Too see with the mind, not merely with the eye; to bring out an essential quality, not just the common appearance of things; to give 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 [the oriental artist] keeps uppermost in his mind as soon as he knows how to use his tools with tolerable facility.
Havell’s first major work,
Indian Sculpture and Painting,
was published in London in 1908. In spite of the author’s harsh words about the ignorance of archaeologists, Sir John Marshall hailed it as ‘a splendid protest against the drivelling nonsense on Indian art to which we are usually treated’; ‘and so far as one “archaeologist” is concerned it has his very warmest sympathy’. Among
those who reviewed it was Roger Fry, the most eminent art critic of his day. Havell, according to Fry, had proved his point. His illustrations alone were a revelation and many of the sculptures ‘must appeal deeply to any unbiased and sensitive European’. The business of art could no longer be regarded as that of simply representing things as they appeared to be. ‘We can no longer hide behind the
Elgin marbles and refuse to look; we have no longer any system of aesthetics which can rule out, a priori, even the most fantastic and unreal artistic forms. They must be judged in themselves and by their own standards.’
Two years later, Havell was invited to address the Royal Society of Arts. The meeting proved a stormy one, but it marks the turning point for Indian art. In the chair was Sir
George Birdwood, an authority on Indian crafts and an outspoken exponent of the traditional and dismissive attitude to Indian art. Ranged against him were Walter Crane, the artist, William Rothenstein, and a dramatic looking young man who was to become the greatest of all authorities on Indian art, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy. And, of course, there was Havell. If Havell had one serious fault it was
his intensely combative approach to the subject. According to
The Times
his teaching career had been characterized by ‘vehement and relentless opposition to every trace of European influence [and] constant denunciations of what he deemed utter ignorance on the part of his fellow countrymen of Indian art and civilization’. Seeing everything from the point of view of his Indian students, he had
sought to rekindle a pride in their native art by disparaging everything non-Indian – neither the sculptors of ancient Greece nor the painters of the Italian renaissance were spared. But in London such ‘irrational exclusiveness’ tended only to antagonize his enemies and to embarrass his supporters.
At the Royal Society of Arts, Havell’s passionate defence of Indian art brought Birdwood to his
feet in a vitriolic outburst. So now India was to be credited with its own brand of ‘fine art’. In seventy-eight years Birdwood had not seen a single example to support such a ridiculous theory. India had never prized art for art’s sake and the best that it could offer was ‘ritualized and generally monstrous representations of gods’. He turned to one of Havell’s illustrations, a sculpture of the
Buddha in meditation.
My attention is drawn to the photograph, on my left, of an image of the Buddha as an example of Indian ‘fine art’&. Few of us have the faith of the new school of ‘Symbolists’ in a symbolism that outrages artistic sensibilities and proprieties by virtually regarding art as just a framework for its myths; & one might as reasonably rave over algebraical symbols as such examples of ‘fine art’. This senseless similitude [the Buddha sculpture] in its immemorial fixed pose, is nothing more than an uninspired brazen image, vacuously squinting down its nose to its thumbs, knees and toes. A boiled suet pudding would serve equally well as a symbol of passionless purity and serenity of soul.
Several speakers took exception to the suet pudding, and the controversy spilled over
into the letters and editorial columns of
The Times.
As a direct result, the India Society was formed, dedicated to promoting the understanding of – and publishing works on – Indian art. More significant, though, was the reaction of the young Coomaraswamy. His first book, on Sinhalese art, had already been published, but it was from about this time that he espoused the cause of Indian art as a
whole. Like Rothenstein, he acknowledged that it was Havell’s work that ‘marked the beginning of a new order of things’. But it is his own works on Indian art, and especially Indian painting, which have formed the basis for all subsequent criticism.
Coomaraswamy’s mother was English and he was educated in England, but he can in no way be identified with the British raj. His father was Sinhalese,
his sympathies lay with the rising tide of Indian nationalism, and his career as an art historian was made in the United States. Although the study of Indian art was, even for Coomaraswamy, a process of exploration, he could expound it from within, not just interpret it from without. He was one of India’s cultural emissaries rather than one of the West’s cultural explorers.
Suffice it, therefore,
just to outline his main contributions to the understanding of Indian painting. In the first place, he did for art what Fergusson had done for architecture. A great collector as well as a connoisseur, he identified all the main styles and provided the criteria by which an approximate date and place of origin could be assigned to any work. Jain miniatures, Bengali (Pala) palm leaf paintings and,
most important of all, the whole field of Rajput art were virtually his discoveries. But he also insisted on a continuous tradition of Indian painting, and in this respect was far more convincing than Havell. On the ceiling of the Kailasa temple at Ellora, he found traces of frescoes dating back to the eighth century. Though technically reminiscent of the Ajanta murals, their style, and particularly
the long sharp noses and exaggerated eyes, clearly anticipated similar modelling in the Jain or Gujerati miniatures. The earliest of these miniatures was painted on palm leaf and dated from the twelfth or thirteenth century. But the tradition of illustrating Jain manuscripts continued right through the medieval period, and the earliest Rajput miniatures (sixteenth century) owed much to the style
and lyricism of Jain art. Thus the great hiatus in Indian painting, if not exactly filled, had at least been bridged.
As for Rajput art, it seems quite incredible that as late as Havell’s 1908 book, this vast, important and thoroughly delightful school had not so much as been identified. Rajput architecture had, of course, fared little better, and the murals in the palaces of Orchha and Datia,
though noticed by Coomaraswamy, are still virtually unknown today. Coomaraswamy’s main task was to differentiate Rajput miniatures from the Moghul school. He conceded that there was much interchange between the two contemporary traditions but, whereas Moghul art was essentially secular, academic and factual, Rajput art was always religious, lyrical and poetic. Stylistic distinctions were equally
relevant: Moghul tones were softer, the line drawing more precise, and shading more common.
Coomaraswamy also established the two main schools of Rajput painting – first, that of the Rajput states of Rajasthan and Bundel-khand; second, that of the Rajput states of the Himalayan foothills (Pahari). He further broke these down into the individual principalities. Each not only had its own stylistic
conventions, but also its favourite themes. Rich in allegory and symbolism, they provided Coomaraswamy with a chance to show the importance of an understanding of Hindu literature, music, dance and iconography to any appreciation of Indian painting.
Perhaps none of this would have cut much ice with Twining and Forster. They would still have bemoaned the absence of perspective and longed for a
big watery landscape. But that delightful twosome of Ralph and Captain Gresley would have lent a willing ear to what Coomaraswamy had to say about Ajanta. Their undisguised surprise and admiration had had a lot to do with the fact that the figures in the frescoes seemed to emanate sophistication and classicism. Desirable as was a Mathura
yakshi,
one might have found her conversation limited and
her character suspect. Not so, though, the Ajanta beauties; they looked a safe bet in any company. Not only was there ‘nothing monstrous’, but in fact much grace and delicacy as well as irresistible charms.
Coomaraswamy agreed. ‘A more conscious or sophisticated art could scarcely be imagined. Despite its invariably religious subject matter, this is an art of “great courts charming the mind by
their noble routine”.’ It was the very epitome of Gupta art and, like the literature of the period, especially the plays and poems of Kalidasa, it directly mirrored the style and etiquette of India’s most classical age.
The specifically religious element is no longer insistent, no longer antisocial; it is manifested in life, and in an art that reveals life as an intricate ritual fitted to the consummation of every perfect experience. The Boddhisattva is born by divine right as a prince in a world luxuriously refined. The sorrow of transience no longer poisons life itself; life has become an art &
CHAPTER TWELVE
Some Primitive Vigour
A peculiarity of India’s classical past was that its origins invariably defied research. Ajanta art, Mauryan sculpture, even the classics of Sanskrit drama, all seemed to emerge as already mature art forms. They must clearly have had behind them many centuries of development and experiment; but all evidence of these was missing. The dawn, indeed the long morning,
of Indian civilization was shrouded in mystery; and the earliest evidence all related to a period close to its high noon.
The incorporation of wooden beams and screens in some of the earliest cave temples suggested that they had been preceded by a long tradition of wooden buildings, all of which had long since rotted away. Stone sculpture, too, was probably a development from more perishable
carvings in wood and ivory. An interesting relic of this art, though unfortunately not a pre-classical one, is the little ivory handle of a mirror which was found amongst the ruins of distant Pompeii. The handle is carved into the shape of a highly provocative female figure unmistakably related to the
yakshis
of Bharhut and Sanchi. The eruption of Vesuvius, which fortuitously preserved this one
fragment of what was certainly a major craft, occurred in
AD
79, a date which incidentally provides a useful cross-reference for the dating of the Buddhist reliefs.
But other aspects of the problem were less easily explained. What, for instance, about the origins of India’s religions?
The yakshi
figures are evidence of early Buddhism seeking to accommodate ancient fertility cults associated with
tree and snake worship. Hence Fergusson’s conviction that Buddhism and Jainism had been more popular with the non-Aryan peoples of north India, the Dasyus or aboriginals. But who were these aboriginal inhabitants of the subcontinent, and to what extent were they responsible, not only for the iconography of early Buddhist art, but also for its execution?
What, too, of the origins of Hinduism?
India’s prehistory was generally thought to begin with the arrival, about 1500
BC,
of the Aryan peoples. On the strength of their literary traditions, the Aryans were credited with the awakening of Indian civilization. They brought with them to India a strong racial consciousness which, through the developing caste system, provided a society capable of absorbing outsiders without becoming swamped
by them. They also brought Sanskrit, their Indo-European language of such immense potential; and they brought Hinduism – or at least a religion to which the origins of Hinduism are usually traced. But Vedic Hinduism (i.e. the religion of the early Aryan invaders as revealed in their
vedas
), was a far cry from medieval Hinduism. Its gods were stern, elemental, all-powerful — lords of fire and thunder,
of the sun and the waters and the wind. They were worshipped by sacrifice, invoked by hymns, but never represented by idols or enshrined in temples. The Aryans were an outdoor people — horsemen and graziers; their religion was essentially a wooing of the elements.
But what changed all this? Whence came the softening of this harsh-sounding people, the civilizing of their lifestyle, the lulling
of their fear-stricken fantasies? Virtually the whole pantheon of Hindu gods, from the jolly Ganesh to the ghastly Kali — and including Vishnu and Siva — were later additions. So, too, were such fundamental concepts as deities represented in human form, the personal devotion paid to them, and the hallowing of places of worship. Clearly there must have been some other vital ingredient in the development
of Hinduism.
Another intriguing subject was the origin of the Indian scripts. Ashoka Brahmi had been successfully identified as the earliest precursor of most north Indian writing. But when found in its earliest form, in the column and rock inscriptions of Ashoka, it was already well developed and fairly standardized. The idea of carving inscriptions on stone seems to have been a Mauryan innovation;
but the script itself must have been in use for a long time before that. Some authorities suggested that, like Kharosthi, the script used in ancient Gandhara, Ashoka Brahmi originated in western Asia. Others maintained that it was indigenous to India; and none with more conviction than Alexander Cunningham. For, in the course of his travels as the Archaeological Surveyor, he had located a
single and unique piece of evidence.
In the winter of 1872–3, while touring the Punjab, he investigated Harappa, on the Ravi river. It was ‘the most extensive of all the old sites along the Ravi’, and, according to Charles Masson who discovered it on his way to Afghanistan, it boasted the ruins of a vast brick castle. Cunningham found plenty of bricks, several mounds of them in fact, but no castle.
Nor was he altogether surprised. Standing amongst the mounds, he could hear the trains rattling along the new Lahore-Multan line. More than a hundred miles of track had been ballasted with bricks from Harappa.