The subject of folk art is one of great importance, and Mr. Ajitcoomar Mookerjee's contribution is very much to the point. Such a work, a promising introduction to a study of folk art parallel to that which my old friend Dinesh Chandra Sen has carried out so admirably for the Bengali folk songs, should lead to further local research. Mr. Mookerjee's pioneer work will no doubt stimulate others. To discover and publish local examples of this peasant art, so admirable in its naive presentment of story, image, so powerful and resourceful in fanciful design.
Such discovery, alas, is but a second best. The beat would be that this vital creative and spiritual impetus should have continued among the Indian peasantry. Something has happened to chill this activity throughout the world. We may have to wait decades for the re-emergence of a living popular art; meanwhile it is right that we should value and preserve every garment woven for the ingenious spirit of man. Such a work as that of Mr. Mookerjee will increase our respect for the genius of the peasant hand and mind.
My knowledge of the traditional life in rural Bengal came to me from my grandmother with whom I spent my early years at a village in this province. I am deeply indebted to her for the experience which I then gathered and which has always proved useful to me. A folk art should be distinguished from a highway art both of which, however, can grow at one and the same time. Folk art is always traditional but all traditional art is not folk art. Innumerable motifs, figures, terra-cottas, drawings, etc., either in Alipana, dolls and toys, wood and metal works, embroidery and textiles or in minor arts have to be excluded from the present work as they are cultivated from folk art and are nothing but its elaborations and transformations. Folk art is not the accidental discovery of an individual; it is the product of the people, of the whole community. It is an art confounded with superstitions and religio-magical beliefs tinged by folkloristic fantasies of the masses and what died everywhere else in the contemporary world still lives on in the domain of Bengal's folk culture which belongs to that common fund of primitive or primordial conditions. (Here, the word 'primitive' always means the psychologically primitive.) Its survival to-day in its pristine form evokes the greatest interest in all students of art and ethnology. Ethnology may be of high importance in the determination of the habits and characteristics of the Bengali people, their origin and expansion.
The overwhelming conservatism of Bengal's folk tradition keeps alive this culture, specially such forms and motifs of it as are noticeable in the various designs of Alipana, dolls and toys, wood and metal works. They bear a close resemblance to the heritage of ancient art and culture to which the Western Asiatic and the Indus Valley civilization belongs. It is, therefore, a negligible question whether this simple culture is intelligible to the sophisticated few or not, it comes down in pupillary succession from an indeterminably distant past and it does not require any force of prophecy to assert that it will continue to exist for untold generations until the tradition as a whole disappears.
During the last eight years of my studies in the domain of Bengal's folk culture, I came in touch with the great scholars of this country and outside, specially with Dr. Dinesh Chandra Sen and Mr. G. S. Dutt, I.C.S., whose encouragement and help I gratefully. Acknowledge. Mr. Dutt's appreciation of Bengal's folk art greatly helped me to explore new field in my study of the subject.
Dr. Syamaprasad Mookerjee, formerly Vice-Chancellor, Calcutta University, whose interest in the past of our country has led to the most far-reaching results in the domain of scholarship, has by his help and encouragement made it possible for me to bring the present work to its completion. I gratefully acknowledge his generous patronage.
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