Hindu art

“ Sir George Birdwood says: “The intimate absorption of Hindu life in the unseen realities of man’s spiritual consciousness is seldom sufficiently acknowledged by Europeans, and, indeed, cannot be fully comprehended by men whose belief in the supernatural has been destroyed by the prevailing material ideas of modern society. Every thought, wish, and deed of the Hindu belongs to the world of the unseen as well as the seen; and nothing shows this more strikingly than the traditionary works of India. Everything that is made has a direct religious use, or some religious symbolism. ”

“ It will be a pleasure to such as love India and her peoples to read the work of a highly educated, intelligent and travelled author, in which the destruction of all Hindu individuality is not considered per se as a merit, but in which on the contrary it is regarded as wrong in fact, in art, and in imagination to impair the ancient self- sufficient and highly complex civilization, to the task of providing a substitute for which Europeans and new Hindus are alike wholly unequal. ”

“ Although it may be accepted as a true statement that the typical Hindu mind, which ranges over such a vast area of speculation, will never be induced by missionary zeal to confine itself within the apparently limited formulæ of Christian doctrine, it must not be overlooked that even the symbolism of Christianity represents and covers a shoreless ocean in which thought can disport itself without ever coming into contact with the limitations of the concrete. The Hindu mind binds itself, as it has been said of Art, to no creeds, no articles of faith, no schemes of salvation, no confessions. ”

“ At present our knowledge of the later Hindu schools is almost entirely confined to examples painted on paper, as the painters in the service of Hindu rajas imitated the fashions of the Mogul court in the same way as they now imitate the art fashions of Europe. But nearly all Hindu painters, when painting on paper, followed closely the traditional technique of mural painting, and their paintings are exact reproductions of the frescoes of the Hindu chitra-sāla, or picture-hall. ”

“ Hinduism certainly has proved marvellously stimulating to the intellect or—shall we put it the other way?--is the product of profound, acute, and restless minds. It cannot be justly accused of being enervating or melancholy, for many Hindu states were vigorous and warlike [85] and the accounts of early travellers indicate that in pre-mohammedan days the people were humane, civilized and contented. It created an original and spiritual art, for Indian art, more than any other, is the direct product of religion and not merely inspired by it. ”

“ So in the intimate scenes of ordinary village life he constantly brings before the spectator the esoteric teaching of his religious cult, knowing that the mysticism of the picture will find a ready response even from the unlettered peasant. That which seems to the modern Western onlooker to be strange and unreal, often indeed gross, is to the Hindu mystic quite natural and obviously true. ”

“ Buddhistic works recast by the Hindus.The Moslem conquerors often built Mosques with the materials of the Hindu temples they had destroyed. The sculptural representations of gods and goddesses and other carvings on bricks indicating the ancient decorative art of the Hindus have been lately discovered from dilapidated Mosques in various places in India,—as the plaster, which concealed them from view, crumbled down from the walls in course of time. ”

“ The old traditions of Hindu painting still linger among the temple craftsmen of India, in the ritual of the Hindu womenfolk, and but rarely at the courts of the Hindu princes, though a few descendants of the old court painters still practise their art. A systematic investigation of these living traditions would certainly yield material of the highest artistic and archæological interest, and help the technical development of the important new school of Indian painting which has arisen in the last twenty years at Calcutta under the leadership of Mr. ”

“ The houses, usually one story in height, have neat little verandahs in front, sometimes painted red or with white and red stripes, and are adorned with rude paintings by Hindu artists. Tigers, soldiers, gods, and other objects are represented in flaming colours upon the front walls. A favourite representation is that of their god Krishna in the top of a tree, with the garments of a number of women, with which he had run off while they were bathing. This gives a fair idea of the character of the gods of the Hindus; they are mere men, with some increase of power and wickedness. ”

“ Is the intellectual history of India nothing but the longest page in that unwritten chapter of the world's history—the history of human error? If not, if truth is still to be gleaned from the recesses of Hindu philosophy, where and how can we find it? What is in fact the real place of Hindu philosophy in the history of Science? ”

“ Upon the whole, whatever may be the true antiquity of this nation, whether their mythology be a corruption of the pure deism we find in their books, or their deism a refinement from gross idolatry; whether their religious and moral precepts have been engrafted on the elegant philosophy of the Nyâya and Mimânsâ, or this philosophy been refined on the plainer text of the Veda; the Hindu is the most ancient nation of which we have valuable remains, and has been surpassed by none in refinement and civilization ”

“ The exuberant prodigiousness of the Hindu imagination is strikingly manifest in its descriptions of the rewards of virtue in the heavens and of the punishments of sin in the hells. Visions pass before us of beautiful groves full of fragrance and music, abounding in delicious fruits, and birds of gorgeous plumage, crystal streams embedded with pearls, unruffled lakes where the lotus blooms, palaces of gems, crowds of friends and lovers, endless revelations of truth, boundless graspings of power, all that can stir and enchant intellect, will, fancy, and heart. ”

“ Or apply the same test to the literature of Hinduism, even in its earliest and purest stages. The sacred Vedas, which are supposed to have been breathed into the souls of ancient rishis by direct divine effluence, are tainted here and there by debasing human elements, and that not incidentally but as the very soul of the Hindu system. For example, when the Vedic hymns promise as future rewards the lowest sensual indulgences [225] none can doubt the earthly source of their inspiration. ”

“ Scholars who have studied the Vedic hymns historically are aware that the materials they afford for constructing a history of civilization are fuller and truer than any accounts which could have been recorded on stone or papyrus. And those who have pursued Hindu literature through the different periods of ancient Hindu history are equally aware that they form a complete and comprehensive story of the progress and gradual modifications of Hindu civilization, thought, and religion through three thousand years. ”

“ It will be generally admitted that at the present day, in the full blaze of the light which the science and the philosophy of Europe pours upon us, the value of Hindu Philosophy, for the sake of the knowledge of Nature which it can impart, is insignificant.
The principal value of Hindu Philosophy consists in its bearings on history and on sociology. As the great causes which have influenced the destiny of India, which have moulded the national character, taught the Hindu to despise the blessings of existence and to look upon inaction as the ideal of human happiness ”

“ Their only ambition was to acquire knowledge of the universe,—of its origin and cause,—and to understand the whence and whither, the who and what of the human soul.” The early pioneers of Hindu thought lay down for rest on the open, fertile plains of the Ganges during the fragrant summer nights of India, and their eyes sought the starry heavens above. Then they looked into themselves, and must have asked, “What are we? What is this life on earth meant for? ”

“ An American writer truly says: "The first principle underlying the whole business of Hindu wonder-working is that of a strong will; and the first necessary condition of producing a magical effect is an increase in the power of thought. The Hindus, owing to that intense love for solitary meditation, which has been one of the most pronounced characteristics from time immemorial, have acquired mental faculties of which we of the Western and younger civilization are totally ignorant. The Hindu has attained a past master's degree in speculative philosophy. ”

“ He who will write the history if Hindu asceticism, from its first appearance in the Vedic Theology to its most complete development in the Buddhistic philosophy, will earn a title to the gratitude of India. ”

“ It must, of course, be admitted, that Hindu mythology is a subject of universal interest on account of its real or supposed affinity to the primitive beliefs of all the Aryan races, while Hindu Philosophy has no higher claim than that which arises from its being exclusively Indian. To us, indeed, who are the children of the soil, Hindu Philosophy is a far more important study than Hindu mythology. To us the nearer and more local is of greater interest than that which is the common property of all nations, and the real significance of which is lost in the dim shades of remote antiquity. ”

“ In regard to India, therefore, you must not look only into her condition today, but travel back in imagination thousand of years, and see what she was in ancient times of primitive Hindu simplicity and purity. Even in the earliest books of the Hindus, the Vedas, which must be regarded as the earliest record of Aryan faith – even in them you find glimpses of high moral and religious truths which are unmistakable – not duly formed and organised religious thought, but the crude instincts and aspirations of the human mind in the state of religious infancy, seeking the Deity. ”

“ There is nothing in the life of a Hindu devotee, whether it be eating, sleeping, bathing or travelling, which is not religiously prescribed both as to time and method. And utterly regardless of the significance of these rites or the appropriateness of them to his life, he deems their observance as essential to his salvation and finds in their daily keeping the highest satisfaction and completest assurance of his spiritual progress.
The Hindu is no rationalist in his religion. ”

“ But when one comes to the modern sects, then he has to deplore not so much the lack of historical data as the grotesque form into which this same over-vivid imagination of the Hindu has builded his gods. As the scientific systems grow more and more fancifully, detailed, and as the liturgy flowers out into the most extraordinary bloom of weird legend, so the images of the gods, to the eye in their temples, to the mind in the descriptions of them, take to themselves the most uncouth details imagined by a curious fancy. ”

“ It is well to remember here that that modern product—the Hindu of Western culture who is so much in evidence today in India and who sometimes comes West in flowing orange robes and turban to urge his mongrel philosophy upon our fellow-countrymen—is not the type of Hindu appreciated by, or representing, the people of that land. ”

“ Hence Hindu poetry expresses a profound melancholy, which pervades the character as well as the literature of that people. This poetry breathes a spirit of perpetual sacrifice of the individual self, as the ideal of human life. The bards of India, inspired by this predominant feeling, have given to poetry nearly every form it has assumed in the Western world, and in each and all they have excelled.
Sanskrit poetry is both metrical and rhythmical, equally free from the confused strains of unmoulded genius and from the servile pedantry of conventional rules. ”

“ The most advanced thought of Hindu philosophy is that all is Maya, illusion, the play, the amusement of the Supreme, who leads us to believe that we are, that we have a separate existence, which we have not; but at last the illusion will come to an end, all will be absorbed in Brahm, as the water in the clouds falls into the sea; there will be no conscious existence in the universe. ”

“ And the Christian preacher's or teacher's vivid portrayal of the Christian's heaven too often denotes to the Hindu only one of the many purgatorial heavens of his religion, and rarely suggests to him the supreme test of the value of our faith as contrasted with his own. The glories of our heaven do not appeal to the stolid, weary, transmigration-ridden soul of the Hindu as they do to the youthful, hopeful, buoyant soul of the Christian. ”

“ The Hindus are fond of painting the outside of their houses a deep red colour, and of covering 715 the most conspicuous parts with pictures of flowers, men, women, bulls, elephants and gods and goddesses in all the many forms known in Hindu mythology. ”

“ It is that which makes him the dull, narrow-minded, noble, fearless, reliable man that he is. The moving forces of the Hindu are quite different; they are, first, Religion; and second, Affection; and it is these which make him so hopelessly unpractical, so abominably resigned, yet withal so tender and imaginative of heart. Abstract duty to the Hindu has but little meaning. He may perform his religious exercises and his caste injunctions carefully enough, but it is because he realises clearly the expediency of so doing. ”

“ Religious asceticism has been the ideal of the Hindu life from time immemorial. The man who has given up all earthly pursuits and wanders with beggar's cup in hand from place to place, making pilgrimages to the holy places of India, or who separates himself entirely from men and devotes years to the solitude of the wilderness in the cultivation of piety,—he it is who is the admiration of the whole Hindu community. And it is for this very reason that so many men in India to-day don the yellow robe of this profession, and make capital out of this sentiment of the people. ”