more highly cultured, intellectually and spiritually,

than the average Indian Graduate. . . . . . The Founder of Christianity

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was Himself a craftsman, and in those noblest monuments of the Christian Faith, the Gothic cathedrals of mediæval Europe—we can see that the splendid craftsmen of the Middle Ages preached and practised a religion, like their Master, pure and undefiled before God, while a self-indulgent and contentious priesthood wrangled over its dogmas.”

It is generally assumed that image worship was unknown in the time of the Vedas. But even the Rig Veda describes minutely the forms (rupas) of the Gods and the Goddesses. The Sanskrit words corresponding to the Greek word eikon (image) are vigraha, bera, archâ, bimba, sandrsa, pratikriti, pratima, etc. I have referred elsewhere to the Rig Vedic hymns showing that images were known in that age, though Maxmuller and others deny this fact. The gods are described as Nripesas (having the form of man). In R. V. IV, 24, 10 the poet asks : “Who will buy this Indra of mine for ten cows ?” The Shadvimsa Brāhmana refers to Devatāyatana and daivapratima. The Upanishads describe the various Divinities and their Mantras and Gāyatriyas. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata refer to temples (chaityas and āyatanas) and images and artisans. The Ramayana says that after Sita disappeared, Sri Rama had a golden image of Sita made (Uttara Kanda, Chapter XXV). The Grihya Sutras refer to devagraha, Devāgara, devāyatana, etc. The philosophy of image-worship is stated thus in the Rāma Tāpaniya Upanishad. (the making of images of God who is pure formless consciousness is for the spiritual welfare of the worshippers).

चिन्मयस्याद्वितीयस्य निष्कलस्याशरीरिणः ।

उपासकानां कार्यार्थं ब्रह्मरूपकल्पना ॥

Though in the Rig Veda, the number of hymns to Indra and Agni and Surya and Varuna is large and the number of hymns to Vishnu and Siva is small, this is no ground for supposing that the now widely prevalent Siva and Vishnu cults are a later development or accretion in Hinduism. The seeking of the grace of the Lokapalas or cosmic divinities was naturally earlier and more frequent than the invocation of the supreme causal power. The Pāsupatha rite is referred to in the ancient Atharva Siras Upanishad. In the Kena Upanishad Siva's being Brahman or the causal divinity is announced by Uma who is Brahma Vidyâ. Some scholars imagine and declare a conflict between the Vedas and the

DANCING KRISHNA, FRONT VIEW, BELUR

(Copyright, Archaeological Survey of India)

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Agamas. The latter are only a supplement to the former, despite

certain sectarian passages here and there about the rival merits

of both. The great Srikanta Acharya says : Na Vayam Veda

Sivāgamayoh bhedam pasyamah (We see no difference between

the Vedas and the Sivagamas), Nor do I think that there is any

real warrant for saying that Siva was non-Aryan and Rudra was

Aryan and that the former concept was unified with the latter.

Even in the Rig Veda Rudra is described by the epithet Siva. The

Atharva Veda describes him as Bhava, Mahadeva, Isana, Rudra,

and Pasupathi.

The Buddhist images of Dhyāni Buddha were the result of a

great art-motif and mark an epoch in the history of Indian Art.

The Supreme calmness and repose of the figure is one of the

marvels of vision and has gone deep into the world's art—con-

sciousness, like the figure of Christ on the cross. But Buddhist

sculpture and iconography are confined to an expression of the

body in repose. Pratimāmānalakshana is a work regarding Bud-

dhist iconography. As shown above in the later Mahāyāna and

Vajrayāna Buddhism other gods and goddesses were brought in

such as Amitabha, Avalokiteswara, Manjusri, Tārā, etc. In Jain

art we have Tirthankaras as well as gods but the former are

superior to the latter. The Jain images have long hanging arms,

the Srivatsa mark, calmness, youthfulness and nudity.

आजानुलम्बाहु: श्रीवत्साङ्क: प्रशान्तमूर्तितिश्र ।

दिग्वासास्तरणो रूपवांश कार्योऽहितां देव: ॥

(Varahamihira's Brihat Samhita).

The Hindu icons or images were made in India by expert artists

who used to meditate on the Dhyāna Sloka (verse descriptive of

the particular image) and act in complete obedience to the

rules embodied in books and the traditions handed down

in their guilds as regards the making of the figures in

stone or wood or metal. In Hindu iconography we see dynamic

as well as static elements. Images may have a standing (sthānaka)

or sitting (āsana) or reclining (sayana) postures. Though the pre-

vailing view of modern scholarship is that Saivism is very old in

South India whereas Vaishnavism is a later immigrant from the

north, there is no doubt that Vishnavism also is very old in the

South. The oldest Alwars are even older than the oldest Saiva

Samaya Ācharyās. In the ancient Tamil Classics there is reference

12

to the worship of Vishnu who is described as Mâyon. The Silap-padhikaram (XIV, 7 to 10) refers to the images of Krishna and

Balarama. Krishna among the cowherds is a favourite subject of description in ancient Tamil poetry. As already pointd out by

me, equally unacceptable is the view which finds an imaginary separateness between an imaginary Aryan Rudra and an imaginary

Dravidian Siva. The holy Panchâkshara on which the Saiva Sidhanti prides himself is the very heart of the Sata Rudriyam of

the Veda. The Saiva Sidhanta is a very ancient system. But its technical terms are almost all Sanskrit terms. Siva images are

not the special and private monopoly of South India. The holiest of all the Indian Siva Temples is at Benares. Further, Patanjali

refers to images of Siva and Skanda. The invocation to Siva in Kalidasa's Sakuntala and other plays and in Sudraka's Mrichcha-

katika shows that the worship of Siva existed in North India even in the first century B.C.

The view that the Lingam in Siva temples is only a phallic symbol is another of the heresies of modern scholarship. Saivism

is one of the most austere cults in India and preaches the value of the ascetic life and it is absurd to connect it with phallic worship.

Linga means a symbol. In the Puranas it is said that Siva appeared as a pillar of fire before Vishnu and Brahma. In works

on Saiva Siddhanta it is said to be an illustration of the combina-tion of the form-aspect of God-head and the formless aspect of

God-head. Mr. E. B. Havell derives the Linga from the Chaitya or Stupa. Swami Vivekananda used to say that it represents the

holy fire on the Vedi or altar. It must also be remembered that some Lingas called Mukha Lingas have a human face or faces

carved on them representing one or all of the five aspects of Siva. Though the Linga is the central image in Siva temples, the shrines

contain also the form-aspects of Siva as the five-faced Sadasiva, Somâ Skanda (Siva with Uma and Skanda), Chandrasekhara

(Siva with the crescent moon on his matted hair), Dakshinamoothry, Nataraja, Gangâdhara, Ardhaneeswara, Bhairava, Virabhadra, etc.

Very elaborate and intricate rules are laid down in the Agamas about making of Lingas. Equally elaborate are the

rules laid down therein about the making of the Siva Images having the above-said forms. Such divine forms are not mere idealised

human forms but are eternal forms visioned in yoga. In regard to both Lingas and images Mr. E. B. Havell says well : "There are

good grounds for believing that the present Saivite emblem, when it took the place of anthropomorphic images, had no connection

SRI DAKSHINAMOORTHI IMAGE

(Madras Government Museum)

INDIAN ICONOGRAPHY

91

whatever with phallic worship. While the Greeks made the perfect human body the highest ideal for an artist, there has always been in Indian thought a deep-rooted objection to an anthropomorphic representation of the Divine." We find in Siva shrines other images also. We find the images of the Devi and Vinayaka and Subramaniya and Chandeswara and Nandi. We find also the images of Samayâcharyas in a group. We find the images of the Sixty-three Saints, the group being known as Arupathimoovar. We find also many beautiful female figures bearing ever-burning lamps. They are called Deepâla Nayakis.

Equally remarkable are the Vaishnava images in South Indian Temples. The images of Vishnu and Lakshmi, of Rama and Sita and Lakshmana and Hanuman, of Krishna and of Narasimha, abound all over the South India. In the Vishnu temples we find also images of the Alwars. Later on were introduced the images of the Acharyas, viz., Sri Ramanuja, Sri Desika, Sri Manavala Mahamuni, and others.

Before the present unfortunate cleavage between the Saiva and Vaishnava cults became definite and deep, there was no such mutual dislike and divorce. In many Siva temples there used to be shrines for Vishnu. In the holy Chidambaram temple Nataraja's shrine and Govindaraja's shrine are close by, and a devotee can at one and the same time see both the Gods. Near the fingers of the right hand of God Padmanabha in the holy temple at Trivandrum is a small Lingam. The sordid history of the recent quarrels and litigations in regard to the Siva and Vishnu shrines in Chidambaram and elsewhere is a miserable episode in the history of the evolution of religious sects in modern Indja. In the Mahabharata the unity of Siva and Vishnu is proclaimed by Arjuna in the Vana Parva and by Sri Krishna in the Santi Parva. It is stated also by Markandeya in Hari Vamsa. The Sankara-Nârâyana Murthi which is half Siva and half Vishnu shows their unity and inseparability. More than all, the Rudra Hridaya Upanishad affirms their oneness with unmistakable clearness. Siva and Vishnu are only as different as Rama and Krishna.

Elaborate rules are laid down in the Silpa Sastras about iconometry (measurements of images) and about the materials with which images are to be made. Images could be made of wood, clay, stone, metal, etc. Travancore artists have excelled in wooden images. In metal images in temples, copper and brass and white

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lead are used, copper largely predominating. In household worship silver and even gold images are often used. An image is at first modelled in wax. It is then coated with soft clay. The wax model is then melted away. Into the hollow so caused the molten amalgam is poured. After the metal has cooled, the clay covering is removed. Then the artist gives the image the necessary fineness of finished workmanship. Hollow images should not be cast for purposes of worship. There are definite rules in regard to the height of the images to be used for domestic worship and for public worship in temples. The artists know by heart the nemonic verses needed for such image-making. It is absurd to condemn the verses as curbing originality. In making images of Gods we cannot let our petty and puny imagination act as it likes ignoring the intuitions of the sages in Yoga. There is ample legitimate scope for the imagination of the artist in saturating his mind with the beauty of the Divine forms and giving the images as much grace and expressiveness as possible. There is ample scope also for revealing the artist's constructive skill and technical genius. Mr. Gangoly says well : “The rules and canons are only limitations for the mediocre and the incapacitate and not to the real artist to whom the fixed convention of a particular theme is never a barrier to his artistic expression. . . . . . . . The ancient Greek artists had also their canons and systems of proportions but the beauty of the great schools of Greek sculpture was no more due to these formulas than the artistic excellence of these South Indian bronzes was due to the systems laid down in the Silpa Sastras.” Indeed there is as much room for legitimate Manodharma (imaginative presentation) in Indian Sculpture as in Indian Music where the ascending and descending notes of each rāga are fixed but there is infinite scope for musical improvisation. The makers of images should follow the rules laid down in the Sastras. What is beautiful according to the Sastras is really beautiful; nought else.

शाब्दमानेऽन यो रस्मः सरङ्गमो नान्य एव हि।

A supreme master of image-making is very rare.

I shall deal in a later chapter with Indian symbolism. But I may mention here a few of the teachings in the Silpa Sastras about image-making and about the significance of hastâs and mudrâs (hand-poses and finger-poses). It is laid down that the image has to be eight times the length of the face (ashtatâla) in the case of Gods and seven times such length in the case of Goddesses, though in some works it is said that the tâlas could be 5, 7, 8, 9 or 10. The length of the face is the unit and is called tâla. A special aspect of beauty is brought out by the poses of the arms and

especially of the fingers. It is said that there are Vaidika, Tantrika

and Laukika mudras and that there are 64 Mudras in art and

108 mudras in Tantrik worship. The abhayahasta offers protec-

tion from all fears and the varadahasta offers all blessed boons.

Such mudras have nothing to do with purely human posturing but

are descriptive and expressive of divine moods of grace. In the

Jnâna mudra the tips of the middle finger and of the thumb are

joined together and held near the heart, with the palm of the hand

turned towards the heart. The Vyâkhyâna mudra or Chinmudra

of Dakshinamourthi symbolises and expresses the identity of the

individual soul and the universal soul. The Dhyâna or Samâdhi

mudra in which the palm of the right hand is placed in that of

the left hand and both are laid on the crossed legs of the image

in a sitting posture expresses yogic contemplation and self-

absorption.

Other specialities of images are the Kirita, or the diadem,

kundala or the ear-ornaments, the hâras or necklaces, the kati-

sutra or Mekhalâ or Kânchi (girdle or belt), bangles and anklets.

In the case of Siva, we find jatâ makuta (matted hair tied up as a

crown) in the place of kirita. There are also Siraschakra (nimbus)

and Prabha. A small bell called Viraghanta (bell of heroism) is

tied round the right calf muscle. It is found in Siva and Vishnu

images. I found it in the wonderful image of Sri Rama at Tillai-

vilâgam in the Tanjore District. We must bear in mind also the

lotuses (padmas) on which the divine feet rest. In the case of

images of goddesses there are different modes of dressing the hair

such as kuntala, dhamilla, alakachudaka, etc.

The wonderful Indian icon-making helped to perfect also a

number of subsidiary industries. Every image has its prabhâ

(halo of glory). Every temple has got also its Tirupasi, i.e., an

arrangement of small brass lamps fixed to a frame. When they

are lit they present a beautiful and radiant appearance. Every

garbhagriha has got its set of hanging lamps. Every temple has

got its rathas (cars) and its Vâhanams (animal and bird images as

seats for the deities) which are used during the divine processions.

The Indian skill in image-making extended to wood, ivory,

bone, etc. Sometimes, though rarely, images in wood or living

ivory (Jivadanta, i.e., ivory chipped from living elephants) are

used to make images for worship but such use is very

rare. Images made in ivory are not generally used for

worship. But even to-day such images which are

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made in Travancore and Vizagapatam and other places have

remarkable polish and beauty and command admiring buyers in

India and elsewhere. The expertness of the Indian artist in image-

making is, in fact, one of our rare cultural possessions and no

achievement of greatness in any modern direction can compensate

for its loss which seems to be imminent and inevitable if our

knowledge and love of Indian Art dwindle as they are doing

to-day.

PAINTING FROM TIRUNANDIKARAI (Travancore)

CHAPTER X

INDIAN PAINTING

Painting as a fine art has been the delight of the world from very ancient times. Its appeal is to the eye which is the finest and subtlest of the senses of man. “Things seen are mightier than things heard”. Colour and perspective are its vital elements. Colour leads to vividness and variety and glow and glory. Perspective creates the illusion of the wonders of space. Chiaroscuro means the arrangement of light and shadow, whereas colour is the arrangement of colours other than black and white. It is by chiaroscuro and perspective that the painter indicates various planes. The architect and the sculptor have no power over light and shadow and the wonderful gamut of colours but the painter has and exercises such divine power. He adds delicacies of touch and tone and suggestion and significance to delicacies of tint and perspective.

The instinct of picture-making is natural to man. Even the cave-man used to decorate the interior sides of the cave with figures of trees and animals. It is said of an African boy from a wild bush tribe that, when he saw a ship for the first time, he set to work and drew a picture of it with his stick in the sand. Later on the religious festivals, with their dance and song, led not only to sculpture but to painting as well. In Greece the Olympian Pantheon inspired the twin arts of sculpture and painting with equal power by giving highly individualised yet general and universal types of perfection. But greater heights of splendid achievement were attained by Greek sculpture than by Greek painting.

The fact is that the art of painting is a subtler art than architecture and sculpture and takes a much longer time to reach perfection. Among its mysteries are the indication of solidity and distance on a flat and near surface, and the power of representation of many—nay, innumerable—objects on a limited space of panel or canvas. The painter can deal with a single object or with the whole face of nature. At a moment’s notice he can recreate the sky or the sea or a mountain or a forest or a stream or a cataract. If the architect wishes to build a superb building he must pile stone upon stone, but the painter can create the impression of a

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vaster and loftier edifice—nay, many edifices—before our eyes by a few strokes of the brush. While a sculptor toils and travails to give a solid shape, the painter can easily cause the illusion of solidity and give us as great delight. It has been well said by Mr. G. B. Brown : "Nay more, painting can conjure up before us not only the single sublime or beautiful object but all the scenes and spaces of nature that stretch away into illimitable distance, and can depict not only the form of objects but also their colour and variety of surface, tint, and tone." At the same time we must remember that in their own special provinces architecture and sculpture can produce a more vivid and intense impression than painting can. But the painter's joy and the painter's power and privilege lie in his discerning and presenting the magical play of colours and the wonderful varieties of surface effect. His work is not a mere conjurer's trick or sleight of hand but a divine creativeness. His glory is not in giving us the facts of nature but in representing her essential and significant appearances and their impressions on his mind. He is not concerned with nature as it is but with nature as interpreted by the painter's eye which knows that the beauty of the world is not so much in definite contours as in the play of tints and tones. Mr. Brown says well again : "In such work the subtle transitions, the play of tone, and tone and colour combined, over the face of Nature, the mystery and enhancement of beauty in which her aspect is veiled, are all reproduced again for us upon the canvas, and the sharp lines and mapped-out appearance of ordinary painting give place to a suggestion of forms which is after all their truest delineation". Go too near a great painting and you are repelled. Be at the proper focal distance and a new and wonderful and permanent creation—intangible yet real

—shines upon your delighted vision.

"She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!"

Only a finely endowed and finely trained eye and hand can give us a representation of the subtle play of beauty on the face of Nature. Early painting excelled in line and form but did not excel in variety, in giving the illusion of solidity and distance, and in subtle coloration. It was Italy that rose to supreme heights in universal painting in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci and Titian and Tintoretto are among the greatest masters of painting in the world. Christianity contributed by the passionate story of Christ's life an element of spiritual glory and aspiration unknown before in the west.

INDIAN PAINTING

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Florence surpassed Athens in the pictorial art. The mediaeval painters excelled in vast and grandiose scenic paintings. They were absorbed in their work and delighted and gloried in it. Their cycle of fresco paintings is one of the noblest and most wonderful and glorious intellectual possessions of the world. By linear perspective and foreshortening and by subtle distribution of light and shadow and by glorious sweep of coloration, painting was lifted from its ancient level to its modern level. Northern Europe added the charm of mingled light and shadow to the charm of superabundant light as represented by Southern Europe. Rembrandt brought out new aspects of Nature’s suggestiveness under the half-hiding and half-revealing play of light and shade. The art of painting got added to it new resources and capabilities such as a new use of chiaroscuro and of aerial perspective leading to broader effects and subtler suggestiveness of tone. In modern painting Turner and Corot and Correggio and Velasquez and Rembrandt and John Phillip and Millais and Burne—Jones and Claude Lorrain and others have added new conquests and triumphs to the painter’s art. Rembrandt is the father of modern landscape painting. He saw and loved the face of Nature and made others love it for its own sake. Thus the art has been broadened and heightened in the west since its first triumphs in Greece.

In modern times painting has taken considerable strides forward. The artists have realised that the artists’ vision is its own proof and justification and that the real value of a painting is in the artists’ contribution of a new and unifying and creative and illuminative idea. Kandinsky says: “Good drawing is drawing that cannot be altered without destruction of its inner spiritual value, quite irrelevent of its correctness as anatomy, botany, or any other science. There is no question of violation of natural forms, but only of the need of the artist of such form. The artist is not only justified in using but it is his duty to use only those forms which fulfil his own need”. Thus Western art has now moved away from mere photographic accuracy in regard to nature and mere anatomical accuracy in regard to the human figure. Burne—Jones used to say that pictures should come from within the artists’ head. What is of value in art has been recognised to be not the reproduction of the mere appearance of things but the expression of the enkindled emotion. As Professor Santayana says: “art is the modelling of nature by aesthetic reason”. Art is not a transcription or an imitation but a revelation and a sublimation. Though Post-impressionism and Expressionism and Futurism and Cubism have often gone too far away from a sane

13

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self-rootedness in reality and have become a kind of Bolshevism

in Art, they imply a wholesome departure from the former crude

realism.

But Western departures from realism tended to become

freakish because the west had no hold on Yoga. The Indian mind

was enabled by its hold on yoga to realise real ideal figures and not

mere fanciful ideal figures. Its power of imbibing the atmosphere

of the spiritual world enabled it to idealise the real and realise

the ideal. The Indian canons of image-making require the artist

to depend on his inner vision and not on external types in the

physical world. In fact the things of the spirit need a spiritual

discernment. This is why the cheap criticism that Indian art lacks

anatomical accuracy has no real validity or value. Shukracharya

says: “The hands and feet should be without veins. The bones

of the wrist and ankle should not be shown”.

Indian Painting achieved brilliant results in the past but its

achievements are not comparable to the wonderful achievements of

Italian painting or to Indian achievements in architecture and

sculpture and music and poetry and drama. This may have been

due to the fact that canvas and colours are less durable than stone

or metal especially in a tropical climate or to the successive waves

of conquest and vandalism that deluged India for many centuries.

It is not possible to trace here the history of Indian painting from

the earliest times. The Rāmâyana refers to painted halls. The

story of Usha and Chitralekha describes the art of painting as the

quickener of love. The Sanskrit dramas like Mrichakatika and

Sakuntala and Malavikâgnimitra and Uttararama charitra describe

picture halls in palaces. In Sakuntala the king is described as an

expert artist. His friend describes his painting of Sakuntala in

beautiful words which show Kalidasa’s mastery of the painter’s

art as well: “The delineation of the feeling (Bhâvânupravesa) is

brought out by the sweet grouping of lovely objects. My sight

seems to stumble at the apparent elevations and depressions”.

Kalidasa pays as the highest compliment to Sakuntala’s loveliness

that it seemed as if she had been painted by the Creator and then

the painting had been endowed with life, or as if she had been

formed by Him as a mental creation out of the sum total of all the

scattered loveliness of the universe. In the Buddhist drama

Nāgananda, Prince Jimutavahana draws a portrait of Princess

Malayavati. The Pali Buddhist work Vinaya Pitaka which relates

to the third or the fourth century B.C. refers to the picture halls

in the pleasure-palaces of King Pasenada. Such mural pictures were the forerunners of the wonderful painted cave temples of Ajanta.

In Vātsyāyana's Kāma Sutras we have a reference to the six limbs (shadangā) of painting.

रूपभेदः प्रमाणानि भावलावण्ययोजना ।

सादृश्यं वर्णिकाभेद इति चित्रं पडङ्कम् ॥

What is generally described as the six limbs are rupabheda which refers to the study of distinctive forms, pramāṇam which means correct perspective and measure and structure and symmetry and includes anatomy and proportion and foreshortening, bhāva which is the expression of feeling through form, lāvanya yojana which is the addition of grace and beauty and brightness of artistic presentation, sādrisyam which is perfect fidelity and truth to the natural and the supernatural as realised in moods of joy which are enkindled by the sight and enjoyment of beauty, and vārṇika-bhanga which is perfect technique in the use of the brush and perfect mastery over the implements and materials used in painting. This excellent analysis of the art was adopted in China which refers to "the six canons" which are first mentioned by Hsieh Ho in the sixth century A.D. to be the spiritual rhythm and movement of life, the use of the brush in structural drawing, representation of form in accordance with nature, colouring appropriate to objects, composition and postures, and copving and imitation of classical models. The ancient Indian work Chitra Lakshana also dealt with religious paintings in great detail. In the Tamil country there was an Ovianool belonging to the Sangam period and dealing with the art of painting.

The Buddhistic period of India was the golden age of Indian painting. The whole of eastern Asia felt the cultural influence of India not only by the spread of Buddhism but also by the spread of Indian art. Even when the language of the Buddhistic scriptures was unknown, the silent influence of Indian art was all-pervasive in Asia. Artistic priests from India went to China and Japan and Ceylon and spread the art-motifs of the wonderful Ajanta frescoes there. The most remarkable examples of Buddhistic painting in India are of course the Ajanta frescoes. But the paintings at Bagh and at Sigiriya in Ceylon also are remarkable. Fresco-painting is painting on a prepared surface of lime spread on a wall of wood or brick or stone. The painting is on a section of a wall which is kept

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moist so that the colours might mingle chemically with the surface.

Hiuen Thsang says that the convent of Serika was famous for its

mural paintings. The great ancient Indian universities at

Takshasila and Nālanda and Sridhanya Kataka had courses of

training in religious painting and sculpture. They were the real

sources of the wonderful Ajanta frescoes which came into existence

from the second century B.C. to the seventh century A.D. Vincent

Smith’s views about the western inspiration of the Ajanta paintings

have been thoroughly exploded by Mr. E. B. Havell in his Indian

Sculpture and Painting. Mr. Havell observes: “The Buddhist

monastic schools of Northern India, from which the art of Ajanta

was derived, were sufficiently cosmopolitan in character to account

for all the foreign details which are found in those paintings, but

their title to be considered Indian is just as valid as that of the

schools of Athens to be called Greek, those of Italy to be called

Italian, and perhaps stronger than that of the schools of Oxford

to be called English……Even assuming that Graeco-Roman

painters and sculptors may have sometimes been the technical

teachers in Indian schools, they can no more claim on that account

to have inspired Indian art than Shakespeare’s schoolmistress can

be said to have inspired the tragedies of Macbeth and King Lear

……Indian art was inspired by Indian nature, Indian philosophy

and religious teaching, and no one, I imagine, would go so far

as to say that all these were imported from the west. The little

Greek, or Graeco-Roman, art that came into India went there in

the ordinary way of commercial and political intercourse, not as

part of any intellectual or religious propaganda. It was assimilated

by Indian art in much the same way as a great deal of oriental art

became incorporated in Italian art, from the time of the building

of St. Marks at Venice down to the palmy days of the Renaissance;

but we do not say that Italian art was inspired by the East”…

India truly inspired the art of the rest of Asia, but neither at Ajanta

nor anywhere else in India can the influence of Western art be

called an inspiration. To form a just estimate of any national art

we must consider not what that art has borrowed, but what it has

given to the world. Viewed in this light Indian art must be placed

among the greatest of the great schools, either in Europe

or in Asia”

About the Ajanta frescoes Mr. Griffiths says: “The artists who

painted them were giants in execution. Even on the vertical sides

of the walls some of the lines which were drawn with one sweep

of the brush struck me as being very wonderful; but when I saw

long, deliberate curves drawn without faltering, with equal precision,

INDIAN PAINTING

upon the horizontal surface of a ceiling, where the difficulty of

execution is increased a thousandfold, it appeared to me nothing

less than miraculous”. We do not yet know what was the secret

of the process which has ensured to those paintings the durability

“denied to more recent attempts in Europe, executed with all the

aids of modern chemical science” (Havell). Mr. Griffiths says that

Ajanta art influenced Chinese painting.

After the complete triumph of Hinduism over Buddhism, the

arts of architecture and sculpture had a wonderful impetus but the

heights attained in the Buddhist age in painting were not preserved.

But the art of mural painting in temples continued to flourish, and

the Hindu princes gave patronage to artists by having their palaces

adorned with mural paintings as well as oil-paintings and paintings

in water colours. But a noteworthy height of attachment was not

attained.

During the Moghul period a new school of painting arose and

flourished but it was an exotic school derived originally from

Persia. The Indian artist however soon adapted and Indianised

that school of painting. Its best triumphs were not in religious

painting but in portraiture and secular painting. It was a child of

the Moghul Court and was remote from the vital faith of the people.

The Muhammadan religion proscribed the representations of

animate nature in art, with the result that sculpture and painting

could not flourish. Mr. Havell points out the Persian school of

painting which influenced the Moghul painting was itself due to

“the Chinese schools which, again, owed their inspiration originally

to the art of India”.

The artists of the Moghul Court painted portraits of historical

and contemporary life in wall frescoes as well as in miniature

paintings. They scrupulously refrained from representing human

beings or God in mosques. The fresco paintings of the Moghul

period do not exist. What we have got are miniature pictures

painted on fine Indian or Chinese paper. The Moghul school

flourished best during the reign of Jehangir, though it was Akbar

that gave it a great impetus during his reign. Akbar is recorded

in the Ain-i-Akbari to have observed: “It appears to me as if a

painter had quite peculiar means of recognising God, for a painter,

in sketching anything that has life, and in devising the limbs one

after another, must come to feel that he cannot bestow personality

upon his work, and is thus forced to thank God, the Giver of Life,

and will thus increase his knowledge.” Abul Fazl says : “More

than a hundred painters have become famous masters of the art,

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whilst the number of those who approach perfection, or those who

are middling is very large. This is especially true of the Hindus:

their pictures surpass our conception of things. Few indeed in the

whole world are found equal to them”. Akbar encouraged and

even commanded the practice of direct study from nature.

Mr. Havell points out that the miniatures of the Moghul school

fall into four classes viz., finished outline drawings and sketches,

mostly portraits; studies of birds and animals, both in outline and

in colour, and often made direct from nature; painted portraits;

and historical pictures. He says: “Indian art cannot, however,

show any separate school of landscape painting such as is found

in China and Japan; but landscape back-grounds to figure-subjects

are frequently used with a complete understanding of the true

function of the fine art”. Landscape-painting is not mere colour-

photography. Emerson says : “In landscapes the painter should

give the suggestion of a fairer creation than we know. The details,

the prose of Nature, he should omit, and give us only the spirit

and the splendour” . Mr. Havell says: “‘Night and effects of

artificial light seem to have a special attraction for the Indian

painter, and these are often handled with magnificent breath and

fine feeling”. He says about Indian impressionism: “His impres-

sionism is not merely a blurred vision of natural appearances, as it

often is in modern European art. To see with the mind, not merely

with the eye; to bring out an essential quality, not the common

appearance of things; to give the movement and character in a

figure, not only the bone and muscle, to reveal some precious

quality or effect in a landscape, not merely physiographical

or botanical facts; and above all, to identify himself with the inner

consciousness of the Nature he portrays, and to make manifest the

one harmonious law which governs Nature in all her moods, these

are the thoughts which he always keeps uppermost in his mind

as soon as he knows how to use his tools with tolerable facility.

It is considered of the most vital importance to train the faculty

of mind-seeing from the earliest youth, when impressions are

strong and vivid, instead of leaving this development to the end

of the academic career, as we usually do in Europe”. Dr. A. K.

Coomaraswami says in his History of Indian and Indonesian Art :

“Thus Mughal painting reflects an interest that is exclusively in

persons and events and essentially an art of portraiture and chroni-

cle….Mughal painting is academic, dramatic, objective, and

eclectic; Rajput painting is essentially an aristocratic folk art,

appealing to all classes alike, static, lyrical, and inconceivable apart

from the life it reflects”

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The Rajput school of painting was remarkable and was of ancient lineage and was a child of the soil. It falls into two groups (1) the Rajasthâni which flourished in Rajputana and (2) the Pahāri or mountain school which flourished in the Panjāb hill States especially Kangra, Chamba and Punch. Its most remarkable manifestation was in the Kangra school. Most of the work of the Rajput school was miniature painting. Sri Krishna is the central figure in much of the Rajput painting. It deals also with types of womanhood, epic themes, and representation of rāgas and rāginis. Mr. Percy Brown says well: "Broadly the Moghul art may be defined as aristocratic and genuinely realistic, while the Rajput painting, although similar in all its technical aspects, is democratic, and in the main, mystic. The latter art reveals all the religious fervour of the Ajanta frescoes, but, in place of the passiveness of the Buddhist religion, it is founded on the restless energy of the Hindu pantheon. This is its fundamental idea, but it also embraces every aspect of Indian national life, and delves deeply into the fascinating folklore of the country".

In South India we had in mediaeval times the Tanjore school and the Mysore and Travancore schools of painting. The Tanjore school excelled in painting in ivory and wood and also in oil-painting. Even to-day the Tanjore artists excel in what is called Rek-work i.e., thin gold-leaf work embellishing paintings. Their Rama Pattabhisheka paintings are prized all over South India. The Mysore artists also excelled in ivory painting. The Travancore mural paintings are of high excellence. In the Chitrâlaya at Trivandrum, which owes much to the shaping genius of Dr. Cousins, we see how under the new inspiration and dispensation of His Highness the Maharaja of Travancore, Travancorean art is becoming intensely national and yet universal in its appeal.

I may here pause to say a few words about the general art-concepts and art-ideals in India before I describe the present state of Indian art and the desirable future of Indian art. Mr. Havell has described well the creative and religious aspects of Indian art and says in his Indian Sculpture and Painting: "Just as in Indian music there are no complicated harmonies, but a subtle flow of pure intensive melody, so in painting, too, the Indian artist eschews strong shadows and broken colours, producing an effect of light and atmosphere by the perfect rhythm of his colour-music". Mr. Percy Brown says in his work on Indian Painting in the Heritage of India series: "As the painting of the West is an art of Mass, so that of

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the East is an art of Line. The Western artist conceives his com-

position in contiguous planes of light and shade and colour. He

affirms his effect by ‘play of surface’, by the blending of one form

into another, so that decision gives place to suggestion. In

occidental painting there is an absence of definite circumscribing

lines, any demarcation being felt rather than seen. On the other

hand, the beauty of Oriental painting lies in the interpretation of

form by means of a clear-cut definition, regular and decided; in

other words, the Eastern painter expresses form through a con-

vention—the convention of pure line—and in the manipulation and

the quality of this line the Oriental artist is supreme. Western

painting, like western music, is communal; it is produced with

the intention of giving pleasure to a number of people gathered

together. Indian painting, with the important exception of the

Buddhist frescoes, is individual—miniature painting that can only

be enjoyed by one or two persons at a time. In its music, in its

religious ritual, India is largely individualistic”. This is a clever

piece of writing and is true in a measure, but it errs by over-

statement and by inability to see the essence of the arts of India.

Indian Music can and does appeal to many just as Indian religious

ritual does and can appeal to many. Some critics criticise us for

too much individuality and others criticise us for too little

individuality! The difference between Indian and western music

lies elsewhere as I shall indicate hereafter. Indian painting is

largely, but not exclusively, an art of “line”. No painter—eastern

or western—can omit to conceive his artistic composition except

as “contiguous planes of light and shade and colour” or can give

up the aid of “play of surface and the blending of one form into

another” and the infinite charm and power and variety of sugges-

tiveness. All these traits are found in Indian paintings as in paint-

ings elsewhere. No doubt in Indian painting there are clear-cut

and settled conventions. That is the only means of standardising

art and settling the scaffolding with the aid of which the dream-

palaces of artistic geniuses can be most securely and adequately

built. It is no doubt true that the mediocre artists stop with the

scaffolding and that conventions are not to them a means of

expression and a high platform for soaring achievement. But the

conventions prevent the fantastic erudities and confusions which

pass for originality in the west. Dr. A. K. Coomaraswami says

well : “Convention may be defined as the manner of artistic pre-

sentation, while tradition stands for a historic continuity in the use

of such conventional methods of expression. ......... Tradition is

a wonderful expressive language that enables the artist working

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through it to speak directly to the heart without the necessity for

explanation. It is a mother tongue, every phrase of it rich with

the countless shades of meaning read into it by the simple and the

great that have made and used it in the past."

Modern Indian painting is full of promise but has not as yet

grounded itself well in the fundamentals of Indian art and æsthe-

tics). In 1848 was born the famous Raja Ravi Varma at Kilmanore

in Travancore. He was fortunate in having been brought up

amidst thoroughly Indian cultural surroundings. It was in 1876

that he exhibited his first picture of Sakuntala writing to Dush-

yanta). It appealed at once to the popular imagination. Its pers-

pective was not first-rate and it did not show much skill in economy

of details. But it was a bold and original attempt to vivify the

national life by a pictorial presentation of the heroic age of India.

His Sita's ordeal took up a great subject and treated it well. But

its sense of back-ground is poor. Sita and Rama and the Earth-

Goddess are painted well but otherwise the picture was not a great

performance. He was good at painting bright and colourful scenes

but did not succeed well in revealing dark or sombre effects.

Later on he painted many great incidents in our immortal epics.

In the ninties of the last century when I was a student of the

Maharaja's College in Trivandrum, I had the privileges of witness-

ing an exhibition of his great paintings which were meant to be

sent to Baroda. They were to me my first initiation into the

wonderland of the Indian concepts of beauty and holiness.

I am perfectly aware of the limitations of Raja Ravi Varma's

art. But what are they in the presence of his unique and won-

derful excellences? It is now the fashion to make much of them

and ignore his remarkable excellences. One critic has dared to

speak of him as "the preposterous Ravi Varma." Dr. Coomara-

swami calls him as "this painter who broke through traditions and

gave them (the public) realistic and sentimental pictures of

familiar subjects." He urges that Ravi Varma's goddesses are too

human and pretty. He says in severe terms : "He is the land-

mark of a great opportunity, not perhaps wholly missed, but ill

availed of; melodramatic conceptions, want of imagination, want

of restraint, anecdotal aims and a lack of Indian feeling in the

treatment of sacred and epic subjects are his faults. His art is

not truly national—he merely plays with the local colour. Ravi

Varma's pictures, in a word, are not national art; they are such

as any European student could paint, after only a superficial study

of Indian life and literature." E. B. Havell also is severe in his

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remarks on Ravi Varma's art. But all these criticisms are largely wide of the mark. Even to-day the significance of the art-concepts and the art-motifs of ancient and mediaeval Indian painting are not fully known. Nor have the modern Indian painters attained the minute accuracy of landscape painting and-the fine sense of perspective which are the great traits of western painting. Ravi Varma did not fully bring out the symbolic suggestiveness of the highest Indian Art. Nor did he excel in nature painting. But he had an unerring eye for beauty, a vivid sense of the poetry of situation and sentiment, and the serenity and reposefulness of the Indian Art at its best and highest. He had a keen eye for bright colours and gorgeous effects and his rich sensuousness of vision is traceable in every one of his pictures. He made his paintings fine symphonies of colour and of curve. There is no wonder in this gifted son of Travancore rising to such a supreme height of artistic achievement, because Travancore is an epitome of the loveliness of India just as India is an epitome of the loveliness of the world and contains every aspect of the glows and the glories of the universe. Above all, he, at a time when the tide of Indian nationalism was rising unseen and unfelt by even the best of India's sons, rode on its crest and inspired the imagination of the people of India by his pictorial revelation of the heroic age of India. The immortal epics of India and the peerless beauty of India and her children will live for ever on the canvas because of the genius of Raja Ravi Varma.

Another notable achievement of modern Indian painting is that of the Bengal school of painters headed by Abanindra Nath Tagore and consisting also of his brother Gogonendranath Tagore, Mukul Chunder Dey, Saradacharan Ukil, Charu Chandra Ray, Samarendranath Gupta, Mahadev Mandal, Durgasankar Bhattacharya, Nanda Lal Bose, Surendranath Kar, Asit Kumar Haldar and others. Their great achievement is their realisation and reintroduction of the ancient Indian mystic and symbolic and spiritual notes in art. They see and show that the meeting-point of outer beauty and inner beauty in mystical feeling is a finer thing than mere prettiness or mere faithfulness to fact. Every true and fine vision of nature includes an element of abstraction and an element of inner vision as well. The concepts of value and significance are added by the mind. The artistic concept of a natural object is realised by an artistic selection out of sense-impressions and mental impressions, the result being no doubt a likeness, but a likeness which is charged with a new meaning and reveals a new

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realm of values. As I have stated elsewhere : “This added element

of delicate emotional significance is the chief charm of art. The

process of abstraction and universalisation, along with the power

of creative vision and emotional suggestion, deflect the course of

mere photographic representation of nature. The inner rhythmic

life is somehow suggested and brought out. We seem to see the

pulse-beat of things. Form-values, colour-values, sound-values,

and idea-values are all used as being co-operant to a fore-ordained

heavenly self-realisation of the soul. ……. In a photograph we

have a thing as it seems; in a work of art we have it as it is.

In actual life a galloping horse is a mere rush of feet. A cinema-

show may picture it for us. But the artist somehow distils the

elements of power and strength and speed and universalises them,

and in a mood of creative glamour he shows the horse in sculpture

or painting or poetry, wherein though the horse does not and

cannot run, we realise ‘its neck in thunder clothed and long-

resounding pace’. It is the artist alone who knows the elements

of condensation and selection and universalisation and creative

vision and emotional value and significance which result in such

a miracle. He makes and gives us a new synthesis which is a

real creation, similar and faithful to nature and yet apart from

and above nature.”

Thus the Bengal school has done a great work, viz., realising

and revealing the essence and the form of Indian painting. It is

full of idealism and vision and expresses the deeper things of life.

Art should exalt and refine us and lead to the merger of our petty

life in a higher life. “This is done by the Bengal school. It looks

not so much at nature but through nature, to what nature half

reveals and half conceals—the soul within. It shrinks from

emphasis and tawdry colour and delights in subtle overtones and

undertones of tint. It is full of “emotion recollected in tranguil-

ity.” It is neither realist nor impressionist in its methods and

ideals but combines the excellences of both with idealistic vision.

I must at the same time point out that Dr. Coomaraswami and

Mr. E. B. Havell and others have showered too much rose water

on the school and its paintings. The paintings no doubt excel in

combined artistic reticence and revelation. But they are a little

too much under the influence of Chinese and Japanese painting.

Such influence is seen in the way in which the eyes are painted.

The Bengali artists have not yet carefully studied the ancient ideals

and methods and motifs of art. Especially regrettable are their

paintings of Sri Krishna, They have not realised the Indian con-

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ception of the beauty of the masculine figure—broad of chest and

lion-waisted and tall and full of strength and power. Nor have

they well realised the elements of feminine grace and sweetness

and attractiveness as described in Indian literature and art.

Especially in the delineation of gods and goddesses they must

reverentially study the revelations of yogic vision.

What I have stated above applies equally to the Andhra school

of art which was begun by that talented artist who was cut off

in the prime of his youth—Dameria Rama Rao. I had the privilege

of seeing his art-gallery. It is full of promise but much of the

work was unfinished and showed rather theprentice hand which

was on its way to mastery. I may also refer here to M. S. Sarma

of Madras, who, despite the galling neglect of his generation,

devoted his life to the painting of the memorable past life of India

and of the kaleidoscopic present life of India.

In short we have to enrich and deepen and broaden our art by

the study of western advance in technique and of western excel-

lence in landscape painting but we should not give up the most

vital aspects of the highest Indian art—its idealism, its suggestive-

ness and its spiritual passion and appeal. Indian nationalism and

Indian renaissance would be poor things indeed if Indian youth

are not fired by such artistic ideals. India must be adequately

voiced and expressed in the realm of the ideal before she can

come into her own in the realm of the real.

We can now easily realise the phenomenal and foolish error

underlying such criticisms of Indian art as the following found in

Percy Gardner's Greek Art: “But for ancient Greece, the art of

Europe would to-day be on much the same level as the fantastic

and degraded art of India. And but for the continued influence

of Greek art, that of Europe would continually be in danger of

drifting into chaotic extravagance.” I entirely realise that India

must guard her vision from extravagance and grotesqueness and

ugliness by the severe, though sweet, discipline of beauty. But

European art can save itself from mere imitation and realism only

by a reverent study and appreciation of the creative artistic vision

of India trained and disciplined by Yoga, for who like India can

add to art

“The light never was on sea or land

The consecration and the artist's dream?”

CHAPTER XI

INDIAN SYMBOLISM

The significance of Indian symbols (Prateekas) is an obscure branch of study to-day. Their meaning and value are scattered throughout Indian Literature in the course of many centuries, and hence it is an almost stupendous task to gather them together and to assess and express their significance and their evolution. It is hardly possible to compress them into a brief chapter in this work and hence I shall merely try to give a few suggestive and indicative ideas about Indian symbolism. Dr. Coomaraswami has said well : “Indian art is always a language employing symbols, valid only by tradition and convention”. Symbols are the visible shrines of the artistic ideas. They spring like flowers and fruits from the tree of the race-consciousness. The racial intuition is actualised into concrete expression in the racial symbols.

Mr. Havell points out that in Indian religious paintings the white colour belongs to Siva and the Himalayas and symbolises purity and bliss and water, that red is the colour of Brahma and the sun, that blue is the colour of Vishnu and the sky, that yellow is the colour of the ascetic’s robe, that green represents the nature, and that black represents space. Though there is a certain element of truth in this view, I am of opinion that he has not studied the sources and has given us merely guesses at truth. We have yet to dive into the ocean of Indian art-ideas and bring up the symbology of Indian painting. By way of illustration I may point out that in regard to the lotus symbol the Maha Nirvana Tantra says that the root is Brahman and the stalk is Māya and the flower is the world. The symbolism of the cosmic Aswaththa tree as described in Chapter XV of the Bhagawad Gita is also well-known.

Though images are found in coins and inscriptions and seals and even in copper-plate-grants, I shall confine myself here to the symbolism of worshipped images. Worship can be offered also to divine objects like Tulasi, Bilwa, Aswaththa, Salagrama, Bānalinga, Yantra, etc. But I shall discuss here only images with human form. In the fifth chapter of Sri Vedanta Desika’s famous work Rahasyatraya sāra, we have a clear indication of the significance of divine weapons and ornaments. Superficial observers of Indian concepts of divine forms are apt to forget or ignore the vital fact that there is a deep spiritual significance in every element of each

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concept of the Divine in India. The Jiwa tattwa (individual soul) is the Kaustubha on the Lord's breast and the Moola Prakriti is the Srivatsa (mole) therein. The Mahattattwa is His mace (gada). Jnana and Ajnana are His sword and sheath; the tāmasa ahamkara is His Sarnga bow while the Sāttvika ahamkara is His Sankha (conch); the mind is His discus (chakra); the indriyas (senses) are His arrows; and the subtle elements and the gross elements form His Vaijayanthi garland. The Veda is Garuda. In the Bhāgawatha we find it stated in the story of Dhruva that the conch is Veda. Similarly we find it said in the Lalita Sahasranāma (the thousand names of Pārvathi) that her pāsa (noose) is Rāga (attachment) and that Her ankusa (goad) is krodha (anger) and that Mind is Her bow and that the five subtle elements are Her arrows. A similar symbology obtains in regard to Siva's weapons and ornaments. In fact each divine form is visualised in such a way that all the fundamental universal categories are imagined and described as being the Divinity's weapons and ornaments, so that the devotee can at a single glance and in a single act of meditation receive into his mind the divine totality of things.

The symbolism of Nataraja is one of the grandest in the world. A famous Tamil passage says : “Our Lord is the dancer, who, like the heat which is latent in firewood, diffuses His power in mind and matter, and makes them dance in turn.” His dance symbolises His five-fold cosmic activity which consists of creation, preservation, destruction, illusion and liberation. Verse 36 of Unmei Vilakam says : “Creation proceeds from the Drum (which symbolises Nāda or sound); protection is granted by the hand (which symbolises the giving of refuge); the fire causes destruction; and the lifted foot gives liberation.” In the Chidambaram Mummani Kovai it is said : “O, Lord, Thy hand holding the holy drum has created heaven and earth and other worlds and countless souls. Thy lifted hand protects the living and the non-living created by you. All the worlds are destroyed by thy hand bearing the fire. Thy sacred foot placed in the ground gives rest to the soul entangled in Karma. Thy lifted foot gives eternal bliss.” Tirumolar says in his famous Tirumantram that Siva's dance is everywhere because Siva is omnipresent and that it can be visioned and enjoyed in every heart. The burning ground where Siva dances in delight symbolises the pure heart whence sin and passion and desire have been burnt away.

Another idea hidden away in the dance concept is the conception of the universe as the result of the Līlā or play of the Lord.

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The Lord has no object of His aim to serve by means of creation. He launches creation on its course to give embodiment to the bound souls so that these might serve Him with love and attain the bliss of liberation. His Lila is His Dayā (Grace) as well.

In respect of the Nataraja image the Unmei Vilakam says that the arch above the image symbolises Omkara (the mystic causal sound). The Tiru Arulpayan, however, says that it represents the dance of Prakriti or Nature inside which is the dance of Jnana or Siva. Thus Siva dances the dance of life and later dances the dance of death and again dances the dance of life. He is the Supreme Truth and Beauty and Goodness—Sachidananda who gives to the devotees the eternal bliss of liberation.

In the concept of Dakshinamoorthi, we find an equally lofty idea. He is the teacher of art, yoga and brahma vidya. He faces the south and if any soul hastening southward to the realms of the God of Death (Yama) pauses and prays, He gives to it the dower of Vidya and Mukti (knowledge and liberation). He sits on a tiger skin under a banyan tree. His right foot rests on a demon and his left foot is placed on his right thigh. Out of his four arms, the front right hand has the Chinmudra symbolising the oneness of the individual soul and the universal soul, the front left hand confers abhaya (freedom from fear) or holds a book, the back right hand has a rosary, and the back left hand has agni (fire). His head has got Jatāmakuta (Crown of matted hair) adorned by the crescent moon and the Ganges. His complexion is of pure and dazzling whiteness. His breast has a garland of rudrāksha beads. His face is calm and full of bliss. He is the Teacher of the Universe and keeps down the demon of ignorance. His rosary represents all the categories of the universe and the book in one of his hands represents Brahmavidya (the science of the soul). His lotus seat is the Omkara.

We have to add to the above symbolism the later symbolism of the Dhyāni Buddha who represents the attainment of supreme peace, and of the Crescent, and of the Cross. Buddha is represented also by the Bodhi tree, by the vajrāsana, by the stupa, and by footprints and by other symbols. Indian culture has become all the richer by the confluence of so many and such diverse currents of symbolic thought and emotion, and the effects of such enrichment will be seen in the great literature and art which will be born in India hereafter after she achieves political freedom and social unity in an ample measure.

CHAPTER XII

INDIAN MUSIC

Indian Music shares with Indian Poetry the glory of being one

of the finest of the Indian fine arts and stands unique among the

musical achievements of the world. So far as the west is concern-

ed, the only country which has achieved great things in music

is Germany. Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Mendelssohn, and

Schubert are names to conjure with. Germany was as great in

music as Greece was great in architecture and sculpture and Italy

was great in painting. It is not maintaining such supremacy now.

But India's music has been the essence of her life and is as

vital and great to-day as it was in ancient India.

Miss Anne O. Wilson says: “The people of India are an

essentially musical race…..The Indian has the most subtle ear

for tune and an acuteness of musical hearing”. The history of

Indian religion and art attests this truth from the most ancient

times to this day. The Rikprātisakhya refers to the three octaves

and the seven notes. The Sāma Veda whose essence is chanted

music is stated by Sri Krishna to be Himself among the Vedas.

The Gandharva Veda (the science of music) is described as an

upaveda (accessary scripture) along with Vāstu Veda (the science

of architecture). Saraswathi is described as being enthroned on a

pure white lotus and as playing on the vīṇa and having a book

and a rosary—thus revealing the innate and intimate union of

science and art and religion when these are in their pure and

unfalsified forms. The sage Nārada is described in the Bhâgawatha

as one whose song to the accompaniment of his vīṇa intensifies his

devotion and whose devotion intensifies his song. Sri Krishna

plays on the flute. The Ramayana is said to have been sung by

Kusa and Lava and is being chanted down to this day. Râvana is

described in it as a wonderful chanter of the Sama Veda and as

having propitiated God Siva by such chanting. The Mahâbharatha

refers to the seven svaras (notes) and the Gandhāra Grāma.

Kalidasa refers to musical accomplishments very often in his works

and especially in Mālavikagnimitra. Though there are some

differences between the Hindustâni or northern school of Indian

music and the Karnâṭic or southern school, both are based on the

fundamental principles of music as laid down in the great works

on music such as Sangītaratnākara, Rāgamanjari, Rāga Tarangini,

Chaturdandiprakasika, Rāga Vibodha, Sangita Darpana, Sangita Parijata, Sangita Saramrita and Sangita Rāga Kalpadruma. The Chaturdandiprakasika of Venkatamakhi who lived about three hundred years ago fixed the now prevailing classification of tunes (ragas) into melakarthas (major melody types) and janyā rāgams (minor and derivative melody-types). The Tamils attained a high musical proficiency and an original development of music as is clear from the classic work of Ilangovadigal. (Silappadikāram). The Paripādal refers to seven pālais (musical modes). The yāzh was the most famous of the Tamil musical instrument and seems to have been different from the Vina though similar to it. It was of four varieties, i.e. Periyāzh having 21 strings, Makarayāzh having 17 strings, Sakatayāzh having 16 strings, and Sengottu yāzh having 7 strings. The Silappadigaram refers to drum and flute and vina besides the yāzh and contains some of the oldest Tamil songs. It states the seven notes of octave and a number of rāgas (tunes). The names given in it to the notes and the tunes (kolli, kurinji, takkesi, etc.) are not those now in current use and are mostly Tamil words. The Tamil lexicon called Divākaram refers to two kinds of tunes viz., those containing all the seven notes (Pan) and those containing less (Tiran). It refers to twenty-two srutis (mātrās). It describes 29 Pans by name. Some of the Pans are now sung when singing the Tevārams (Tamil devotional hymns), though they are now known by other names which are now in current use. The Tamil folk-song types such as Chindus, kummis and temmangus also are very attractive. In Travancore some peculiar names of tunes such as indisa, indalam, pādi, puranira are found. In the Sopana style of singing which is peculiar to Kerala we find a slow and majestic mode of music which is fitted for the sentiment of Devotion.

The Indian musical instruments are of a varied character. In the Vedas we find references to such instruments of percussion as dundhubhi and ādambara and bhoomidundhubhi and vanaspathi and āghati, stringed instruments like karkari and vāna (a lute of hundred strings), and wind instruments like tunava and nādi. The Rig Veda refers to Mridanga, Vina, Vamsi, Damaru, etc. The Yajur Veda refers to flutes and conches and drums. The Ramayana and Mahabharata refer to bheri, dundubhi, mridanga, pataha, ghata, panava, dindima, sankha, ānaka, gomukha, etc. In Bharata's Natya Sastra chapters 28 to 37 are devoted to a systematic exposition of music. It refers to stringed instruments (Tata) drums and other instruments of percussion (avanadha), cymbals

(ghana), and wind instruments (sushira). The generic name is Atodya. The work gives a detailed exposition of svaras, srutis, grāmas, murchanas and jātis. It says that song (gita) and instrumental music (vādya), and dance (nātya) must whirl around like a lighted torch (alātha chakra). The combination of the three is called Sangeetha. Bharata states what sounds are appropriate to the various rāsas. He shrewdly remarks that the voice of women is sweeter and more divine than that of man and that women should take to vocal music and men to instrumental music. The most popular and prevalent musical instruments are Tambura, Vina, Sitar, Sārangi, Violin, Flute, Nādasvaram, Jalatarangam, Tabala, Mridangam and Ghatam.

Thus for nearly thirty centuries past the subtle secrets of sweet sound have been successfully explored in India. Besides the graceful and intricate tunes revealed by artists, we have also many popular jigs and folksongs full of quick movement and winsome melody. The great musical poem Gita Govinda by Jayadeva who belonged to the twelfth century A.D. is one of the musical marvels of the world and is deservedly famous and popular throughout the length and breadth of India. It is attuned to dance as well. In fact the poet-musician described himself as the king who guides the dancing steps of his beloved wife Padmāvati. He used to sing and she used to dance by way of accompaniment to his wonderful songs. The songs are descriptive of the longing and separation and reunion of Rādha and Krishna.

The Northern or Hindustani school of Indian music was largely influenced by Persian Islamic music. It is said that the great musician Amir Khusru introduced a combination of the Persian and Indian tunes as well as the Sitar as being a musical instrument suited for such music. The Hindustani tāla (tune-measure) also differs from the Karnatic tāla. It is in the Madras Presidency and especially in the Tamil districts that we find the purest varieties of Indian music.

The Bhakti movement gave to music all over India a wonderful impetus and forward urge. The great song-composers of North India were Gopal Naik, Vidyapati, Chandidas, Chaitanya, Haridas Swami, Tan Sen who was one of the greatest musicians of India, Ramdas, Kabir, Mirabhai, Pundarika Vittal and others. In Maharashtra we had Tukaram and other saints whose abhangas and ovis are full of charm and grace. The Canarese Dāsarpadams of Purandara Das and others are equally moving and sweet. In

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South India the standardisation of music was done specially by Venkatamakhi whose work Chaturdandiprakasika is deservedly famous and well-known. As stated above it arranges the râgas or tunes into seventy-two primary tunes or janaka ragas, (melakartas, i.e. creators of melody) with a large number of derivative tunes (janya ragas) attached to and grouped under each primary tune. Tanjore has always been a great centre of South Indian music. Tyagaraja or Tyagayyar, one of the greatest musical geniuses of the world, was born in 1759 in Tiruvarur which is near Tanjore. He gave to the South Indian musical compositions a newer sweetness and a wider range. His kritis, as they are called, have remarkable originality and were inspired by a pure and fervent devotion to God. A kriti should have four vital elements—devotion (bhakthi), sweet notes (swara), rhythm (laya), and emotion (bhâva). He standardised the use of Pallavi and anupallavi and charanam—the three sections of each kriti—by which the dominant idea and emotion of the song are worked out by a subtle evolution of the appropriate tune. They correspond to the North Indian âstâi, antara, sanchâri, and âbhog. It was he that first introduced what is known as sangatis, i.e., variations of melody which are sweet in themselves and which bring out the very heart-beats of the tune. He was such a perfect musical artist that he knew how to bring out the locked-up sweetness of each tune in all its variety and realised at the same time when it would be fitting to bring such variations to a harmonious close without allowing them to pall upon us by too much prolixity or subtlety or intricacy. He achieved an even greater wonder of musical glorification of Sri Rama than Jayadeva did for Sri Krishna. The latter specially expressed the Nâyaka-Nâyaki aspect of devotion, the vital concept being that of the Oversoul as the Bridegroom and the human soul as the Bride, the high priest being Devotion. The former specially expressed the Dâsya-bhakti aspect, the vital concept being that the soul is the servant of God. His royal contemporary Maharaja Swati Tirunal who sat on the throne of Travancore was not only a musician among princes but also a prince among musicians. He composed songs of supreme melodic charm in many languages and on many themes and not only Travancore but the whole of South India resounds with his symphonies. Muthuswami Dixitar and Syama Sastri also were the great Tyagaraja's contemporaries and were musicians of wonderful genius. Muthuswami Dixitar invented a system of Indian notation using the different vowel syllables to indicate the lengths and graces of each note. The great Mahavaidyanatha Iyer of Tiruvadi died

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only a few decades ago. His purity of life and his piety and his

divine voice and power of voice production and his thorough

mastery of Carnatic music and his original compositions brought

great fame to him and great joy to his hearers. Patnam Subra-

mania Iyer also was a great figure. Tirukodikaval Krishna Iyer and .

Govindasami Pillai of violin fame, Sarabha Sastri who was blind

of both eyes but played divinely on the flute and lifted the flute

to a premier position in recent times, Sesanna of Mysore who

was an expert veena player, Poochi Srinivasa Iyengar and Pushpa-

vanam Iyer among vocalists,—not to mention the great living

singers of to-day—and many expert performers on mridangam and

ghatam, and others have carried South India to lofty heights so

that to-day South India leads in music to a degree unknown before.

The usual parts of South Indian musical performance are varnas,

rāga-ālāpanas, pallavi, keertanas or kritis, chittaswaras, jāvalis,

tillānas, etc. Pandit Vishnu Digambar of Bombay also has done

notable work. He established the Gandharva Mahā Vidyālaya in

Lahore and then in Bombay, and the Madras Presidency gratefully

remembers his tour in it some years ago spreading devotion to

music and to Sri Rama wherever he went. Rabindranath Tagore's

patriotic songs and religious songs are also among the most won-

derful achievements of the modern Indian musical art. Quile re-

cently Music Academy and the Indian Fine Arts Society and the

'Adyar Kalākshestra have been started in Madras. The institutions

devoted to music and dance recently started at Trivandrum (Sri

Swati Tirunal Academy of Music and Sri Chitrodaya Nartakalayam)

are equally praiseworthy.

It is not possible in this brief work to go more fully into the

historical evolution of Indian music. A far more important and

interesting task is the inner evolution of music in India. The

Greeks themselves attributed the greater part of their music to

India (See Strabo, X, III). It is said that their music was probably

akin to South Indian music. Their music resembled Indian music

to a large extent in the realisation of the relation of music to emo-

tional states and of the connection of musical education and better-

ment of public morals and national life. They realised also that

in music we get freed from the tyranny of the intellect which is

no doubt all-important as the guide of the soul and which, how-

ever, like fire, is a good servant but a bad master. They knew

also the curative and therapeutic power of music. They knew as

much the ethical as the æsthetical appeal of music. But they did

not know as much as the Hindus did about the spiritual value

of music,

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117

It is undoubted that songs preceded instrumental music. They were a natural expression of the joys and griefs of mankind when these reached a certain state of intensity and incandescence. In course of time the musical scale was realised and revealed. The human voice could go up and down step by step or by leaps and bounds. The units of sound were classified into vādi (sonant) and samvādi (consonant) and visvamvādi (dissonant) and anuvādi (assonant). A famous Sanskrit verse says that Sruthi is the mother and Laya is the father of music. (sruthir mātā layah pita). South Indian music divides the octave into twenty-two equal intervals while the ancient Greek musical scale divided the octave into twenty-four intervals. The ancient name for a musical mode was mōörchana. Kalidasa refers to it in his Mālavikāgnimitra. It is said that there are presiding gods and goddesses in respect of each tune. Tunes are divided into rāgas (male tunes) and rāginis (female tunes). Each rāga divinity is minutely described in regard to his form and function and power. It is also said that each tune has its approprite time and season of expression. Each rāga is a melody-mould and has its ascending and descending notes and its jiva swara (life-note).

Quite a lively controversy went on in South India recenty as to whether it is right to associate certain tunes with certain emotions and to insist that those tunes should not be used to express other emotions. The fact is that there is a subtle connection between sound and emotion and that this cannot be worked out by a mere functioning of the intellect. Collin's famous poem on The Passions brings out this truth in a most remarkable way. One school of learned men denies this altogether and says that a rāga can be used for manifesting any emotion or any group of emotions while another school would rigorously confine one tune to one emotion alone, e.g., mukhāri to express grief and sorrow and so on. This difficulty is created by ourselves because we do not sufficiently know the real and vital inter-connections of sound and emotion and of Rāga and Rasa. Let us take a connected topic, viz., which poetic metre is suited for the expression of a particular emotion. Kālidasa has used the viyogini metre for expressing Rati's overwhelming grief and agony. It expresses well the prolonged sounds of grief varied by frequent catches of the voice and quick sobs which are due to the breakdown of the voice under the excessive stress of emotion. He uses the mandākrāntha metre to express the moods of longing and reverie and melancholy which abound in Meghasandesa. At the same time an even greater

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master of poetry and emotion like Valmiki has used the anushtup metre to express every variety of emotion. But by the subtle use

of liquids and gutturals and sibilants, etc., and by the approprite use of short and long syllables and by the subtle aromas of mean-

ings connected with words and by other means he produces the affects appropriate to the various emotions. It would of course be

better and more suitable to find out which metre by its distribution of long and short sounds and caesura (yati) has the setting

of sound appropriate to a particular pure emotion. It is only the supreme poets and musicians of genius that can lead us into these

rarefied heights without our getting stupefied and out of breath.

There are other considerations as well. Tāla or time-measure is a factor in emotion. If you change the tāla or time measure and

the Kāla (the unit of quick movement or medium movement or slow movement), we find that there are deflecting forces which,

like boulders in front of a stream, lead the stream of dominant emotion into devious ways. Thus anger expresses itself in quick

movement and pathos in slow movement and love in medium movement. Further, the different sanchārās of each rāga and

the diversities of rhythms and stresses and graces (gamakas) in respect of each note have got their own powers of deflection. Nay,

the rāgās themselves have, despite codification, shown a tendency to undergo slight variations. Further, though the fundamental

rasas or emotions are nine in number—I have shown how even the total number of rasas grew and can have further expansion—the

total number of Melakartas is seventy-two while in respect of the janya (derivative) rāgās, we can only say that their name is legion.

If one emotion can have only one rāga, what about the remaining rāgās, which will have to remain in a state of eternal spinster-

hood? Again, emotion is rarely felt in its pure and isolated state. Even sorrow and love are complex emotional states. Congruent

emotions flow into each other. “As the poet says “pity melts the mind to love.” Further, in a musical composition, as in life, we

find many subsidiary emotions controlled by a dominant emotion. The same rāgā tune is used to express them. It is quite open to

the musical genius to make the subsidiary emotion of one song the dominant emotion of another song and the dominant emotion of

the former song the subsidiary emotion of the latter song, while using the same raga or tune.

Thus the subject is a complex and difficult subject in which ex cathedra pronouncements by half-qualified artists or critics do

not lead us anywhere in particular. The proper course is to study

the great and inspired treatise—writers like Bharata and the great

and inspired musical geniuses like Tyagaraja and find out to what

particular group of congruent emotions a particular tune can be

most appropriately applied, when a particular tâla and a particular

kâla can be adopted and when a particular type of râga sanchara

can be assumed as the basic mould of melody. It is of course not

right to divorce tonal values from emotional values. We have to find

out the points of fusion between expressive beauty of sounds and

expressive beauty of sentiments and bring out of the married bliss

of melody and emotion, the delight of wonder and the wonder of

delight.

Let us not forget that it is from Lakshyâs (musical composi-

tions) that lakshanas (rules of musical composition) have come and

that these in their turn guide and develop future musical com-

positions. Such musical compositions are folk-songs or songs by

gifted and trained musicians. The folk-songs could be worked up

by geniuses into new and wonderful tunes and pieces. Nay,

geniuses could give us new revelations of sweetness in old tunes

and in new tunes as well.

As this is not a treatise on Indian Music alone, I have to deny

myself the pleasure of dealing with very many important aspects of

music in India. It is a commonplace of musical criticism that the

Indian music delights in melody while western music delights in

harmony. It is not that Indian music does not know harmony or

that western music does not know melody. But the interest and

emphasis differ. Indian music is horizontal and delights in succes-

sive notes while western music is vertical and delights in simul-

taneous notes. The Indian musician is absorbed in the gamakas

(grace notes), râga-âlâpana (musical improvisation of tunes),

and tâla (time measures). The life of a râga tune depends on its

jivaswaram (dominating life-note) and its moorchana (framework

of melody) and its sanchâras (characteristic note combinations).

The râga-alâpana gives the widest scope for exhibiting his manô-

dharma (the sound evolutions and involutions that spring like waves

in the ocean of his mind). To my mind this aspect is the life and

soul of Indian harmony. No expertness in harmony can come near

such divine creativeness. The grace notes give that divine excess

by which the human aspect gets sublimated into the divine aspect.

The Indians are not content with tones and semitones but delight in

quartertones and in the tenfold gamakas or graces which are full

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of fascinating charm. Mr. H. A. Popley says with fine per-

ception : “The strange and fascinating graces or gamakās

have a great deal to do with the haunting beauty of Indian music.”

About the so-called meloncholy of Indian music, Mrs. Mann says :

“I am often told that all Indian music is melancholy. How can I

convey to you that spirit which is sad yet without pain? That is

the delicious melancholy of Indian music. Can a lover be joyful

away from his beloved? Can a musician sing joyfully, really joy-

fully, whilst he wanders on this earth? Would it not be sorrow

if he forgot his exile? Is not the remembrance of the face of the

beloved more dear, though fraught with the pain of separation?”

Dr. A. K. Coomaraswamy says equally well: “Its sorrow is without

tears, its joy without exultation, and it is passionate without loss

of serenity.”

This is the reason why the harmonium is unsuited to Indian

music and why it hurts the delicacy and purity and grace and

beauty of Indian music. The idea of equal intervals in an octave

of notes is unsuited to Indian music. It may happen that some

great genius may add a great harmonic career to Indian music and

a great melodic career to western music without sacrificing the

present specialities and achievements. But till then it is not wise

to lose the achieved excellence by dilution and hybridisation in

India or in Europe. Tagore says well : “The world by day is like

European music, a flowing concourse of vast harmony, composed

of concord and discord, and many disconnected fragments. And

the night world is our Indian music—one pure, deep, and tender

rāgini .......... Our music draws the listener away beyond the

limits of every day human joys and sorrows, and takes us to that

lonely region of the soul which lies beyond the phenomenal

universe, while European music leads us a variegated dance

through the endless rise and fall of human grief and joy.”

In the same way North Indian music and Karnātic music have

their distinctive glories and graces which should not be mixed up

and diluted and spoiled. The drupad is sung in slow tune and

without much of ornamentation but the khyal is light and quick

and full of ornaments and graces. The drupad demands the use

of three octaves, and an old saying is to the effect that only a man

who has got the strength of five buffaloes should sing drupad. The

voice production in North India is wonderful, whereas in South

India, especially after Tyāgayyar, sangathis and gamakas have

attained a wonderful development. The North Indian Tumri and

Tappa and ghazal also are very attractive. In recent years national songs have added a new glory to Indian music and the greatest of them is Bankum Babu's Bande Mātaram. But the most wonderful and Indian of all are the Kirtan songs of North India and the Bhajana songs of South India as they combine in the best way music and devotion.

Thus after all the sweetest element in Indian music is its devotional element. Tyāgaraja who is more familiarly known as Tyagayyar, has given many wonderful songs on the nature and value of music and says that it is Nādopāsana (worship of the divine as manifested in soul) and that it can give the bliss of beatitude. His songs Nada sudhārasa, Mokshamugalada, Swararāga, Rāgasudharasa, Sobhillu, etc., tell us that we can rise to the realisation of Omkara Nāda and the dasa nādas (ten divine sounds) culminating in the Vinā Nāda (the sound of the vina) and Venu Nāda (the sound of the flute). Mrs. Mann says about the Indian singer that he “seems to concentrate upon his very inmost self in the exercise of his art. His eyes close often in prayerful ecstacy.” Indian music, however it may evolve hereafter in the direction of harmony, should never forget its basis of melody and its mood of prayerful ecstacy. God gave to us one of the greatest musicians and saints of the world in Tyāgaraja, and if we follow his lead, we shall be true to India and Indian music and attain the real goal of music—the bliss of beatitude.

CHAPTER XIII

INDIAN DANCE

It is not realised adequately here or abroad that dance has been a flourishing fine art in India. But though modern life has neither the leisure nor the perception needed to understand and appreciate Indian dancing, the latter is really one of the finest flowers on the stem of Indian Art. Dance in India is not mere activity of the human limbs resulting from high animal spirits or love of rhythmic movement. It is not mere refined and graceful gesture or "the passionate posturing born of a passing mood." It is the embodied soul's attempt to express, not only through the mind or the senses alone (as in the case of the other arts) but through the mind and the senses and the body acting together, its nature and its visions. It uses the hand and the voice and the mind for expressing its passions and its desires. The whole body becomes so expressive that "one might almost say the body thought." The modern dislike of the art being in the hands of dancing girls has been extended to the art itself. But as a matter of fact it is the art that has undergone a kind of vicarious punishment, because the dancing girls are very much in evidence, only dancing being almost dead.

As stated already by me, the dance was the inspirer of sculpture and drama in Greece. G. Baldwin Brown says well : "To regard the dance as a form of art may seem strange to the civilised western reader who understands by the term little more than a social function gone through at stated times without much interest or effort after variety. In the sense in which the term applies to the performances of the Greeks, the dance is a mode of artistic expression that is both free and varied and beautiful. The dance indeed as a form of art lacks permanence, but when it is reduced to a system it can be repeated at will in the same outward show. In all but permanence it is like sculpture, the presentation of the beautiful human form in gestures and position of the most graceful and expressive kind. Beauty was secured in the old Greek dances first through the actual physical comeliness of the performer, and next through the smoothness and rhythm of his controlled and calculated movements." Lucian says of a perfect dancer that he must be "nicely finished off at every point, fair of mien, full of grace and symmetry, nowhere wanting, never less than

DANCING APSARAS (Madras University)

himself." It is said that the youthful Sophocles danced naked, lyre

in hand, at the head of the triumphal choir after the victory of

Salamis. There were in every part of Greece professional female

dancers of wonderful physical grace and suppleness. Such perfec-

tion of dancing had its influence on Greek sculpture and painting.

The Greek posture-dance inspired the arts of sculpture and paint-

ing to a large extent. Lucian says that "the spectator of a dance

should understand a mute and hear one that does not speak." The

dance inspired also the drama wherein

"Gorgeous tragedy

In sceptred pall came sweeping by,

Presenting Thebes, or Pelop's line

Or the tale of Troy divine."

In modern dance we find many new and intricate physical

rhythms but we miss the dominating art-motifs of Greek or Indian

dance. Greek artists like Madame Pavlova and others have tried

to lift dancing to the level of a fine art. But jazz music and dance

and other innovations, while giving to dancing the charms of novelty

and strangeness of fascination, have not helped at all in the

direction of the evolution of dance as a fine art. "The difference

between dance and acrobatics lies not so much in technique as

in a state of mind". (Arnold Haskell).

In the Rig Veda, Ushas (Dawn) is described as clad in gay

garments like a dancer. The dances of Siva, Kali, Krishna,

Ganeša, and the Apsarases are described in Indian religious lite-

rature. The story of Arjuna as Brihannala in the court of the King

of Virāta shows how dancing was prized by cultured persons.

In Kalidasa's Mālavikāgnimitra we see the poet's mastery of the

theory and technique of dancing. The great Tamil classic Silap-

padikāram refers to twenty four kinds of abhinayam (gesture).

Hundred and eight kinds of dances are sculptured on either side

of a gopura (tower) in God Nataraja's temple at Chidambaram.

Ragini Devei, the well-known American exponent of the Indian

Art of Dancing, says that she created her dances after a close

study of Indian sculpture and that footwork and body movement

and gesture and song should go together.

In India we get the key-ideas in regard to the fine art of

Indian dancing in Bharata's Nātya Sāstra. That great work has

yet been imperfectly and carelessly studied, though it is a won-

derful mine of artistic ideas. It has been said therein that Sangeeta

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consists of Gita (vocal music) and Vādya (instrumental music)

and Nritya (dancing). Another verse says that the voice should

bring out the music and the feet should beat time while the eyes

and the hands should bring out the very soul of the dominant

emotion. Bharata’s work describes the construction of the dancing

hall (rangamantapa) and the worship of the deities there. It

then describes elaborately the nature of Tāndava (a form of

dance). The story is that Siva asked his attendant Tandu to teach

the vigorous masculine type of dance (Tandava) to Bharata and

asked Parvati to teach the graceful feminine type of dance (Lasya)

to him. Nritya is the pantomimic representation of feeling (bhava)

अन्यद्रावाश्रय नृत्य नृत तालयाश्रयम ।

rupaka). Nritta consists of movements of the body with gestures

and is regulated by tāla (musical time-interval). As stated

above, dancing is divided into Tāndava (vigorous dancing

and Lāsya (gentle and graceful dancing). Kalidasa says

in his Mālavikāgnimitra that God Siva and Goddess Par-

vathi are the presiding deities of Tāndava and Lasya’ res-

pectively. It is said that Siva and Parvathi taught twenty

varieties of Mārga or Nritya dancing and sixteen varieties of Desi

or nritta Dancing. It has been stated also that the appropriate

modes of dancing in relation to sringāra (love), vira (heroism) and

hāsya (the comic) are churita, laghunrittya and vikata. In Bha-

rata’s work there is an elaborate description of the rasas (æsthetic

emotions). The seventh chapter where the expression of feeling

is described reveals wonderful subtlety and insight and is of the

greatest value. The eighth and ninth chapters deal with abhinaya

or gesture. The later chapters deal with dancing. Bharata refers

to the 108 modes of dance referred to already. Kalidasa describes

in Malavikagnimitra an ideal dancer as having “large lustrous eyes,

moon-like face, arms gently sloping from the shoulders, firm and

prominent breasts, soft smooth sides, narrow waist, full and beauti-

ful lips, and finely curving toes.” He says also of that dancer-

Mālavika–that she interpreted the emotion by gestures.

Quite recently Dr. Ananda Coomaraswami published the

Abhinaya Darpana (the Mirror of Gesture) of Nandikeswara. It is

only when we compare it and Bharata’s Nātya Sastra with such works

as Charles Aubert’s The Art of Pantomime and Florence Lutz’s

The Technique of Pantomime and books on western dancing that

we can realise the fertility of artistic ideas in the Indian concept

of dancing. One hundred and twenty-seven emotions are depicted

in Florence Lutz’s book in respect of the physical attitudes express-

DANCING APSARAS (Madras University)

INDIAN DANCE

125

ing them. But the great works on Indian dance show how to get

into the very soul of the rasa and then bring out the essence of

the emotion by posture and gesture and the silent eloquence of the

human form. As in Indian music, so in Indian dancing, there

is a sinuous transition from one subsidiary emotion to another

subsidiary emotion under the controlling and dominant emotion

(bhâva) which is the dynamic aspect of the rasa sought to be

expressed. There is not much in artificial tabulations. The dancer

must be attuned to the emotion and then express the surge of the

emotion. In the Western dances we have rhythmic movements to

the accompaniment of music but they have no theme and no bhâva

and rasa (æsthetic emotion and sweetness).

Dr. Coomaraswami says in his introduction to Abhinaya

Darpana “Indian acting or dancing—the same word Nâtya covers

both ideas—is thus a deliberate art. Nothing is left to chance. The

actor no more yields to the impulse of the moment in gesture

than in the spoken word....... Excellent acting wears the air of

perfect spontaneity, but that is the art which conceals art.......

Indian acting is a poetic art, an interpretation of life, while modern

European acting, apart any question of the words, is prose or

imitation.” In Abhinaya Darpana we find a detailed description

of mudras (finger-poses). Nandikeswara to whom the work is

attributed says : “The song should be expressed by the voice; its

meaning must be shown by the hands; the mood (bhava) should

be shown by the eyes; and rhythm (tâla) must be marked by the

feet. For wherever the hand moves, the glances follow; where

the glances go, the mind follows; where the mind goes, the mood

goes; where the mood goes, there is the flavour (rasa).” The work

refers to nine movements of the head, eight glances, six movements

of the eyebrows and twelve movements of the hands.

In Bharata’s Natya Sastra another truth in respect of the art

of dance is much emphasised. Abhinaya has four aspects, viz.,

Sâttwika, Vâchika, Ângika and Âhârya. Sâttwika refers to phy-

sical changes under the stress of emotion, e.g., change of colour,

perspiration, etc. Vâchika refers to verbal cadences bringing out

the pervasive emotion. Ângika refers to the language of the eyes,

the facial indications, and the language of gesture. Âhârya refers

to the make-up and costume. All these aspects result in the per-

fect expression of the emotions and enkindle rasas in the audience.

Agni Purana and Vishnudharmottara treat of abhinaya. Mr. R. K.

Poduval refers to a great work on Dance-Drama (Bâlarâma-

bharatam) by King Bâlarama Kulasekhara Vanchi Bhoopala of

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Travancore. In it we have a description of the angas and upāngas and pratyangas in Natya (dance). The angas include the movements of the head, hands, breasts sides of the body, hips and feet; the upāngas those of the eyes, eyebrows, nose, cheeks, chin and lips; and the pratyangas those of the neck, arm, abdomen, loins, thighs and shanks. The Indian works on Dance refer to the mudras as falling into two groups, i.e., single hand and combined hands (asamyuta and samyuta). The abovesaid work refers to 40 asamyuta mudras and 27 samyuta mudras. The Vishnu Dhar- mottara refers to 22 asamyuta mudras and 13 samyuta mudras.

It is hardly possible in this brief work to go in more detail into this fascinating subject. In a country which gave the supreme concept of Natarāja the divine dancer, the equally beautiful concept of Kaliya Mardana (Sri Krishna dancing on the head of the serpent Kaliya), and the wonderful descriptions of Sri Krishna's Rāsa dance in the Bhāgawatha, it is a melancholy thing that there should be any need for a plea for the fine art of dancing. The history of dancing as a fine art has yet to be written and the essential artistic principles of Indian dancing have yet to be revealed. The art was given a new charm and a new development in Moghul courts and in later times. Quite recently Rabindranath Tagore has composed some beautiful music for dancing and has realised the value of dancing as an independent form of artistic expression. Till a few years ago there were great and wonderful dancers in India. It was however fast becoming an intricate jumble of meaningless jumps and hops and twirlings of fingers. But its real beauty deserves to be understood and perfected, because the sweetest delineation of Rasa can be found only in dances where the eyes and the tongue and the hands of man—nay, the whole personality of man—becomes the instrument of emotional expression.

The Kerala Kathakali dance is of great beauty. But it is not well understood in North India. Mr. Projesh Banerji says in his recent book Dance of India: “Kathakali is a degenerate specimen of the once glorious art of Kerala in Deccan” (page 186). Kathakali seeks to express a wide range of emotions through gestures (mudras) and movements of eyes and eyebrows and cheeks and lips. The Raja of Kottarakara (1575-1650 A.D.) gave it a great impetus. It consists of Ramanāttam and Krishnanāttam relating to the stories of Rama and Krishna. These became more popular than the ancient forms of Chākiarkoothu and Kudiāttom. Thullal, Mohiniāttam, etc., also may be referred to here. A Thullal is a

FIGURE OF DANCING GIRL ON PILLAR OF VERANDAH, SITHANNAVASAL ROCK-CUT JAIN TEMPLE,

SITHANNAVASAL, PUDUKOTTAI STATE (Copyright, Archaeological Survey of India)

dance to the accompaniment of song and pantomime. There are

three distinct forms of Thullal, viz.,ottam, seethankan and

parayan. The former two are of a vigorous type while the third

is suited to pathetic themes. The great master of Thullal is

Kunjan Nambiar. It is said that 9 movements of the head,

6 movements of the eyebrows, 11 movements of the eyes, and

4 movements of the neck are used by the Kathakali artists. The

wearing of masks and the use of paints and costumes are other

peculiarities. The Kathakali artist communicates the mood and

the spirit of the story by the eloquence of his facial movements and

bodily movements and hand-gestures. There are also scenic stage-

settings. The Kathakali is an open air art.

The Bharata Natyam of the Tamil Districts is of the Lasya

variety whereas the Kathakali is more or less of the Tāndava

variety. It has developed a remarkable technique, which like that

of the Kathakali, has been perfected in the course of centuries

especially in the Tanjore District. It consists of alarippu, jathi-

swaram, Varnam, padam, etc. It excels in movements of head and

neck and eyebrows and eyes. Its special excellence is in the

graceful footwork and in the interpretation of the sentiment of the

song by abhinaya (gesture).

Other living forms of the Indian art of dance are the Telugu

Kuchipoodi dance in which there is a graceful dance-representation

of the story of Krishna, the Manipuri dance which excels in swift

footwork and exhibits episodes in the life of Radha and Krishna,

the Orissa Chow dance which is danced with masks on, many

varieties of folk dances, etc.

It is a happy augury that of late the art of dance, which had

fallen on evil times and on evil tongues is coming into its own.

At a time when many forces threatened to overwhelm it, new

forces have overwhelmed those forces and have lifted the art into

a high place in the popular favour. Rabindranath Tagore has in-

troduced dances into his plays. The dances interpret songs and

the dancers wear charming costumes. They do not care much for

Mudras or Talas. Srimati Rukmani Devi has given it a lovely

cultural setting and a supreme spiritual appeal. Sreeman Gopi-

nath and Sreemati Thangamani of Trivandrum have introduced

not only new colour effects and costume effects to enhance its

charm and appeal but have added new graces and new art values

to it. Uday Sankar and Menaka and Ragini Devi and others have

taken its meaning and message to many lands all over the world.

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Uday Shankar's Indian Culture Centre at Almora is a world-famous institution. But after all is seen and said in regard to dance, it is felt by all lovers of the art of dance that the Bharata Natya of South India is supreme in the expression of all the emotions of the human heart. I have tried to express its appeal in the following poem of mine :—

“Whom dost thou see? What moves thy lips?

What passions, yearnings, joys are thine?

Why tremble thy fair finger tips?

Why do thy eyes thus gloom and shine?

The gems that clasp thy quivering throat

Seem human in their sympathy.

With answering light, like note for note,

They own a kindred ecstacy.

Thine anklets sweet more vocal are—

Those tell-tale traitors round thy feet—

Disclose thy passion's peace and war,

Its raptures deep so bitter-sweet.

Oh ! Call not this mere pantomime

Or mere dissembled ecstacy.

The lyric soul of Rhythmic Time

Awhile incarnate is in thee.”

CHAPTER XIV

INDIAN POETRY

The subject of Indian Poetry is so vast and voluminous that an adequate description of its cultural bases and manifestations will require a separate volume and cannot be compressed into a brief chapter. I must hence retain that privilege for exercise on a future occasion. I can and shall, however, indicate here the vital and essential principles and aspects of Indian poetry, though, for the delineation of the graces and glories of the best poetry in the Sanskrit and the vernaculars of India an ampler canvas is undeniably indispensable.

All over the world the finest aroma of the human soul has been expressed in poetry. Poetry is the joy of rhythmic speech about the meaning and value and joy of life. Poetry is the queen of the arts. It can be and is in its best manifestations, architectonic and statuesque and pictorial and melodious and rhythmical and combines the graces of architecture and sculpture and painting and music and dancing. It is all these and something more. Its channel of expression is words which are dynamos of emotion. Its power of expression and suggestion is manifold, nay, infinite.

The poet is a seer. He sees far and high and deep and feels and reveals the mystery of things. His revelatory power is due to his sincerity and insight. Goethe says: “The Beautiful is higher than the Good; the Beautiful includes in it the Good.” This is a bit of exaggeration. Each of the three aspects of divinity—the Beautiful and the Good and the True—is so attractive that when you fix your attention on any one of them it seems to be supreme. It is the poet’s privilege to reveal the beauty-aspect hinting at the same time the aspects of goodness and of truth. That is the real characteristic and distinction of the highest poetry.

The two western countries which are supreme in poetry are Greece and England. The countries which produced Homer and Shakespeare are entitled to the reverential homage of humanity for all time. Nowhere else has the purpose of poetry been better or more loftily and adequately expressed than by Plato. He says in his Republic: “Excellence of thought and of harmony and of form and of rhythm is connected with excellence of character.…

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…….We must look for artists who are able out of the goodness of

their own natures to trace the nature of beauty and perfection,

so that our young men, like persons who live in a healthy place,

may be perpetually influenced for good. Every impression which

they receive through eye or ear will come from embodiments of

beauty, and this atmosphere, like the health-giving breeze which

flows from bracing regions, will imperceptibly lead them from their

earliest childhood into association and harmony with the spirit of

Truth and into love for the Spirit.” Aristotle says with equal

truth and perception : “Poetry has a wider truth and a higher

aim than his history; for poetry deals rather with the universal, history

with the particular.” Thus Plato makes us realise the unity of

poetry and morality and spirituality, and Aristotle makes us realise

that poetry aims at presenting the universal elements of life and

the infinite possibilities, even more than the infinite actualities, of

human nature.

I do not mean to undervalue the great poetry of other nations.

France which gave the world Corneille and Racine and Moliere and

Hugo, Germany which produced Goethe and Schiller, Italy which

gave us Dante who was, what he described the poet to be, the

scribe of “Divine Love”, and other countries have given rare gifts

of poesy to the world. Modern criticism of poetic ideals has been

equally valuable and has given new wings to the realisation of the

poetic view of the world. Lessing, Victor Cousin, Addison, Carlyle,

Emerson, Mathew Arnold, Ruskin, Morris, Saint-Beuve and others

have done very fine work in this direction and shown how the

raw material of reality is worked into the finished creations of art.

Poetry is thus the human soul’s realisation and revelation of the

beauty without and the beauty within. We must never forget that

the soul, though we can for psychological purpose differentiate

imagination and emotion and knowledge and vision, is a unitary

principle and functions as a whole. Addison says well: “We divide

the soul and several powers and faculties, but there is no such divi-

sion in the soul itself, since it is the whole soul that remembers,

understands, wills, or imagines.” The soul loves Nature and yet

looks beyond it. The poet brings us

“The Light that never was on sea or land,

The consecration and the poet’s dream.”

He can make all the flowers of all the seasons bloom together. He

lets us into the secret of things and gives a glimpse of the wonders

which lie unseen about us and within us. He appeals to what

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Mathew Arnold calls our “imaginative reason”. Ruskin says well: “He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of greatest ideas.”

This review of universal poetry and criticism of poetry, fascinating as the subject is, must be closed. The forms of poetry—epic, narrative, dramatic, elegiac, lyric, etc.—differ, and their special manifestations in particular times and climes differ as well. But in every high and noble poetry the same accent of the soul is heard. As Victor Cousin says : “A word in itself, above all a word chosen and transfigured into poetry, is the most energetic and the most universal of symbols. Equipped with this talisman of its own creation, poetry reflects all the images of the world of the senses, like sculpture and painting; reflects feeling like painting and music, rendering it in all its variations—variations which music cannot reach, and that come in a rapid succession which painting cannot follow, while it remains as sharply turned and as full of repose as sculpture; nor is that all; it expresses what is inaccessible to all other arts, I mean thought, thought which allows no sound to escape, which is revealed in no play of feature, thought in its loftiest flight, in its most refined abstraction.”

Tested by such noble and lofty tests, Indian poesy is found to be among the loftiest and noblest poesies in the world. The Vedic poetry, the later epic poetry, the yet later classical poetry of Kali-dasa and other poets, and the still later devotional poetry of Sri Sankaracharya and others form an unparalleled contribution to the world’s poesy. A country which has given to the world the Upanishads and the Ramayana and the Mahabharata with the Bhagawad Gita as its crown and the Bhāgawata may well claim to lead the world in poetry. When we add to such peerless poetry the great poetry which was later on written in the vernaculars, we can well realise the supremacy of India in poetry.

It is not possible to describe in a chapter the magnificence of Indian poetry which would require many volumes for adequate description. The Vedas—and especially the Rig Veda—contain not only the oldest extant literature of humanity but also some of the sublimest and most charming poetry of the world. The poems to ushas (dawn), the sun (sanitar or surya), the fire (agni), the sky (aditi), etc., show vision and rapture in a remarkable combination. The vedic seers arrived at their realisation of the divine unity of all things by a peerless power of intuition and then gave

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it a poetic expression which thrills us by its combined profundity and grace. Their realisation that all that is is born in Bliss (Ananda) and rests in Bliss and is finally absorbed in Bliss is the very zenith of all human realisation. Towards the close of the Isavasya Upanishad, we see how the poet-saint feels that even the sun's superb splendour hides a greater glory and how he visualises that glory by the grace of the Sun-God and finds that the spiritual Light shining there and enkindling the sun is the same as the Spiritual Light in his own heart. The budding poetry of the Vedas found its full blossoming in the immortal epics of India. In the Ramayana we find powers of characterisation and descriptions of nature and human emotions hardly equalled by any other poetry in the world. Rama and Sita are ideals yet real figures whom the poet Valmiki's imagination has depicted in deathless words which have inspired countless lives in India during many centuries. The Mahabharata is not only an epitome of the higher thought of India in all the fields of knowledge but contains sublime poetry inclusive of that peerless and priceless gem of poetic and philosophic literature—the Bhagavad Gita. Tagore says well that these two epics contain the "eternal history of India." Though the puranas aim at presenting morality and philosophy for the guidance of man, yet they often exhibit very high poetic achievement. They include that perfect jewel of the world's devotional literature, Srimad Bhagawata—in which poetic emotion is sublimated into spiritual ecstasy again and again. Later yet we have two great poetic developments in the realms of Kāvya (Narrative Poetry) and Nataka (Drama). In both these realms Kalidasa is supreme and is one of the world-figures in literature. In his handling of the Rama story in his Raghuvamsa he shows consummate artistic tact and skill and he has produced therein a brief but charming Ramayana of his own without putting himself in competition with the older and greater poet. In Kumara Sambhava he has depicted his highest concepts of Indian love and heroism—love based on devotion and discipline (tapas) and heroism based on the passion for world-welfare. His Megha Sondesa is a unique artistic creation and inspired innumerable similar later works. His dramas also are universal in their appeal and contain perfect poetry. Of all his dramatic creations Sakuntala is supreme and deservedly got unbounded praise from the great poet and dramatist of the nineteenth century—the German poet Goethe. Bhāravi, Magha, Sriharsa and others also gave great poems to the world. Equally famous are the Sanskrit dramatists Bhāsa, Sudraka, Bhavabhuti and others. I shall dis-

cuss Indian Drama in some detail in the next chapter. Indian

didactic poetry also attained world-famous heights in Panchatantra,

Bhartrihari's Satakas, etc. Indian devotional poetry attained

supreme levels of achievement in the hands of Sri Sankaracharya

and others. In Bana's Kadambari ornate Sanskrit prose reached

a peerless magnificence of utterance. But yet in the lighter vein

of writing Sanskrit literature was deficient. Great humorous works

were unknown. These have to be created hereafter after imbib-

ing the spirit of the immortal humorous works in the English and

French languages. In the realm of drama, tragedies and prose

social dramas of the new intellectual type were unknown. The

current idea that a tragical close in a play is opposed to the genius

of Indian literature has some truth in it, but we must not make

a fetish of it. Bhasa's Uru Bhanga was a pure tragedy. There is

a charm in the surpassing of tragedy by a restoration of life and

law and love by divine interposition and there is another kind of

charm in the purgation of our lower nature through suffering and

through tenderness..

We see an equally remarkable poetic efflorescence in all the

Indian vernaculars as well. Among these the palm has to be

assigned to the Tamil language which has a very ancient and very

great literature. The ancient Sangam epics are of a high order

and among them Silappadikaram stands out in unique preemi-

nence. The Tirukural is among the world's great classics and

shows the supremacy of the Tamil genius in didactic poetry. The

Thevaram and Tiruvachakam and Tiruvoimozhi and Tiruppugazh

and Tiruvarūtpā form a devotional literature unparalled in the

world's literature and even in Sanskrit literature. The sighs and

sobs and agonies of the human spirit in its moods of unsatisfied

longings for union with God are expressed in a manner which is

unique and soul-uplifting and soul-satisfying. Kamban's Ramayana,

though modelled on Valmiki's immortal epic, is original in its

handling of the theme and shows that the poet is a supreme master

of the poetic art. In recent times Subramania Bharati has given

to the Tamil world patriotic poems of the highest order and also

other new literary forms full of admirable artistry.

Equally remarkable is the poetic achievement in the other

Indian languages which, in mediæval and modern India, have been

raised to the rank of great cultural languages by the genius of a

succession of remarkable poets. In Nannaya's Mahābhārata and

specially in Pothanna's Bhāgawata the Telugu language enters the

ranks of the great languages which have created world-literature.

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The works of Ezhuthachchan and the recent poetic work of Mahakavi Vallathol and Mahakavi Ulloor Parameswara Iyer show the vitality of the Malayalam language. The poems and songs of Purandara Das and others and the new efflorescence of modern Kannada literature in Mysore show the vitality of the Kanarese language. The Marathi language become a marvel of cultural achievement in the poems and songs of Jnāneswar and Ekanath and Tukaram and Samarth Ramadas and shows a virile vitality to-day. Hindi has risen to great heights in the poems and songs of Mirabai and has given to the world Tulasidas' Ramacharitamanasa which, though inspired by Valmiki's epic poem, is an original poem of great merit and has been the solace and inspiration of hundreds of millions in each generation for many centuries. The Sikh Granth blossomed in the north-west of India and the great Bengali poetry of Vidyapati and Chandidas and others blossomed in the north-east of India. In recent times Bengali has raised her language to international renown and to her has been vouchsafed in this century the supreme poetic accomplishment of Rabindranath Tagore.

A mention may also be made here of English poetry by Indians, though it will never equal poetry in the Indian languages in point of poetic merit or as a source of national inspiration. The poetry of Toru Dutt and Sarojini Naidu is of enduring beauty. The new feelings of patriotism and unity surging in passionate waves through the Indian hearts to-day, as also the feelings of futility and frustration due to unattained freedom, find expression in these poems.

The most remarkable fact about such poetic efflorescence in India is that the political downfall in India had no depressing effect on India's soul and did not bring about her poetical downfall as has happened elsewhere in the world. The Indian mind and heart has always shown a remarkable power of resistance and resilience which has led to the irrepressible vitality of the Indian people. The damage wrought by centuries has been repaired again and again in decades. While other civilisations have disappeared, the Indian civilisation alone is "full of youthful vigour." This is due to the divine vision which the Indian heart beheld in its radiant past and to which it has been loyal down to this day.

Wonderful as is Indian poetry, equally wonderful is Indian poetics. I have already given a reference to the works on Indian æsthetics extending over two thousand years. If I were to try to

give even a brief summary of the profound and subtle and valuable

ideas contained in them I would require a big volume for indicat-

ing the procession of ideas in a suitable way. I have tried to do

that work, though in a perfect way, in another volume. Without

a fair knowledge of Sanskrit, such an attempt would be hardly

intelligible. I shall therefore show here what are the vital and

basic ideas which are explained in Indian Poetics and exemplified

in Indian Poetry.

The Indian Aestheticians say that the two ambrosial fruits

on the poisonous tree of worldly life consist of the enjoyment of

poesy and of the company of godly persons. They state also that in

the illimitable cosmos of poetry the creator is the poet himself and

that the world takes colour from his soul and is manifested in the

light of the splendour of his soul.

अपारे काव्यसंसारे कविरेव प्रजापतिः ।

यथास्मै रोचते विश्वं तथैवेतत् प्रवर्तते ॥

(In the limitless creation of poesy, the poet is the creator. As it

pleases him so does the world manifest itself.) Mammata, who is

one of the greatest æstheticians of the world, says in a deservedly

famous and well-known verse in his Kāvyaprakasa : “The poet’s

speech creates a world which is not fettered by the laws of Destiny,

which is of the very essence of joy, which is of self-existent and

not dependent on anything else, and which is made beautiful by

the nine rasas.”

नियतिकृतनियमरहितां ह्लादैकमयामनन्यपरा-

नवरसरुचिरां निर्मितिमादधती भारती कवेर्जयति ॥

He says also that the muse of poetry should give immediate

and direct and supreme delight (sadyah paranirvrithi). Another

ancient and famous idea which is elaborated by him is to the effect

that while the Veda commands us like a sovereign (prabhu

sammita) and the epic and ethical literature of the Purānas and

Itihāsas counsel us like a friend (Suhrit sammita), poetry charms

and enraptures us into perfection with the irresistible graceful

ways of a beloved wife who can by a word, a look, nay, by a

gesture, lead us in the ways of beauty and goodness and truth.

(Kantā sammitā) To use a western analogy the vedas and the

Puranas and the Kāvyas are the Autocrat and the Professor and

the Poet at the Breakfast Table.

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I have already referred to the æsthetical concepts of Ānanda (Bliss) and Rasa (æsthetic sweetness) and Bhāva (æsthetic emotion). Without a complete comprehension of these ideas, there could be no great poetic achievement. In addition to them the Indian æstheticians lay down that three elements are required for the making of a great poet viz. pratibhā (creative imagination) and vyutpathi (study and culture) and abhyāsa (practice of the art of poetry). If in addition to all these the poet is a devotee and wins the grace of God, he is able to give the world that intellectual and emotional and spiritual uplift by which man is lifted up to the highest levels of bliss divine.

The various schools of æsthetics in India may be briefly called the Rasa school, the Alamkara school, the Riti school, the Vakrokti school, and the Dhvani school. The rasa school of Bharata analyses the rasa concept with great acuteness and thoroughness. It says that rasa is the æsthetic mood which is kindled by the dominant emotion (sthāyi bhāva) and which is heightened and intensified by the principal exciting and stimulating causes (ālabana vibhāvas) and the secondary and accessory stimulating causes (uddipana vibhāvas) and by the external manifestations such as smiles and sidelong glances, etc. (anubhāvas) and by the eight sāthvikabhāvas (prominent involuntary physical effects), viz. stupefaction or स्तम्भ, loss of consciousness or प्रलय, horripilation or रोमांच, sweating or स्वेद, loss of brightness or वैवर्ण्य, tremor or वेशु, tears or अश्र and change of tone or वस्वर्य, and the 33 Vyabhicharibhāvas or samcharibhāvas (the ever-changing and ever-rising and ever-setting minor collateral feelings of pleasure and pain, such as fear, jealousy, shyness, impatience, etc.). The Alambana vibhāvas are the human factors and determinants in emotion (such as the beloved) whereas the uddipana vibhāvas are the environmental factors and stimulants in emotion (such as the full moon, etc.). Rasa is kindled by the vibhavas and manifested by the anubhāvas or accessory stimulants and intensified by the vyabhicharibhāvas or occasional and fleeting moods. Thus rasa is an æsthetic mood kindled in the reader or the seer or the hearer by his sharing in the depicted feelings because of the universal elements present in such delineation. But for such common bases of emotion, there is perfect truth in Hamlet’s query,

"What is Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?"

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Such disinterested absorption in an æsthetic mood enables the innate bliss of the soul to manifest itself. The Sthāyibhavās are said to be eight in number, viz. rati, hāsa, soka, krodha, utsāha, bhaya, jugupsa and vismaya (love, the comic, pathos, fury, heroism, terror, disgust and wonder) They correspond to the eight rasas : Sringara, hasya, karmā, randra, vira, bhayanaka, bheebhatsa and adbhuta.

The Rasa concept was elaborated in Bharata’s Natya Sastra which is the earliest systematic Indian treatise on Aesthetics but its seed is found in India’s earliest great poem—Valmiki’s Rama-yana. He says in it that the poem is full of the various rasas—sringara, karunya, hasya, veera, bhayānaka, rowdra, etc. (Bāla-kanda, IV, 9). But the basic rasa in the poem is the Karunā. Rasa (pathos). The poet himself says : Sokah slokātvām āgataḥ (Pity has become Poesy) (Bālakanda, II 40). Anandavardhana bases his theory that Rasa is the soul of Poesy on the poetic achievement of Valmiki and Vyāsa (Third Udyota of Dhvanyāloka).

A question which is often discussed by the Indian aestheticians is as to the exact nature of the origin of the enjoyment of the Rasa (Rasāsvada). In Bharata’s famous Rasa Sutra “Rasa is revealed by the union of Vibhāva and Anubhāva and Vyabhicharibhava”

(विमावानुभावव्यभिचारिसंयोगाद्रसनिष्पत्तिः:)

His aim is to show that the dominant emotion (sthayibhava) is stimulated and revealed by Vibhāvas and Anubhāvas and Vyabhi-charibhavas, and it in its turn stimulates and kindles the kindred Rasa.

विमावैरनुभावैश्च सात्विकैश्च व्यभिचारिभिः।

आनीयमानः स्वाद्यतां स्थायीमावो रसः स्मृतः॥

He says that Rasa is so called because it is enjoyable (आस्वाद). अत्राह रस इति कः पदार्थ:-उच्यते—आस्वाद्यत्वात्। The sthāyi bhāva is the flower while Rasa is the fruit. The first feeling of love is not sringāra. When it is fed and intensified by vibhāvas and anu-bhāvas and vyabhicharibhavas and becomes the ruling passion and dominant emotion and peryades and fills the mind it becomes the sthayibhava of Rathi (रति) which reveals the exquisite and exclusive enjoyment (Rasa) of sringāra. Rasa is the king whose attendants are the vibhāvas and anubhāvas and vybhicharibhavas. The vibhāvas are the causes and the anubhāvas are the concurrent

18

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manifestations and the vyabhicharibhavás are the feeders of the ruling emotion. विभावानुभावव्यभिचारिपरिप्वितः स्थायिभावो रसनामिषभतेन रेन्त्र्वत।

Enjoyment (आस्वाद) is the essence of Rasa. It is the reader of the poem or the spectator of the dance or the drama that has such enjoyment of Rasa. He is called sahridaya, i.e., the man of sympathy whose entrance into the feelings of the personages in the poem or the drama kindles in him a dominant emotion which ripens into Rasa. In the Krishna Karnámrita there is a beautiful stanza which says that when Yasoda told the story of Sita's abduction by Ravana the boy Sri Krishna cried out “Lakshmana! Bring, bring my bow”. A similar story is told about Kulasekhara Alwar, the great Travancore king and devotee. Thus the feeling enkindled in the hero or the heroine lights a kindred rasa in the poet or the dramatist or the actor and this flame lights up a similar flame of rasa in the hearer or the reader. Bharata gives us a telling illustration from the realm of the lower pleasures of the palate. Just as cooked rice is made by sauces of salt, sugar, etc., a means of joy and vigour, even so the Sahridaya enjoys the poem or the drama and in the process becomes full of the joy of Rasa and the vigour of moral and spiritual life. Thus Bharata's view is that the Vásanas or latent impressions of emotion in the human mind are enkindled by vibhāvas, etc., and become bright as sthāyibhavás and rasás. The characters in the poem or the drama experience the full sway of the ruling emotion but the poet and the dramatist and the actor have a similar but not identical emotion kindled by the emotions of the characters. It is this imaginative emotion that becomes a Rasa and kindles a similar emotion in the reader or the hearer or the spectator who experiences a similar Rasa.

Mammata has shown how Bharata's acute analysis of Bhāva and Rasa become the starting point of four types of later æsthetical speculations. Lollata interpreted Bharata's Rasa Sutra according to the Mimamsa doctrines; Sankuka did so according to the Nyāya school of thought; Bhatta Nāyaka did so according to the Sânkaya doctrines; and Abhinvagupta interpreted it according to the Ālamkarika doctrines. Lollata held that Rasa is generated as the effect from the vibhavas, etc., which form the cause. The Vibhāva generates the feeling e.g., Sakuntala generates the feeling of love in Dushyanta, and Dushyanta generates the feeling of love in Sakuntala. The Anubhavas manifest the feeling and in the very process of manifestation fan the feeling into flame and make more potent the generated feeling. The vyabhicharibhavás add fuel to the fire and intensify the flame of emotion (bhāva) till the

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emotion is in a state of white heat and overspreads the entire

mind and becomes a ruling and dominant passion (sthayibhava)

which develops into Rasa. The poet and the actor enter into the

feelings of the characters and represent the emotions. Lollata

thinks that the spectator is under the mistaken impression that

the actor or the actress is the hero or the heroine. This is bring-

ing in the metaphysical theory of Adhyāsa (superimposition)

with a vengeance. No spectator ever mistakes the actor for the

hero. Nor is it true that the actor merely simulates the hero's

passion. No actor is worth his salt if he does not feel the emotion,

though he may not and cannot feel it in the same degree and with

the same intensity. Lollata is further wrong in thinking that the

spectator merely enjoys the actor's simulated passion just as he

is wrong in thinking that the actor merely simulates the hero's

passion. The fact is that the actor's detachment combined with

feeling etherealises the feeling and makes it æsthetic and that the

spectator's greater detachment combined with feeling etherealises

the feeling further and completely converts it into the æsthetic

rasa. The element of feeling must be in all—i.e., the hero and the

actor and the spectator. Otherwise there is no possibility of the

evolution of real rasa. It is the element of detachment that bring

in the transmuting touch. It transforms the agony of the original

character owing to sorrow into the æsthetic rasa of pathos. The

spectator's tears, like the tears of the hero in agony, cause an

exquisite thrill of pleasure. Aristotle's famous view that tragedy

purgates the heart through pity and terror and that these emotions,

though painful in the actual *world, give a pure and chastened

pleasure in the ideal world of poetry and drama may well be

remembered in this context.

Thus Bharata shows a masterly grip over the nature of Rasa

while in Lollata we find that the entry of the logician and the

metaphysician into aesthetics brings in elements of confusion.

Bharata's word Nishpathi signifies enkindled and manifested

and intensified and revealed. Lollata takes it to mean Utpathi

(generation) and has not made a success of his analysis of Rasa.

Bharata is not concerned with the direct emotions of the characters

but with the kindred indirect æsthetic emotions kindled in the

artist and the spectator. If Lollata has erred in his analysis of

Rasa, the next great æsthetician Sankuka errs in another way.

He sets his Rasânumiti theory (that Rasa is inferred) as against

Lollata's Rasotpatti theory (that Rasa is generated). In him also

the logician and the metaphysician overpower the pure æstheti-

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cian. Lollata would say that the spectator imposes the character

or the actor by way of adhyāsa and regards the actor as Dushyanta

or Rama. Sankuka combats this view and says that there can

be no adhyāsa because the spectator never arrives at the later

correct knowledge that the actor is not Rama or Dushyanta. His

view is that the spectator infers the emotion of the character from

the simulated emotion of the actor as exhibited by vibhāvas, etc.,

and is filled with delight as at the sight of a painted horse (chitra-

turaga). But is it right to equate Nishpatti with Anusmriti (infer-

ence) ? The view that the spectator equates the actor with the

character by inference is as incorrect as Lollata’s view that the

spectator superimposes the character on the actor. It cannot be

said that the real feeling is in the character and a simulated feel-

ing is in the actor and that the enjoyment or rasa is in the spectator.

As stated above by me the feeling is common to all though in

different degrees while the elements of detachment and disinterest-

edness convert emotion to rasa. This is why the emotions of pathos

and horror which cause grief or fear in the character create pleasure

in the spectator by softening the grief and the fear. The spectator

feels a little of the grief or the fear but not so much of it as will

cause the evaporation of joy (Rasa). This magic is achieved by

imagination in the actor and the spectator. When the original

emotion of the original character is refracted by the double prism

of imagination and detachment, the delectable coloured ray of Rasa

is the result. Bharata’s word anukarana (imaginative apprehension and representation) is a magical word whose significance has

been missed by later æstheticians. The result of the interpreta-

tion of the original emotion by the artist and the actor and the

audience is Rasa. All of them idealise and universalise the

original emotion with the help of imagination and detachment.

Bhattanayaka takes a line of his own and propounds his theory

of Rasabukti (Enjoyment of Rasa). He says that the poet or the

dramatist or the actor helps the spectator to arrive at a univer-

salisation of the emotion experienced by the individual. Thus

Sakuntala becomes a symbol of all love-lorn maidens. The poet

or dramatist gives a universalised and idealised picture of

the emotion. By this power it is possible to share in the emotion

of the original character in whose individual and incommunicable

experience no other can have a part. The universal aspect of the

emotion is then enjoyed by the reader or the spectator owing to

the preponderance in him of Sattwa Guna which activates sympathy

and detachment. Such enjoyment is an impersonal enjoyment. In

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spiritual experience the detachment is complete and the object of

attention is unitive, viz., the glory of God. But in æsthetic experi-

ence the detachment is but partial and the object of attention is

the diversity of the world. It is the predominance of Sattwa guna

and the combination of impersonality and detachment with sym-

pathy which makes the tragic in art a source of pleasure though

the tragedies of life would be only a source of unhappiness to

the hero himself. The reader or the spectator enjoys the pathetic

scene with a calmness and steadiness of mind which the hero

cannot enjoy. His sympathy leads him to an imaginative compre-

hension of the pathetic situation while his detachment enables him

to distil happiness out of unhappiness. Further, the poet's use of

style (Riti and Vritti) and figures of speech (alamkārās) appro-

priate to the particular emotions enhances the emotional effect.

Soft sounds are appropriate in the case of sringara (love) and

karuna (pathos) and Santi (dispassion.) Harsh sounds fit in with

Veera (heroism), raudru (the terrific), etc. Thus Bhattana-

yaka's æsthetic theory is very valuable and interesting. But his

basic assumptions are secured easily by the Dhwani theory and

hence it is that the Rasa-Dhwani theory now finally holds the field

in Indian Aesthetics. Vyanjanā Vrithi or Dhwani is a power resi-

dent in human speech and by it the emotion depicted in words is

given wings so to say and soars from the particular to the universal

and charms and calms the hearer's or the spectator's mind into the

sāttwic mood wherein joy and radiance shine forth without inter-

ruption. As the Bhagawad Gita says well :

तत्र सत्त्वं निर्मलत्वेन्याय्यकमनामयम् ।

सुखसंगेन बध्नाति ज्ञानसंगेन चानघ ॥

(Chapter XIV, Verse 6)

Further, Bhattanayaka was so intent on the universalisation of

emotion that he failed to realise that the reader or the spectator

has a similar emotion (though in a softened and impersonal form)

kindled in himself and his enjoyment is thus bound up with such

emotion enkindled in his soul.

It was reserved for Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta to

assimilate the best elements in the above views and to bring out

the full force of Bharata's remarkable and original æsthetical

theory by introducing the concepts of Vyanjana and Dhwani (sug-

gestion) and propounding their theory of Rasābhivyakti (Rasa and

its manifestation). The main human emotions are native to all—the

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characters and the poets and dramatists and the actors and the

readers and spectators. The poet’s or dramatist’s artistic imagi-

nation universalises the particular emotion of the character and

enjoys the emotions and kindles similar emotions in the reader or

the spectator, and these emotions become rasas. Thus the poten-

tial and latent emotions which reside in all human beings were

experienced by the depicted characters and then idealised and uni-

versalised and charmingly and appropriately represented by the

artists in a mood of imagination and sympathy and detachment.

The emotions attain the rank of rasas in the poem or the drama.

The actor goes through a similar process and makes the latent

emotion patent. The spectator or reader goes through a similar

process and has his latent emotion kindled and experiences Rasa.

Even among the spectators or readers there are different adhikâris

for different rasas. An old man can enjoy the Sānthi Rasa better

than a young man; but the latter can enjoy the Sringāra Rasa

better than the former. The final fulfilment of Rasa is therefore

in the enlightened and appreciative critic (sahridaya).

आपरीतोषाद्द्रुतुां न साधु मन्ये प्रयोगविज्ञानम् ।

(I do not think artistic expression to be excellent till it pleases the

discerning audience) — (Kalidasa’s Sakuntala).

Thus Anandavardhana and Abhinavgupta expound Bharata’s

idea accurately and express the very essence of æsthetic delight.

When Kalidasa describes in the opening scene in Sakuntala the

deer running for its life pursued by the Dushyanta’s chariot,

neither the poet nor the actor nor the spectator feels the fear of

the deer but all of them imaginatively apprehend the emotion of

fear and experience the pleasure of the rasa of fear. The power

of suggestion contained in the words of the poet and the gestures

of the actor create in the mind of the spectator parallel Vibhâvas

and anubhâvas and vyabhicharibâvas which manifest the rasa

latent in him. But everything depends on the poet’s sense of

appropriateness (auchitya) and his imagination and sympathy and

detachment. Then only the spectator’s mind is simultaneously

calmed and charmed, and out of the calm ocean of sattwa guna

arise the apsarasas (heavenly damsels) of the Rasas. This is why

then sorrow, fear, disgust, etc., becomes sources of æsthetic

pleasure. Love in separation (Vipralambha sringara) is thus able

to cause a more rapturous rasa than even love in union (sambhoga-

sringara). A pathetic scene which may have caused sorrow to the

primary character evolves a feeling of combined pity and sympathy and pleasure which shines as Karunā Rasa in the reader or the spectator and fills his heart and thrills his entire personality. As Bharata says :

योऽर्थो हृदयसंवादी तस्य भावो रसोद्भवः । शरीरं व्याप्यते तेन शुचं काष्ठमिवाभ्मिना ॥

Thus Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta express the heart of Bharata best and reveal the very soul of Rasa. The secret of rasa is in the rousing and revealing of the emotion of the reader or the spectator by the artist's impersonal and sympathetic and detached delineation of the hero's or the heroine's emotion. The artist's method is the method of appropriate speech whose power of suggestion evokes the spectator's dormant emotion and makes it shine as a rasa.

After the doctrine of Rasa-Dhwani thus took root in India, later æstheticians perfected it. Rasas are not generated or inferred but are made manifest and patent. The cause of Rasa is not something alien to the spectator but something which makes patent what is latent in him. Among the later Rasa theorists Mammata and Viswanatha are pre-eminent. Mammata emphasises creativeness and joy and rasa as being of the essence of poesy. Viswanatha says in his Sahityadarpana that rasa is the soul of poesy. वाक्यं रसात्मकं काव्यं He calls the æsthetic delight the brother of the spiritual ānanda (Brah­mānanda sahodarah). Jagannatha describes the setting free of the joy of the rasa as a process of the breaking of the hindrances of the expression of the joy of the soul (āvaranabhanga). Of course æsthetic ānanda is the white light of Ātmananda broken into the coloured lights of the rasas by the prism of imagination and sympathy and detachment, while spiritual ānanda is the integrated and infinite and eternal and supreme and transcendental Rasa.

The essence of the highest æsthetical theory in India is thus in the concept of Rasa-Dhwani. We are now in a position to realise the unity of the highest æsthetical doctrine and the highest spiritual doctrine in India and to understand how the Indian æsthetical doctrine is founded on basic human nature and is far ahead of the western æsthetical doctrine in breadth as well as in depth. The main human emotions are the common possession of all humanity.

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They are in the shape of subtle and latent vāsanas (impressions and tendencies) which had been acquired in the course of experiences in innumerable births. In the case of the characters whose emotions are realised and expressed by the artist, the emotions are enkindled by Vibhāvas and quickened by Anubhavâs and fed by Vyabhichāribhāvas till they become Sthāyibhavas. But so long as the emotions do not pass through the minds of the artist and the author and the actor and the audience there is no manifestation of the æsthetical rasa. The emotion of the primary character is too personal and particular to be a rasa. The artist idealises and impersonalises and universalises the emotion while maintaining its directness and intensity. He does so because of his imagination and his sympathy and his detachment. The universal element in the emotion becomes manifest. His speech is not the mere verbatim words of the character but is bathed in the colours of his imagination. His style and his figures of speech give his words a significance which makes the universal appeal of his delineation of the emotion more charming and universal. In him the emotion attains the rank of rasa. He feels the emotion of the original character by his power of sympathy which evokes emotionally felt vibhavas and anubhavas and vyabhicharibhavas; his power of imagination impersonalises and universalises the emotion; his power of art uses style and figures of speech to intensify the emotion; and his detachment calms and tranquillises the mind and brings about the upsurge of the sattwaguna wherein the emotion ripens into Rasa. Such an emotion is in Wordsworth's language "emotion recollected in tranquillity". In the case of the poem a similar process happens in the reader or the hearer. A kindred emotion is kindled by his sympathy which enkindles emotionally felt vibhavas and anubhavas and vyabhicharibhavas and is universalised and is manifested as rasa. In the case of the drama an intermediate factor, viz., the actor intervenes. In his case a similar process takes place. The added aids of scenery and costume bring in a visual verisimilitude which intensifies the process in the spectator.

Thus the prism of sympathy and imagination and detachment is the magician which breaks up the white light of the emotion of the original character into the soft multi-tinted radiance of æsthetic rasa. Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti point out that even in the case of the original character when he views his emotion in retrospect there is an element of detachment and pleasure even in the contemplation of the outlived agonies. Kalidasa says that Rama and

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Sita, when they say the painted scenes describing their misfortunes in the Dandaka forest, had a thrill of pleasure.

पांसुनी दुःखान्यपि दण्डकेषु संचिन्त्यमानानि सुखान्यमून् ॥

(Raghuvamsa, XIV, 25)

This idea was worked out by Bhavabhuti in Act I of his Uttararamacharita. What time can do in the case of the original character himself, the poet's art and the emotion of the Sahridayā (enlightened reader or spectator) can do even more efficiently and create æsthetical rasa. In their case the transmuting power of imagination and sympathy and detachment brings about such a remarkable result.

In regard to the Rasa theory three other aspects deserve mention. Though Bharata mentions only eight rasas, the number was finally raised to nine by including Sānta Rasa, though this was done after many battles royal among the æstheticians. Here again the artists forced the hand of the æstheticians. Some æstheticians contended that Sama (tranquility) which is the sthayibhāva of sānti Rasa is quietism which means not emotion but subsidence of emotion and passion. But human experience shows dispassion as a soul-filling and soul-elevating experience. Very possibly Bharata did not enumerate it as he was mainly concerned with the rasas in dramas (Nātyarasas). Further, he mentions nirveda after the eight sthayibhavās and as the first of the vybicharibhavās. Nay, he expressly says:

न यत्र दुःखं न सुखं न द्वेषो नापि मत्सरः ।

समः सर्वेषु भावेषु शान्तिः प्रोत्थिता रसः ॥

After all, does it matter very much that Bharata does not specify the Sānta rasa as one of the Nātya Rasas? The passion for Moksha is the highest passion of the soul. It is the portrayal of Sāntha Rasa that evokes and enkindles that supreme and divine passion. Sama or Nirveda (dispassion) born of Tattwagnāna (knowledge of the supreme Truth) is the sthayibhavā of the Sānta rasa. Nāgānanda shows how in the hands of a great playwright the Sāntarasa could become a supreme Nātyarasa. I have already shown how in the epics of Valmiki and Vyāsa all the rasas flow into the ocean of Sānta rasa; Nay, Vyāsa expressly says :

यच्च कामसुखं लोके यच्च दिव्यं महत्सुखम् ।

तृष्णाक्षयसुखोद्भवस् नाहृतः श्रोषि कलाम् ॥

19

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INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL

(The joy of love and the joy of heaven are not even a fraction of the joy of the elimination of desire).

Thus the Sānta Rasa established itself as the ninth rasa. The attempt to add other rasas (prayas or friendship, vātsalya or parental affection, etc.) did not succeed. But Bhakti got elevated in course of time as a Rasa. Rup Goswami calls the Ujjwala Rasa (the shining Rasa). Its Alambara Vibhāva is God; its uddipana vibhavas are His Vibhuties; its anubhavās are supreme joy, etc. It is different from Sānthi as Prema is a different category from Vairagya.

Thus the Rasa concept was a growing and expanding concept in India. Another aspect is the discussion of the question of what is the basic or supreme Rasa? Bhoja says that the supreme rasa is sringara because its soul is bliss.

शृङ्गारवीर करुणाद्रुतहास्यरोद्र

वीभत्सवत्सलेभ्यस्त्रिभिरैक्यान्निषेव्यते शान्तनोऽपि ।

आत्मासिह्युद्भवशान्तपरेऽवयन्तु

शृङ्गारमेव रसानाद्रसमामनाः ॥

(Sringaraprkasa).

He says also that all the other rasas are connected with and subordinate to sringara. Bhavabhuti called Karuna Rasa as the basic and supreme rasa, because the heart is melted soonest and most completely by it.

एकोऽरसः करुण एव निमित्तभेदाद्

भिन्नः पृथक् पृथग्वैत विवर्तान् ।

(Uttararamacharita, II, 47)

Valmiki seems to support such a view when he says : शोकः ।

adbhuta rasa the rank of the basic and supreme rasa as it expands the mind most in the joy of wonder (हृदयामत्करत्वतः) He says that it was also his great great-grandfather Narayana's view.

रसे सारश्वमकर्त्रारसर्ववित्त्राप्यनुस्यूते ।

तन्मत्कारसारस्तवे सर्वत्राप्यद्भुतो रसः ॥

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But these views are more queer than true. Each rasa is supreme and soul-filling. If any rasa can be said to be supreme, it is the Bhakti Rasa.

The supremacy of the Bhakti Rasa is due to the fact that it is the emotion that appeals to all minds and to youth as well as age and to men as well as to women at all times and in all climes. It includes and transcends all the other emotions. Coleridge says about love :

"All thoughts, all passions, all delights

Whatever stirs this mortal frame,

All are ministers of love

And feed his sacred flame."

This truth is even more true in regard to divine love than in regard to human love. Bhakti not only thrills every fibre of our being. It has a permanence which no human love can ever have. Human love pins its love to the human body which, whatever be the bud-ding and blossoming and burgeoning of beauty in youth, must inevitably undergo decay and dissolution and death.

"Here where palsy shakes a few last sad grey hairs,

Where you grows pale and spectre thin and dies,

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Nor new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow."

(Keats).

But that inevitability has no application to the divine splendour which knows no waxing or waning and which kindles in us a death-less love which is the inner radium which shines for ever and ever. Valmiki in his immortal Ramayana describes the divine radiance in two wonderful verses :

रूपौदार्यगुणे: पुंसां दृष्टिचित्तापहारिणम् ।

रूपसंहननं लक्ष्म्या: सौकुमार्य सुवेशताम् ।

ददर्शुर्विस्मिताकारा रामस्य वनवासिन: ॥

(Him who lures our eyes and hearts by his Beauty and Grace)

(The forest-dwelling saints saw with charmed and enraptured and wonder-stricken hearts Sri Rama's handsome physical features and winsome grace and softness and attractiveness).

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In Bhakti the element of joy is uncloying and ever-new and ever-growing not only because of the infinite ever-new freshness and sweetness and charm of the divine beauty (तदेतद् रस्यं रुचिरं नवं नवं तदेव शश्वत्-नवीयस्तद्रसवम् ) in the language of the Bhāgawata but also because the elements of graciousness and grace in the object of Bhakti are as wonderful and permanent as the element of gracefulness. In human love there is the possibility—nay, certainty.—of satiety. There is the possibility of a change of the intensity of love as between the lover and the beloved. In fact a famous verse pictures vividly this melancholy element in a romantic reality. It says :

"At first our frames were in loving and inseparable union and we had an absolute unity of being. Then you become the lover and I the beloved. Now you are the husband and I am the wife. This is the result of my unassailable vitality which prolongs my hapless life."

पौर्वामुदस्सांक प्रथममविभिन्नो तनुरियं ततोनु स्वं प्रेयान् वयमपि हताशाः प्रियतमाः । इदार्नी नाथास्वं वयमपि कलत्रं किमपंरं हतानां प्राणानां कुठिलशकठिनानां फलमिदम् ॥

Nay, even in the best human love the element of selfishness is not totally absent. Nor is the lower element of sexual appetite eliminated from the pure psychic longing. All these drawbacks are absent from Godward love.

This is not all. The Adbhuta Rasa,—the joy of wonder—is one which fills the human heart and overflows in a mood of marvel and a mood of supplication. But after all the marvels of the created universe and the marvels of the human spirit are nowhere in comparison with the marvels of God. The sublimest heights of the adbhutarasa in the entire literature of the world are reached in the Vibhuti and Viswarupa adhyayas (Chapter X and XI) of the Bhagawad Gita.

Equally remarkable is the inclusion and transcendence of the Karunā Rasa in the Bhakti Rasa and the Vātsalya Rasa. The most unselfish and passionate tenderness and compassion of the most best and noblest and most altruistic of human beings pales into insignificance before the tenderness of Sri Rama towards Ahalya and Guha and Sabari and Sugriva and Vibheeshana and Jatayu, and the tenderness of

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Sri Krishna towards the cowherds and Kuchela and the tenderness

of Jesus towards the erring children of the Heavenly Father.

In the same way Vira rasa (the joy of heroism) is kindled and

is included and transcended in the Bhakti Rasa. The heroics of the

ordinary human being in the presence of the need "to ride abroad

redressing human wrongs" pale before the heroic mood and speech

and action of the soldier of God. Arjuna whose devotion ripened

into supreme and unquestionable heroism and who cried out

(I have crossed all doubts and become steadfast and shall do Thy

bidding) stands on a higher level of heroism than the Arjuna of

the epic. The main stream of Bhakti Rasa is worked out on the

Bhāgawata.

This idea of all these Rasas flowing like tributaries into the

main stream of Bhakti Rasa is worked out in the Bhāgawata. It

says:

"The Gopis attained Krishna through the way of love; Kamsa

through the gate of fear; Sisupala through the gate of hate;

Vrishnis through the gate of kinship; You through the gate of

comradeship; and we through the gate of devotion."

गोष्य: कामात् भयात् कंसोऽहैचैवायदयो नृपा: ।

संबन्धाद्रषणयो यूयं सख्याद्रष्ट्रस्य वयं विभो ॥

Another well-known verse says :

"To the gladiators Krishna was the thunderbolt; to men he was

perfect manhood; to women he was Cupid incarnate; to the cow-

herds he was their kith and kin; to the bad kings he was the

chastiser; to the parents he was the child; to Kamsa he was Death;

to the ignorant he was the Virat or apparent universe; to the yogis

he was the Supreme Reality; and to the Vrishnis he was the visible

deity."

मल्लानामशनिर्नृणां नरवर: स्त्रीणां स्मरो मूर्तिमान्

गोपानां स्वजनोदसदां क्षितिसुजां शास्ता स्वपित्रो: शिशु: ।

मृत्युम्भोजपतेर्विराडविदुषां तत्त्वं परं योगिनाम्

वृष्णीनां परदेवतेति विदितो रङ्ग गत: केशव: ॥

Sridhara says in his commentary on the above :

रौद्राद्‌भुतशृङ्गारहास्यवीरो द्रवो दया तथा ।

भयानकश्र बीभत्स: शान्तस्स प्रेमभक्तिक: ॥

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(He was thus all the rasas—Raudra, adbhuta, singāra, hāsya, karuna, bhayānaka, Bheebhatsa, sānta and bhakti).

Of all the rasas the Sāntha rasa is the best feeder of the Bhakti rasa. The Santhi rasa is included and transcended in the Bhakti rasa. The peace that comes out of satiety or out of a sense of the impotence of the senses or out of a sense of the evanescence of pleasure is but a shadow of the divine peace that passeth all understanding. Nay, in the gamut of devotion rising from Santhi Bhakti through Dāsya Bhakti and Sakhya Bhakti and Vatsalya Bhakti up to Mādhurya Prema Bhakti, the highest note includes and transcends all the lower notes.

In a similar fashion all the rasas are included and sublimated and transcended in the Mādhurya Prema Bhakti Rasa. It seems to me that the supremest levels of such Rasa were attained by the Gopis of Brindavana. The poet Saint Sri Sukacharya says:

"The sweet voices of the Gopis who sang the glory of Sri Krishna reached the very vault of heaven."

उद्‌द्यातोनामरविन्दलोचनं व्रजांगनानां दिवमस्पृशत् ध्वनि: ।

I show presently below how the Gopika Geetha is the highest scripture of such Rasa. Nay, in the Bhāgawata there is a reference to the Ananda Rasa of which such Madhurya Prema Bhakti Rasa is the sweetest manifestation. Sri Sukacharya says:

"Therefore one should hear and praise Govinda's glory which is beautiful with the Ānanda Rasa. Only such a person attains the goal and crown and consummation of life."

तस्माद्‌गोविन्दमहितोन्निद्रैर्मनानन्दरसुन्दरम् । श्रृणुयात्कीर्तयेतच्च स कृतार्थों न संशय: ॥

In the Gopi episode in the Bhagawata there is a perfect delineation of the sublimation of the Sringāra Rasa into the Bhakti Rasa and of the supremacy of the latter Rasa. There has been much misunderstanding in regard to that episode and the great poet-saint Vyasa's handling of it. The episode has been admiringly and admirably described by Vyasa, the perfect poet-philosopher, and belauded by his perfect and saintly son Sri Suka Deva. So far as the Ālambana Vibhava was concerned, the object of the human love of the Gopis was Incarnate God. The Uddipana Vibhavas

like the full moon, etc., fed the human love passing into the divine

love in a manner which would not happen in the case of an all-too-

human love. The Gopika Geetha shows that Sri Krishna vanished

from the midst of the Gopis to stimulate their mood of devotion

and contemplation.

प्रशमाय प्रसादाय तत्रैवांतरधीयत ॥

(For the sake of dowering them with dispassion and grace He

disappeared from there itself.)

The poet says that the agony of separation from Him burnt away

their sins and that the infinite bliss of meditation on Him overbore

the petty joys which were the fruits of their virtues.

दुस्सहप्रेष्ठविरहतीव्रतापगुताशुभा: ।

ध्यानपासाच्युताश्लेषेननिवृत्त्या क्षीणमज्झला: ॥

The Anubhāvas and sthayibhavas and sanchāribhavas also became

sublimated in a similar way.

तन्मनस्कास्तदालापास्तद्विलेप्टास्तदात्मका: ।

तद्रुणानेव गायन्ट्योनात्मागाराणि सस्सरु: ॥

In the Gopika Geetha (the Gopi Song) which is the brightest gem

in the world's literature of love and devotion, love is sublimated into

devotion and devotion is sweetened by love. We find the illiterate

Gopis rooted in the consciousness of Divinity. They say:

“You are not merely the darling of the Gopis; You are the divine

witness of all souls.”

न खलु गोपिकानन्दनोभवांखिलदेहिनामन्तरात्मसाक्षिक् ।

The song refers again and again to Him as the Lord of Laxmi—a

recollection which would not assert itself if there were only a

physical infatuation and a sexual urge.

करसरोरुहं कान्तकामदं शिरसि धेहि न: श्रीकरमह्म् ।

प्रणतकामदं पद्मजार्चितं धरणिमण्डनं ध्येयमापदि ।

चरणपङ्कजं शान्तमश्र्यत रमण न: स्तनेष्वर्य्याधिहन्तृ ।

बृहदुर: श्रियो धाम वीक्ष्य ते मुहुरतिस्पृहा मुबते मन: ॥

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These verses pray the Lord to place His feet on their breasts and thus quell all passions and sublimate all desires. One of the verses describe His feet as placed on Kaliya’s hood—thus suggesting that they can conquer evil and that the human heart is like a serpent’s head. His feet are described also as the jewels of the earth and adorable in times of misfortune. (श्रारणमणौ ध्येयमूर्ति:) His form is a source of auspiciousness (विश्वमङ्गल:) and His acts of grace are sweet subjects of meditation(ध्यानमङ्गल:). The Rāsa dance is thus the sublimation of Sringara Rasa into Bhakti Rasa.

I have thus far elaborated the theories of the Rasa school as it is by far the most important aspect of the schools of Indian Poetics and Aesthetics. I have discussed in some detail the Sanskrit authorities dealing with the concept of Rasa in my work on Indian Aesthetics (published by Sri Vani Vilas Press, Sri-rangam), and refrain from doing so here, because this work is meant for persons who are not in touch with such sources. Proceeding now to detail with the other aspects of Indian Rhetoric, the alamkāra school of Bhamaha and Dandin and others, while not ignoring Rasa, emphasises Alamkāra. Alamkāra is decorativeness of speech. Its main form is rhetoric and figures of speech. Indian rhetoric clearly analyses the power and significance of human speech. There is a vital difference between the expressed sense (vāchyārtha) and the figurative sense (lakshyārtha). The purpose of lakshana (secondary and figurative sense) is vyangya (suggestiveness). The rhetoricians divide the alamkārās into sabdālam-karas (relating to words) and arthalamkaras (relating to sense) and ubhayagatha (relating to both). The double meanings brought out by such graces are often remarkably attractive. The subtle Indian mind went on discovering and revealing new alamkārās (figures and graces of speech) till the number went far beyond one hundred figures of speech. Out of them simile (upamā) and metaphor (roopaka) and poetic fancy (utpreksha) occupy the highest place. It is well said that

उत्प्रेक्षा हरति स्वान्तमचिरोढा कभ्रुवः ।

(fancy charms the heart like a new-wed bride.) In this respect Indian æsthetics is as subtle as Indian metaphysics. All the realisations of the similarities and affinities of things, all fine and hightened modes 'of description and utterance, and all possible felicities of speech have been explored by the Indian æstheticians and poets.

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153

At the same time attention was bestowed also on striking and simple natural descriptions of things as they are (svabhāvokti).

The Rīti school of Vāmana emphasises the importance of style. All varieties of charmingly simple and charmingly ornate styles are referred to in the works on rhetoric. The ritis are the Vaidarbhi, Pānchāli, gaudi, avantika, lāti, and māgadhi styles. The vakrokti school of Kuntala emphasises the importance of charming indirect expression. This means the same idea as Browning expresses in his well-known verse: “Art may tell a truth obliquely.” Kuntala goes so far as to refuse to recognise svabhāvokthi (natural description) as poetry at all. He however administered a needed corrective to the rasa school and the dhvani school which attached too much importance to emotion and suggestiveness and minimised the value of charming and decorative utterance.

As shown above, the school which found most favour in India and holds the field to-day is the dhvani school. It takes up the essential truths of the rasa school and may hence be more appropriately called the rasa-dhvani school. Its protagonist Ānandavardhana is one of the greatest rhetoricians and æstheti­cians of the world. His work Dhvanyāloka and its commentary Lochana are of very great beauty and value. He gives a proper place to alamkâras and gunas (graces and qualities of style) and a high place to rasas but affirms that the most vital element in poetry is suggestiveness (vyangya or dhvani). Rasadhvani (emo­tional suggestiveness) is thus the soul of poesy and is far more important than vasthudhvani (suggesting a fact), or alamkara­dhvani (imaginative suggestion). When reality and imagination and emotion are in a state of fusion the highest artistic effect is attained, but the ultimate and vital element is Rasadhvani. The Indian rhetoricians give a considerable place also to a very important topic, viz., gunas and doshas (merits and defects of style). They compare gunas to the mental qualities of a man like courage, heroism, etc., and alamkâras to beauty of dress and decoration. Thus gunas are much more important than alamkaras. They are described as a beautiful combination of words, clarity, an equable level of style, sweet simplicity, mellifluousness, splendour of utter­ance, stateliness of sound, interlikedness of words, interweaving of liquid sounds, sweet and subtle expression, description of anima­tion in animate objects, brevity, dignity, etc. The Indian rhetori­cians classified with equal care the doshas (defects) such as breach

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of grammar, user of unusual or inharmonious words, repetition,

slang, obscene words, circumlocution, dubiety or roughness or lack

of charm in expression, lapses from appropriateness, etc.

I must desist from going into further details here. Bhoja

sums up all these aspects in a well-known verse wherein he says

that the poet, composing poems free from faults and full of good

qualities and decorated with figures of speech and endowed with

rasa as soul, attains fame and delight. As I have observed else-

where : “If I may venture to suggest a principle of co-ordination

of views on these vital points of æsthetics, I may say that rasa is

the soul of the Goddess of Art; vyangya or dhvani is her life; gunas

are her mental qualities; sabdârtha (word and sense) is her body;

arthâlamkaras (felicities of sentiment) are her natural ornaments

just as brilliance of complexion, beauty of tresses, beauty of fore-

head and eyes, dimpled chin, rose-red bloom of lips, lissom figure,

and charm of gait are natural graces to womanhood; and sabdâlam-

karas (verbal felicities) are her beauty of dress and decoration.

Any attempt to exalt any one of the elements at the expense

or to the exclusion of others cannot but stultify itself. The above

analysis is but a many-sided and multiple presentation of a unity,

as the personality of the goddess of poesy is a divine unity in a

divine variety.”

We find all the abovesaid aspects present in a preeminent

degree in Valmiki and Vyasa and Suka and Kalidasa who are the

high water-mark of Indian poetic achievement. However much

we may learn in respect of directness of expression and description

of nature from the west and however much we may assimilate the

poetic ideas of other nations who are great in poetic achievement and

however much we may appreciate and assimilate the finer teachings

of western æsthetics, we cannot afford to let go our hold upon the

essentials of Indian æsthetics and Indian poesy, because these are

the natural efflorescence of the Indian nature (svabhāva). They must

be our guides and teachers in regard to our future efforts and

achievements. It is Rabindranth Tagore’s loyalty to them that

has been the cause of the universal homage paid to him to-day

and of his being rightly regarded as one of the finest incarnations

of the Indian genius. Except in him, modern fiction and drama

and poetry have been largely imitative of the west and

unreal and unsatisfactory in every way. No Indian, if he has the

great and legitimate ambition of leading the world again in the

literary art, can afford to neglect or ignore the finest aspects of

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155

Indian Aesthetics and Indian poesy, because they are wonderful things of beauty and form :

"An endless fountain of immortal drink,

Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink."

Well does the Indian poet say :

कनकं कामिनी वापि कोविद: कोड कामयेत् ।

अलंकाङ्यरसाखादैरानन्दैकरसस्य मे ॥

(which wise man will feel the lure of wealth or woman, when, finding the full sweetness of joy, he can enjoy the bliss of Poesy?)

CHAPTER XV

INDIAN DRAMA

Shelley says in his famous “Defence of Poetry”: “The con-

nection of poetry and social good is more observable in the drama

than in any other form, and it is indisputable that the highest per-

fection of human society has ever corresponded with the highest

dramatic excellence, and that the corruption or extinction of the

drama in a nation where it has once flourished marks a corruption

of manners and an extinction of the energies which sustain the

soul of social life; for the end of social corruption is to destroy

all sensibility to pleasure.” Judged by this test, the two western

countries which have achieved signal greatness in the drama of

life as well as in the life of drama are Greece and England. But

an even higher acme of excellence was reached in India, though

Shakespeare, the supreme dramatist and universal genius, reached

a range and an amplitude all his own and unrivalled elsewhere in

the world.

The greatness of Indian drama was not appreciated and

acknowledged till Goethe’s encomium of Kalidasa’s Sakuntala

placed it above cavil and neglect. Goethe’s famous encomium,

hackneyed as it has become by too frequent quotation, may well

be cited here as it expresses well the unique excellences of Indian

drama in general.

“Wouldst thou the young year’s blossoms and the fruits of

its decline

And all by which the soul is charmed, enraptured, feasted

and fed?,

Wouldst thou the earth and heaven itself in one sole name

combine?

I name thee, O Sakuntala ! and all at once is said.”

The Indian drama brings before us the whole of life—its spring-

tide glow and its summer glory and its autumn mellowness and its

winter bleakness—and at the same time links earth to heaven and

man to God. The Indian drama is nearer in spirit to the modern

romantic drama than to the classical drama. The Grecian ideal

was balance and harmony; the romantic ideal is soaring indivi-

dualism which seeks to blend the Finite and the Infinite. A severe

and self-restrained simplicity characterised the Greek art; romantic

art revels in a various and rich profusion of adornment. To the

Hellenic mind Nature was but a theatre of life; to the Romantic

spirit it is a presence, a power, nay, the living garment of God.

Hellenic art keeps the realms of tragedy and comedy apart;

Romantic art intermingles them even as they are intermingled and

interwoven in actual life. Greek dramatic art emphasized the

unities; Romantic art is careless about the unities of time and

place and cares only about the unity of action. In all these respects

Indian dramatic art has many and intimate points of kinship with

the romantic drama of modern Europe.

Certain very important traits however distinguish Indian

drama from Greek drama as well as from modern drama. The

doctrine of Karma is one of the greatest truths given out by India

to the world and enables the dramatist to show the play of cause

and effect and the subtle interlinkedness of life. The doctrine of

an overruling but gracious and loving Providence enables the

dramatist to link up the natural and supernatural and to irradiate

human life by the life divine. This combination of Karma and

Grace has enabled the Indian dramatist to achieve far higher effects

than the Greek idea of Nemesis or the modern idea of defect of

will or evolutionary taint or social malformation. Further, Nature

enters more largely into the Indian drama than into Greek or

modern drama. In the Sakuntala the inner and mystic kinship

between Nature and human nature is brought out in a manner

unknown and unseen elsewhere in the world. Equally important

is the romantic and tender and passionate but pure and lofty and

noble treatment of love in Indian drama. What Tagore says of

Kalidasa is not only beautiful in itself but applies to Indian drama

in general. He says: “This ancient poet of India refuses to

acknowledge passion as the supreme glory of love. Truly in

Sakuntala there is one Paradise Lost and another Paradise

Regained.”

The drama has been popular in India from the earliest time.

St. Chrysostom said : “All dramatic arts come from the devil;

laughter and gaiety come not from God but the devil.” That

was not the Indian idea. Music and drama constituted an Upaveda

(supplementary veda) in India. It is said that Brahma gave to

Bharata Rishi the Nâtya Sastra (the Dramatic Art) as a treasure

got by him during meditation.

Further, side by side with the regular stage, there were the

puppet plays and village dramas and koothus and Malabar Katha-

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kalis. Piechel says that “the vidushaka is the original of the

buffoon who appears in the plays of medieval Europe.” In the

Tamil country there are no ancient dramas extant but it is said

that there was a Tamil work called Jayantham which dealt with

dramaturgy. In the Tamil classic Silappadikaram there is a story

about the origin of the drama on the earth. It connects dance and

drama with Jayanta, the son of Indra, and with the heavenly nymph

Urvasi. In every stage and dancing hall a gold-encased bamboo

stick decked with precious stones used to be set up as represent-

ing Jayanta. The Tolkāppian refers to Nataka vazhakku (dancing).

There were two kinds of dancing—viz. Vallikoothu in honour of

God Subramania’s consort Valli and Kazhamilaikoothu which was

a dance in honour of a hero successful in battle. Ritual dance

was a regular feature of temple worship. Dances in honour of

God Krishna and God Subramania and God Siva and Goddess

Durga are referred to in Silappadikaram and other classic works.

In Travancore we find a remarkable development in the realm of

indigenous drama. The ancient Yātrakali combined heroic and

comic elements with song and dance but there was no continuous

story in it. Then came the stage of Kudiyattam in which a special

class of actors called chakyars expressed the emotions by look and

facial expression and gesture. The later Krishnan āttam and

Rāman āttam (Kathakali) combined gesture and facial expression

with song and dance. The themes were taken from India’s immortal

epics (Ramayana and Mahabharata).

The Indian drama went abroad into Eastern Asia and influ-

enced the development of the drama there to a very great extent.

In Burma and Siam and Cambodia, the Rama and Buddha plays

popularised Hindu ideals and developed artistic taste. The Rama

cycle penetrated into the Malay Archipelago and China as well.

The history of Indian drama in Greater India and elsewhere is a

fascinating chapter yet to be written.

The Indian aestheticians differentiate between Nātya, Rupa,

and Rupaka, i.e., representation of emotions, presentation of indivi-

dual situations, and a regular drama. The ten forms of drama

(rupaka) are Nataka, Prakarana, Bhana, Prahasana, Dima,

Vyāyoga, Samavakāra, Veethi, Anka and Ihāmriya. These are

elaborately described in Dhananjaya’s Dasarupaka, Viswanatha’s

Sahityadarpana, and Vidynatha’s Prataparudriya. The Nataka is

the norm of which the other forms are the variants. It opens with

a Nandi sloka or benedictory stanza. Then follows a prologue

(prasthāvana) descriptive of the author and his work and contain-

ing some sweet songs and some indication of the character about

to enter. The hero should be Dhirōdātta (heroic and noble and

famous personage). There should be a prevailing rasa, —gene-

rally love (sringāra) or heroism (vira)—in the play, the other

rasas being contributory to the main rasa. A Nātaka should ordi-

narily contain five acts. Battle, coarse love-making, kissing, etc.,

should not be exhibited on the stage. The play should close with

a prayer (bharatavākya). Among the other rupakas may be spe-

cially mentioned Prakarana and Prahasana. In Prakarana the plot

should be a fiction based on real life. Prahasana is a farce. There

are also uparupakas or subsidiary dramatic forms. Every play

should have vastu (plot), Neta (hero), and rasa (sentiment). The

rhetoricians clearly define also the stages by which the plot should

be carried on from its commencement to its conclusion (kārya).

The classical drama of India reached its acme of perfection

in Kalidasa. In my two volumes on Kalidasa I have shown how

he is next to Shakespeare, the greatest figure in the realm of

universal drama and even overtops Shakespeare in some respects.

Bhasa’s plays and Bhavabhuti’s plays and Sudraka’s Mrichakatika

are other great dramatic works. Many ancient Indian plays have

been lost. But such as remain are such as to excite our wonder

and admiration.

Later on the closet drama written by senior pandits for junior

pandits became stiff and wooden and convention-ridden beyond

measure. The popular drama has been a mere piece of transcript

from real life or a stilted and unreal representation of a Puranic

story. It has been a hotch-potch and a medley in which song

covers a multitude of artistic sins. The modern amateur stage is

yet in leading strings. It has not yet made up its mind as to

whether it should look to the past of India or to the present or

to Europe and America for inspiration and guidance. It has how-

ever done good work in setting up a higher model before the

popular stage and in helping to raise the latter from the gutter

of immorality. The drama of mingled prose and song is an

artistic solecism, but it is one of the legacies of the popular stage.

The amateur, while bettering the popular stage in some respects,

has caught the infection of being music-ridden—a widely prevalent

epidemic on the popular stage—though its music is far less charm-

ing than that in the popular stage. In this welter and confusion

of methods and ideals, Tagore’s fine work, though limited in range

and though poetic rather than dramatic in essence, has helped to

show India a way out of the confusion of to-day in dramatic art.

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We have, in short, to make the new drama the mirror of the

soul of India. It must be loyal to the fundamental concepts of

Indian æsthetics and dramaturgy. At the same time we must

learn from the west the art of writing great tragedies and romantic

plays and social dramas. It may be that

"Shakespeare's magic could not copies be;

Within that circle none dared walk but he."

But a nation which has produced Kalidasa, a nation which has

produced such subtle and lofty æsthetics, a nation which is alive

to-day and full of a new renaissance—must evolve the great Indian

drama of the future which in Kalidasa's words will be a sweet

and sacred sacrificial feast to the eyes, and which will at the same

time, in Shakespeare's words, "hold as it were, the mirror up to

nature, show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and

the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."

CHAPTER XVI

THE FUTURE OF THE INDIAN CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL : CONCLUSION :

Though I have dealt only in a very brief way with the important and interesting aspects of the Indian concept of the beautiful, I must bring this work to a close, leaving a greater elaboration and a full historical presentation, and a complete picture of the future of Indian Arts and Aesthetics to a suitable future occasion. We can never understand the full significance and value of the Indian concept of the beautiful, unless we see it in its proper setting of the Indian concepts of the useful and the good and the true. Utility and Beauty are married powers and no one could or should divorce them. Equally related are they to Morality and Reality. He who does not know the interrelatedness of Utility and Beauty and Morality and Reality does not know the heart of the Indian concept of the beautiful.

Sister Nivedita, in one of her lofty and inspired utterances which are full of intuition and vision, said : “There is no voice like that of art to reach the people. A song, a picture, these are the fiery cross that reaches all the tribes, and makes them one. And art will be reborn, for she has found a new subject—India,. . . . . .Not only to utter India to the world, but also, to voice India to herself,—this is the mission of art, divine mother of the ideal, when it descends to clothe itself in forms of realism. At each step, then, the conquest must be two-fold. On this side something to be added to the world’s knowledge, and on that, an utterance to be given for the first time, for India to herself. This is the battle that opens before the present generation.” The only statement herein which, I think, needs revision is the remark that Art did not utter India to herself. The concept of India as a unit, as a personality, nay, as a goddess, was well known to ancient India. The mother-land was applauded as being superior to heaven. The holy spots of India, her holy rivers and mountains, her holy scriptures, her holy traditions and memories, her holy hopes and dreams, and her holy doctrines and divinities were all visualised as a grand and sacred unity.

Such is the two-fold mission of the Indian concept of the beautiful. It must fully express India to herself and must also

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express India adequately to the whole world. The Indian Renaissance is a unique phenomenon. It is not like the Renaissance in

Europe. There the great life-movement of the Renaissance represented only a poetic and artistic interest in the symbols and

presentations of a high but vanished culture. It was only an attempt to cover up the present poverty of artistic symbols and

intuitions by a wholesale adoption of the same from a dead civilisation. But in the Indian renaissance to-day we have a living and

vital and spiritual interest in our symbols and traditions and intuitions and visions. The new spirit has been well described by Sir

John Woodroffe as "Bhārata Shakti". The intensive culture of India has momentum if not velocity and has enormous reserve

power which is the source of her immortal vitality. Civilisation after civilisation has come on the stage of the world's life and

played its part and gone for ever. But she, the mother of them all, is strong with the strength of youth and fair with her maiden

charm. I have already referred to what Prof. Radhakumad Mukherjee calls the Fundamental Unity of India. The outer unity

of India as expressed in her geographical features, and her history is a composite beauty and is remarkable by itself. But the composite inner unity of India as revealed in her arts and faiths is

even more remarkable still.

Let us not therefore forget this central fact of the Indian swabhāva. The Indian worker and the Indian woman have

preserved it, though the upper classes whom Swami Vivekananda once described as being "physically and morally dead" have been

faithless to their trust in a growing measure and have not kept their loins girded and their lamps trimmed. The past of India is

not a dead past. Dr. J. H. Cousins says well : "India of to-day is the India of the centuries. She has never moved far from herself.

Her past is her present." Nay, it is her future as well.

He says with equal insight : "It is this weight of antique modernity that is the secret of India's recuperative and assimilative power;

it is this also that makes for ever impossible the only possible condition that could rob her of all the constituents of national life

save the legislative—the total destruction of her distinctive literature and art. Whatever impact the West may make upon the

East, there is nothing more certain than that those impacts will sooner or later find themselves oriented." Even in politics India

is asserting to-day her innate swabhāva (nature). Satyāgraha is an original and remarkable Indian idea in politics. She is standing

up for a federal constitution; she is asserting her right to freedom;

CONCLUSION

163

and she is against the imperial idea and demanding her right to complete independence with an option to enter into a partnership in a commonwealth including herself and England as the result of a voluntary co-operation in the interests of mutual betterment and of the peace and well-being of the world. But India's central shrine is her art and religion. The fundamental unity of India is really based on the fundamental unity of her inner cultural life.

The world's need of Indian æsthetics and metaphysics has been and is and will for ever be persistent and great, as India is the mother of the arts and religions of the world. We have therefore to presrve our arts and faiths and understand and perfect them not only for the sake of India and of ourselves but for the sake of the world at large. The detractors of the Indian concept of the beautiful have spoken ill of it out of sheer ignorance. Ignorance is the progenitor of dislike and hate and is the cause of all the malicious utterances in the world by persons about individuals and nations and cultures and civilisations.

Thus the Indian concept of the beautiful has to be thoroughly national and yet completely universal. It must be national in its symbols and traditions and motifs and expressions. It must adequately reveal and express the national genius and the national temperament in the search for and the revelation of the graces and sanctities of the inner life. We must explore new ways in every art as shown by me in the previous chapters. But such a new energy of expression must be a thrust from within and in accordance with our symbols and traditions and our essential national genius. Indian art should colour and decorate and embroider and beautify and sanctify Indian life and thought in their essence. It should assimilate the finest assimilable art ideas elsewhere in the world and at the same time uplift and influence universal art. We have for some time past been a debtor nation. We must become a creditor nation once again. We must reassume our ancient and accepted role and lead the world once more. We have to preserve Indian Art from being crushed between the upper and the nether millstones of too much asceticism and too much materialism. By preserving Indian idealism untainted and pure, we can achieve this consummation and enrich life in India and beyond India. But all this cannot be adequately accomplished unless for each art there is an Academy which will preserve and improve the achieved standards and ideals and technique and unless there is also a

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federated Academy of all the arts to bring about mutual comprehension and a realisation of the basic ideals of Indian Art.

Thus wonderful as was the past of Indian Aesthetics and wonderful as is its present, its future is to be more wonderful yet. Art is, in Burke’s noble words, the “unbought grace of life.” It is the innate refinement of the soul. G. B. Shaw in his Back to Methusaleh : “Art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.” It is thus the unique privilege of Indian artists and æstheticians to make and hold the magical mirror wherein Goddess India will behold the immortal and ever-youthful beauty of her face and form and figure and will be glad, and will bestow her benediction on us and on all.

The artist moves from experience to expression, and such expression when communicated to the men and women of trained taste leads to the evocation of artistic experience. In such interactions of experience and expression is born the life divine within the human life. Then and then alone will the Goddess of Art, with her attendant angels of Imagination and Vision, smile upon her ardent and eager worshippers. Shelley says well: “Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world…….The great secret of morals is Love, or a going out of our own nature and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own.” Thus the concept of the beautiful should lead to the cult of the beautiful, and the cult of the beautiful should lead to the culture of the beautiful, and the culture of the beautiful should lead to the creation of the beautiful. Thus and thus alone will the iron of human sorrows and the silver of human pleasures be turned into the pure gold of the bliss of artistic experience and emotion and enjoyment and expression by the alchemic touch of the Indian Concept of the Beautiful.

INDEX OF AUTHORITIES QUOTED

Achyuta Raya's Sahitya Sāra.

Agastya Jnāna.

Agni Purana.

Anandavardhana's Dhvanyāloka.

Appayya Dixita's Kuvalayānanda.

Aubert's (Charles) The Art of Pantomime.

Projesh Banerji's "Dance of India."

Bhamaha's Kavyalankara.

Bharata's Natya Sastra.

Bhavabhooti's Uttara Rama Charita.

Bhoja's Saraswati-Kantābharana.

Brown's (Percy) Indian Painting.

Burke's Essay on The Sublime and the beautiful.

Carlyle's Sartor Resartus.

Collingwood's Outlines of A Philosophy of Art.

Coomaraswami's (A. K.) Art and Swadesi, Essays in Indian Nationalism, Buddha and Buddhism, History of Indian and Indonesian Art, Dance of Siva, Abhinaya Darpana, The Indian Craftsman.

Cousins' (J. H.) A study in Synthesis, The Renaissance in India.

Dandi Alankaram

Dandi's Kāvyādarsa.

Dallas' Indian Poetics.

Dhanānjaya's Dasarupaka.

Fergusson's History of Indian and Eastern Architecture.

Gangoly's (O. C.) South Indian Bronzes.

Gardner's (Percy) Greek Art.

Gopinatha Row's (T. A.) Elements of Hindu Iconography.

Govinda's Kavya-Pradipa.

Havell's (E. B.) Indian Architecture, Indian Sculpture and Painting.

Holmes' (O. W.) Breakfast Table.

Dean Inge's Outspoken Essays.

Jagannatha's Rasagangādhara.

Jayadeva's Chandrāloka.

Kalidasa's Malavikagnimitra, Vikramōrvasīya, and Sakuntala.

Kavikarnapoora's Alankāra Kaus-tubha.

Thomas A. Kempis' Imitation of Christ.

W. Knight's Philosophy of the Beautiful.

Kshemenedra's Auchitya Vichitracha-rcha and Kavi Kantābharana.

Kuntaka's Vakroktijivita.

Lalita Sahasrāma.

Lalita Stava Rāja.

Lessing's Laocoon.

Lord Lindsay's Sketches of the History of Christian Art.

Lutz's (Florence) The Technique of Pantomime.

Mahima Bhatta's Vyakti Viveka.

Mammata's Kāvyaprakāsa.

Mohendra Nath Dutt's Dissertation on Indian Painting.

Mukula Bhatta's Abhidhavritti-matrika.

Sister Nivedita's Select Essays, Web of Indian Life.

H. A. Popley's Indian Music.

Professor Radhakumud Mukerji's The Fundamental Unity of India.

Rājachudamani Dixita's Kāvya Darpana.

Rajasekhara's Kāvya Mimamsa.

Ragini Devi's Indian Dancing.

Rudrata's Kāvyālankara.

Rup Goswami's Nātaka Chandrika and Ujjvala Nilamani.

Ruskin's Modern Painters.

Scheltoma's (J. F.) Monumental Java.

Shaw's (G. B.) Back to Methusaleh.

Shelley's Defence of Poetry

Silappadhikaram.

Singabhoopala's Rasarnavasudhakara.

Tagore's Kalidasa the Novelist, and Sakuntala : Its Inner Meaning.

Tantr Samuchchaya.

Tolstoi on Art.

Udbhata's Alankarasāstra Sangraha.

Vāgbhata's Kāvyānusāsana.

Vamana's Kāvyālankara Sutravritti.

Varahamihira's Brihat Samhita.

Vatsyayana's Kāma Sutras.

Vidyānatha's Prataparudriya.

Wilde's (Oscar) DeProfundis.

GENERAL INDEX

Aesthetics 8.

Aesthetics and Artists 27, 28.

Aesthetics in America 26.

Aesthetics in England 21 to 26.

Aesthetics in France 18 to 20.

Aesthetics in Germany 14 to 18.

Aesthetics in Greece 12, 13, 14.

Aesthetics in Italy 20, 21.

Aesthetics in Rome 14.

Aesthetics and Poets 28 to 31.

Aesthetics—in Orient 32 to 37.

Aesthetics and Mysticism 32, 33, 34.

Aesthetics — Indian Concerpts of

Ananda and Rasa 38 to 46.

Aesthetics in India—History of. 47 to

Aesthetics—Indian Arts. 54 to 58.

Aesthetics (Indian)—Future of 161 to

Architecture—Lamps of 59, 60

Architecture—evolution 61.

Architecture (Indian)—Periods 62.

Architecture (Indian)—Buddhist 63,

Architecture (Indian)—Jain 64, 65.

Architecture—North Indian 66.

Architecture—West Indian 67.

Architecture—South Indian 67 to 72.

Architecture—Travancore 72, 73.

Architecture in Greater India 74, 75.

Architecture—Indo—Saracenic 75, 76.

Architecture in Modern India 79.

Art—Enemies of 8.

Art—Realism and Romanticism 4.

Beauty—Concept 1 to 9.

Dance in Greece 122, 123.

Dance, Modern 123.

Dance—Nritya and Nritta 124.

Dance and Rasa 125.

Dance—European and Indian 125.

Dance—Abhinaya—Four Aspects 125.

Dance—Abhinaya and Mudras 126.

Dance—Kathakali 126.

Dance—Bharata Natyam 127.

Dance—Kuchipoodi 127.

Dance—Manipuri 127.

Drama—Indian 155 to 160.

Iconography in India 86 to 94.

Music in Ancient India 112.

Musical Instruments—Types 113.

Music—Tamil Nad 113.

Music—Travancore 113.

Music—Hindustani 114.

Music and Bhakti Movement 114, 115,

Music—Ragas and Raginis 117.

Music—Rāga and Rasa 117, 118.

Music—Tāla and Kāla 118.

Music—Lakshya and Lakshana 119.

Music—Rāga improvisation 119.

Music—Melody and Harmony 119, 120.

Music and Harmonium 120.

Music—North Indian and Karnatic

120, 121.

Music—National Songs 121.

Music and Devotion 121.

Painting 95.

Painting—Italian 96.

Painting, Landscape 97.

Painting, six limbs (shadanga) 99.

Painting—Buddhist Period 99, 100.

Painting—Moghul School of 101, 102.

Painting—Rajput School 103.

Painting—Tanjore School 103.

Painting—Mysore School 103.

Painting—Ravi Varma's Genius 105,

Painting—Travancore School 103.

Painting—Bengal School 106, 107, 108.

Painting—Andhra School 108.

Poetry—What is 129, 130.

Poetry—Vedic 131, 132.

Poetry—Epic 131, 132.

Poetry—Classical 132.

Poetry in the Vernaculars 133, 134.

Poetry in English 134.

Poetics—Schools of 136 to 144, 152 to

Poetics—Rasas 144 to 153.

Ruskin and Indian Art 81.

Sculpture and Greek Dance 80, 81.

Sculpture in India 84, 85.

Sculpture in Greater India 85.

Symbolism—Indian 109 to 111.

Yoga 98.

Printed by G. S. Press, Madras, P.I.C. MS. 97

for the University of Travancore, 8—2—47