Wood Carvings of Eastern India (An Old and Rare Book)

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Wood has been a primeval material and an almost universal medium of expression of the creative impulse of man for the last five thousand years or so. Imaginably the earliest sculptor for its easy availability and ready tractability had chosen it for expressing his creative urge and even in later times a sculptor seems to have tried his hand first in this medium before he worked in more solid and durable materials like stone and metal. Unfortunately the surviving examples are not that adequate in terms of output and antiquity. In India the earliest wood carving has been found at Patna, a place within the area of our present study. And although most of the extant samples coming from different parts of India are rather late, viewed along with the literary traditions regarding this art, they are perhaps sufficient to indicate that wood was considered as one of the major plastic media by the artists in the days of yore. Understandably they deserve a thorough study on a comparative method along with the sculptural creations in other media like stone and metal.

Geographically, the present work deals with the wood carvings of eastern India. More specifically, the chosen objects are from Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal and Bangladesh, Assam, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland. There is, however, no selection from the four other provinces, viz., Meghalaya, Mizoram, Sikkim and Tripura, as they have not yielded worthwhile specimens so far. Chronologically, the present study extends from the earliest times to the recent past. The obvious focus is on the carvings of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, as the samples belonging to the earlier periods are few and far between. A few specimens of the first two or three decades of this century have also been taken into account as they perpetuate the traditional style.