Page:Hindu Art - its Humanism and Modernism.djvu/38

 hensive secularism in the painted bas reliefs of Egyptian hill-caves and the stately Kakemonos of the Chinese masters. While the message of the artists and craftsmen of India is thus universal as the man of flesh and blood, they developed certain peculiarities in the technique and mode of expression which "he that runs may read."

The most prominent characteristic of Hindu sculptures and paintings is what may be called the "dance-form." We see the figures, e. g., Shiva, the prince of dancers, or Krishna, the flute-player, in action, doing something, in the supple movement of limbs. Lines of graceful motion, the play of geometric contours, the ripple of forms, the flowing rhythm of bends and joints in space would arrest the eye of every observer of the bronzes, water-colors, and gou-