THE long history of Indian art falls naturally into two periods. The earlier, which may be called the classical period, begins with the official adoption of Buddhism T by the emperor Asoka in the third century B.C. and ends with the invasion and occupation by Muslim powers, of North India in the thirteenth and of the Deccan in the fourteenth century. Orissa and South India alone succeeded in fighting off the invaders: in these intact and powerful provinces the classical period was prolonged into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During this period the unique character of the Indian genius found expression in the creation of a complex society, in religion and meta-physical speculation, and in literature and music, no less than in the visual arts. The classical period was Hindu, the word being used not in any exclusive, sectarian sense, for the two religions which stemmed from it, Buddhism and Jainism, shared in every development equally with the parent faith, but to express a mode of thought, a way of life and a form of social relationship and organization. The classical culture developed in a great, continuous and uninterrupted sweep, of which a fair, if rough and much briefer parallel, would be the Christian culture of mediaeval Europe. Invasions there were but they did not deflect India from her steady movement in the direction of her choice, though they may have accentuated regional differences in style, at least in North India.
From its inception the classical style had been naturalistic, the ideal forms of the Indian imagination being firmly based on those of nature. By the tenth century art in North India and the Deccan had reached a stage of its long development in which the increasing elaboration and scale of design involved the use of sculpture primarily as decorative units to give plastic life to the surface of the temple. An image of the tenth to the twelfth century which looks right in its architectural setting as a perfectly placed accent in a large composition, is less satisfying and valid than an earlier image when viewed as a fragment. This slow movement away from naturalism as a means of expression is apparent also in painting where the line which had been inflected to produce the volumes of ideal natural forms began tentatively to invent rules of its own. Though personal taste may prefer this phase in the life of a style, it is a shifting of emphasis familiar when a particular culture is beginning to lose its intensity and sureness of vision. If the process is uninterrupted the forms of the style which once had real content become decorative gestures which, vivacious in the hands of an artist of quality, achieve real vitality rarely. This process is interminable in a society where craftsmen are organized in families and guilds and are trained by precept and pattern book. The only source of novelty open to such a period is archaism, the attempt to recreate the forms without reliving the experience of one or several earlier phases of the style. This is the history of South Indian art from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. To regenerate the European tradition when it becomes difficult to imagine a real development within the framework of mediaeval culture and society, the southern Renaissance intervened: a break, not abrupt or complete, but clear. The Muslim invaders provided the break at a similar stage in the art of North India and the Deccan.
Unlike the source on which Europe was able to draw, the new cultural tradition in India was in every respect alien to what had gone before. It was moreover imposed by foreign conquerors who organized and ruled the new states and commanded the resources of the country. In the great Muslim provinces, the Hindus merely provided the conquered population. It was only in desert, hill and jungle, away from the main lines of communication that small Hindu states managed to survive, their independence continually threatened. To the first period of post-classical art, lasting from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, the title "Muslim" is usually given. It is justified historically, since the Muslims enjoyed almost complete political control and were able to provide the most liberal patronage. It can however mislead. The Muslims arrived in India in comparatively small numbers. They had few craftsmen and an artistic tradition only in architecture and the minor arts. Though even as late as the sixteenth century some regions, such as the Deccan, were in touch with the latest developments in architectural style and decoration in the metropolitan Persian centres, most provinces employed the craftsmen to hand, the descendants of families responsible for the planning and carving of the last great temple groups of the classical period. By the fifteenth century, especially in the provinces of Gujarat and Bengal, a new style of architecture had evolved to which the native contribution was so large and vital that we are entitled to speak not of Muslim art in India but of Indian art for the Muslim patron. No doubt the same would have applied to the minor arts had any examples of them survived. The exclusive use of decorative carving on the Muslim buildings, to which the Indian craftsman brought an extraordinary inventiveness in natural and abstract forms, meant the end of the tradition of figural sculpture, probably classical India's greatest contribution. In painting, so far as one can judge, the Muslim rulers were not interested, if indeed they did not condemn it. The few surviving illustrated books from the end of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries underline the lack of a tradition either Muslim or Indian. It seems that a mediocre artist from Persia might occasionally try his fortune in India, or native artists attempt, as yet with small success, to adapt another tradition to the requirements of their patrons. As far as Indian art for the Hindu patron was concerned the situation was quite different. In architecture the lavish and continuous patronage and the revitalizing influence of Muslim forms of construction were lacking. In the small Hindu states the princes had rarely the resources for large building schemes.
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