Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 10.djvu/649

* INDIAN ART. 567 INDIAN ART. tive design is given more importance than purely figured compositions. Then and even earlier the art of sculpture received great development in outlying regions, in Kashmir, Tibet, and the French sphere of iuHuence. There probably never existed a style of art in which sculptured ornament was so profuse as in the art of India and its neighbors. A second decadence came with the Mohammedan conquest : decorative de-ijgn still flourished, but the Moslem dislike for the portrayal of the figure had its efTect. Hindu traditions, however, were stronger than the Mo- hammedan belief: the recent sculpture of Delhi, Bombay, and Madras is directly derived from the eleventh century style through intermediary stages. !Martand and Avantipore in Kashmir, Madura, Ellora, Puri, and Khajuraho contain the foremost works of the old Hindu school. Cole's Catalogue to the Objects of Indian Art in the fSouth Kensington Museum (London. 1874) gives a good classification of the sculptures, which are also described in Fergusson's works, and in special monographs and volumes. of the Cfovernment surveys and ^■eports. The three divisions of the Brahman style — Dravidian, C'ha- lukyan, and Indo-Aryan — all afforded great scope ior sculpture by the elaborate plans and colossal proportions of their sacred buildings. The most extensive and magnificent sculptured effects in the Dravidian style are found at the temple of liameswaram, in the Chalukyan style (with ^reat prevalence of animal and bird friezes) at that of HuUabid, in the Indo-Aryan (Hindu) at Bhuvaneshwar. The lack of festhetie qualities in composition and form, which prevented monumental sculpture from reaching a high level of achievement, was not noticeable in the smaller branches of sculp- ture, such as carving in wood, marble, soapstone, and ivory, metal-work, clay figurines, as well as inlaying and enameling. The naturalism and ex- quisite detail here appear to advantage. Work in black wood, ebony and sandalwood is still car- ried on in many villages, for small objects, and in teakwood for the details of house decoration. Carved ivoiy is as popular as in China and Japan, both for statuettes and for reliefs of re- ligious and genre scenes, hunts, animals, and hirds. Painting. There is not the same continuity iu the use of painting as in the other larger arts. The developed Buddhist art of the period after Christ appears to have used wall-painting on a monumental scale, as in the caves of Ajanta and Bagh in Malwa, but then, as well as later, the impulse came from abroad, usually from Per- sia. At later times painting w-as spasmodically employed and l>ecame popular in the decoration of scul])ture. Th? identification of the numerous gods by means of their s>anhols or emblems, and the emblematic use of different colors in their dress, made ?olor an essential element in statu- ary and relief work. The Mohammedans intro- duced the illumination of manuscripts from Per- sia, and later still miniature painting became popjilar, especially at Delhi. The i^hnh Jehan Xameh and others in the Royal Library at Wind- sor, and the Life of Timur. beloncing to Earl Amherst, are beautiful examples of illuminations. Jewelry. Of all the smaller arts in India, jewelry is the most universally interesting and heautiful. In it we see suirivals of early and late Etruscan, Greek, and Asiatic forms, un- doubtedly descended froin imported originals. The techniques of filigree and granular work, only recently rediscovered in Europe after - antique models, never were lost in India. There are at least three very primitive types of jewelry: (1) The heavy gold wire twisted into collars, girdles, bracelets, anklets, and necklaces, used originally throughout India; (2) the chopped gold style made of flat or cubic pieces, strung together, and either solid or hollow, all of general use, but now- most popular in Gujarat; (3) the Hat beaten silver tyjie of many primitive tribes, similar to early Celtic work. There evidently is great sim- ilarity between the Indian races and the Etrus- cans in the profusion of jewelry that was always worn, as is evident from the earliest literature, such as the Rig-Veda; and the sculptures show that its forms have remained unaltered for over two thousand years. The present schools are those of Ahmedabad, with its archaic style; of Mysore, Vizianagram, and other towns, in thin- nest pieces of beaten gold ; of Kashmir and the Punjab, for the use of gems and enamels in rich- est but always tasteful variety; of Sindh and Beluchistan, similar but more solid and severe; of Oudh, formerly centred in Lucknow. similar to that of Delhi and Lahore; of Cuttack in Orissa, famous for silver filigree work ; and a multitude of minor centres, like Dacca and Dinajpur in Ben- gal, the work of the last-mentioned place being extremely primitive. The Parsis of Bombay long held on to antique Persian forms, and the South used mythological subjects. The school of Trichinopoly, with very rich chains, necklaces, and bracelets, has long been a favorite one with Europeans. In fine, India has sounded every extreme and form of jewelry, from the most simple and primitive to the richest. See Jew- elry. Pottery. Even more than jewelry the pottery of India, especially in its unglazed varieties, pre- serves the ancient forms shown in the early sculp- ti res and paintings. The potters of the villages 1 ave never changed these forms since very early times. L^nglazed pottery has Ijeen made every- where in India, and still survives quite generally, especially in the Punjab. Decorative pottery for commercial purposes, painted, gilt, glazed, or even pierced, is made in speci.il varieties in dif- ferent provinces: for instance, the gilt pottery at Amroha. the black and silvery ware at Azira- ghar, whose meretricious art is in great contrast to the simply beautiful glazed ware of Sindh, of Madura, and of the Punjab. The special pre- eminence of the best Indian pottery has always been the strict subordination of color and orna- ment to form and the conventionalizing and lepetition of natural fnniis in the decoration. The glazed ware of these three scIkmjIs only is worthy of standing beside the beautiful primitive unglazed pottery. Their knop and flower pat- terns, and other favorite floral designs, imitate classic and even As,syrian, Persian, and Egyptian originals; the shapes of the vases are also those of antique examples found in Oriental. Etruscan, and Greek tombs. The turquoise blue, golden brown, dark green, or purple colors are the most beautiful. The exquisite color tones and combi- nations can be studied even better in the glazed tiles which came into fashion with the Moham- niedan conquest after the eleventh century. These encaustic tiles, when used to cover large wall spaces, or even entire buildings such as mosques,