This set consists of 3 titles:
The book offers its readres an enlivening introduction to the various art forms exhibited in temples, mosques, caves, shrines and ancient monuments of India.
The author Vidya Dehejia takes us on a journey of rediscovery through a representative selection of sites from Elephanta on the West coast to Konarak on the East, from the Himalayan ranges in the North to srirangam in the South – all in the time span from 1st century B.C. to 18th century A.D. Due importance has been given to particular art sites and objects, in selecting monuments reflective of the art of different parts of the country. Each theme has been prefaced with a general introduction to its artistic style.
The book is richly illustrated, well researched and written in a vivid and lucid style, which speaks of the author's deep grasp of her subject.
INDIA is a land with a rich cultural and artistic heritage, and one with a religion that reaches back over 3000 years. Dotted all over this extensive country are remains of our ancient civilisation-of cities, temples and shrines of various kinds-all testifying to the glories of the past. Nearly all the artistic monuments of the pre-Muslim days are of a religious nature or were made for a religious purpose. Secular art must have existed, for ancient Indian literature tells us that kings lived in magnificent palaces, decorated with wall-paintings and sculptures. But all this has vanished. What has come down to us today is the religious art in the form of temples and sculptures of stone and images in metal-substances that have stood the test of time. We assume that the palaces of the rulers were built of brick and were decorated with wooden sculptures, all of which have perished in the hot humid climate of this country.
At the same time, it would be wrong to think that the religious monuments and images of our ancient times were the work of men inspired solely by religious fervour. Occasionally there must have been a craftsman inspired by religious emotion and a divine vision. But the bulk of India's ancient religious art came from the hands of secular craftsmen. These were men to whom sculpture and architecture was a profession. The craftsman was a member of a guild that would work for any patron, whether he was Hindu, Buddhist or Jain. On one occasion the sculptor might be asked to make an image of the Hindu god Vishnu, on another that of the Buddha and on a third occasion that of a Jain tirthankara. The craftsmen worked, of course, according to priestly instructions. When they were told to carve images of gods on a particular section of temple wall, they did so. When they were left to themselves to complete the decoration of particular wall or pillar, they filled it with the forms they loved and knew best. It is because of this we see so many figures of scantily-dressed women in provocative poses decorating various portions of our ancient temples. Nevertheless we can say that all the remains of our ancient art are of religious nature, in the sense that they form part of a religious structure, and that all the sculpture is to be found decorating a religious shrine.
It is only after the coming of the Muslims that the idea of art for its own sake first appears on any large scale. The Muslims built a large number of religious structures, but they also built tombs, forts and palaces of stone. In addition, they developed the art of painting to a remarkable degree. Paintings to illustrate manuscripts had begun in pre-Muslim days, but the Moghuls now provided a great stimulus to the art, and many non-religious books were illustrated with such paintings. Today, of course, modern sculpture and painting are purely art for its own sake-carved or painted because it has some special significance for the artist, or because it gives pleasure to both the artist and the viewer.
Whatever part of the country we live in, we have one or more famous artistic monuments in our vicinity. We usually take these for granted and regard them as part of the scenery. It is our intention to look more closely at these monuments. All of us have noticed, I'm sure that ancient Indian art has several unusual characteristics-unusual and peculiar to our twentieth-century eyes. We may have looked at relief carvings in stone belonging to the centuries B.C. such as those decorating the monuments at Sanchi, and we may have wondered how it is that the artists were so completely unable to depict depth or any three-dimensional effect. (Plate 4) Or, we may have looked at sculpted and painted scenes from mythology and commented on the fact that the main figure of a story is represented much larger than the surrounding figures, and somewhat out of proportion with the rest of the scene. (Plates 11, 14, 21) Or, we may have looked at frightening figures of the Tibetan gods and wondered how such images came into existence (Plates 57-59). There are reasons for these and other peculiarities. Sometimes, the answer lies in the religious environment in which the artists worked; sometimes in the material that they handled; sometimes in their craft tradition. Certainly, we can admire a work of art without a knowledge of any of these circum-stances. But to appreciate that art truly, it is necessary to understand the circumstances of its origin. And it is with this in mind that we shall be looking at ancient Indian art.
My choice of subjects for the chapters of this book has been governed mainly by the importance of the particular art sites and objects in themselves. At the same time, I have tried to choose monuments representative of the art of different parts of the country so that each one of you, wherever you live, might find one chapter at least that discusses a site in your area, and with which you are perhaps familiar. I owe a debt of gratitude to all those scholars who have written previously on the art and culture of our country, and from whom, over the years, I have imbibed much knowledge. Those whose views I have incorporated in any detail are accorded special recognition in the Notes and Acknowledgements at the end of the book.
Aestheticians is a compilation wherein the major ancient poets/ philosophers are introduced by writers who have specialized on them. The thirteen scholars / poets include - Bharata, Dandin, few. The compilation doubles up as an introduction to those times besides being a study in poetics and literary criticism. First printed in 1983, this is being reprinted for the third time.
The desire for unfair advantage in traffic in goods has led to the drive for colonies and empires in history. But in traffic light, both donor and recipient benefit, and equally. Country which has not radiated impulses and assimilated impulses from other lands will remain stunted in growth.
But assimilation of cultural impulses really means what assimilation of nutrients by the body means. The impulses are not received into a vacuum, but into a deeply rooted and growing structure that assimilates them into its own organic tissue, uses them for its own growth and finer flowering. However, it can happen that after an epoch of strong acculturation backed by political hegemony, a hangover can persist even after the curtain has fallen on that shadowed phase of history. In the uncertain twilight that still lingers, the fullest benefit is not received even from the impulses from abroad. For they are not assimilated through the roots, since the roots look as if they have decayed away.
Is this happening in our literary endeavour today? All critical perspectives and canons seem derived from afar and to the extent that there is widespread ignorance about the correspondences and anticipations in our own tradition, it can be questioned whether, valid as they are, these perspectives have been really understood.
But it has to be admitted that coming into our own here, really assimilating our legacy, is going to be a difficult task. All aspects of poetic activity, from creation to expression, have been studied with perceptive insight and in meticulous detail by the great Indian thinkers in the field from Bharata onwards. But the texts seem to be condemned to the dusty immortality of shelves in libraries for specialised research. Years may pass before their contents become curricular material for education in general humanities and still greater will be the delay before the educated layman will be as familiar with them as he seems to be today with the views of T. S. Eliot on the nature of poetry or of Coleridge on poetic diction.
As the agency responsible for general communication, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has ventured into this field as well, in spite of the difficulty of the subject. Six talks, under the title "Major Problems in Indian Poetics", were broadcast by the All India Radio in 1967 and the texts were brought out, under the title Aspects of Indian Poetics, by the Publications Division in 1969. The talks were on the major themes. In the present publication, the major Indian thinkers in this field are introduced by writers who have specialised on them.
Unassuming though the publication is, it tries to give in outline the great contributions of the past which together cover all aspects of poetics. Bharata's is perhaps the most complete theoretical statement in the world heritage on the entire poetic circuit: the latent affective reactivity of man, its activation by the organisation of various kinds of stimuli in the dramatic presentation, the reaction to it by the spectator, and its final distillation into a pure aesthetic relish. Bhamaha explored the mysterious mutual interfusing of sound and sense, their transformation into an indissoluble unity, in the poetic language. Anandavardhana perceived and Abhinavagupta further clarified the quantalleap of power, the power of resonance or Dhvani, which poetry acquires and which transcends all the logical, grammatical and syntactical resources of prose discourse. Vamana studied the features of the integrated reality that is poetic diction. Other thinkers related poetics to ontology and transcendence. Bhoja's unconventional concept of Srngara is really a wholly positive narcissism seeking endless expansion of ego boundaries through poetic experience and Vishwanath equates it to the experience of ultimate, transcendental beatitude.
But, for a seed to germinate, it must fall on hospitable ground. It is to be hoped that this volume will find a readership that is stimulated by it to do the further study. If this happens this unpretentious publication may well become a turning point.
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