Indian art

• 1. Introduction

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  Indian art begins not with a temple or a king, but with a red wash. The pigment is geru, a powdered form of iron oxide, and the painters who used it left scenes of human life beside animals and hunts on the walls of rock shelters. Some of those paintings are around 10,000 years old. They survive in the Bhimbetka rock shelters, a cluster of roughly 750 sites along the Vindhya Range, now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. From those caves to the present day, the art of the Indian subcontinent has held onto one thing across every shift of dynasty and faith: a strong sense of design. But that single thread runs through a tangle of contradictions. How does a tradition this old leave so little behind from some of its richest eras? Why did one civilization, sophisticated and widespread, refuse to make public monuments at all? When did sculptors first dare to carve a god in human form, and what foreign hand may have guided the fold of a stone robe? And how did rival religions, century after century, end up sharing the same chisel?

• 2. The Vanished Record

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  Indian funeral and philosophic traditions exclude grave goods, the buried objects that elsewhere became the main source of ancient art. That single custom reshaped what could survive. In other cultures, tombs preserved the treasures of the dead. In India, the ground gave back far less. Stone and metal sculpture, mostly religious, endured the climate better than anything else, which is why it makes up most of the best remains. Wood, by contrast, rarely survives long in the Indian climate, though it was almost certainly extremely important. After the Indus Valley Civilisation ended, there is a surprising absence of sophisticated art until the Buddhist era, a silence thought to reflect the use of perishable organic materials such as wood. The gaps run deep. Some of the most important ancient finds that are not carved stone come from the surrounding, drier regions rather than India itself. Organic animal materials such as ivory or bone were discouraged by the Dharmic religions, which thinned the record further. The Begram ivories, many of Indian manufacture, were found not in India but in Afghanistan. What remains, then, is a fraction. Of the wall paintings, more than 20 locations preserve work or traces from ancient and early medieval times, and these are described as a tiny fraction of what would have once existed.

• 3. A Civilization Without Monuments

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  The Indus Valley Civilisation, dated from around 3300 BCE, took no interest in public large-scale art, unlike many other early civilizations. Despite its wide spread and sophistication, it built no colossal statues, no grand reliefs for the crowd. Its art was intimate, held in the hand. By far the most common form of figurative art is the small carved seal. Thousands of steatite seals have been recovered, fairly consistent in character, ranging from an inch to an inch and a half square, most with a pierced boss at the back for a cord. One seal from Mohenjo-Daro shows a figure standing on its head. Another, the Pashupati Seal, shows a figure sitting cross-legged in a yoga-like pose, in which Sir John Marshall identified a resemblance to the Hindu god Shiva. The animal on most mature-period seals has never been clearly identified, part bull, part zebra, with a majestic horn, a source of speculation about whether such images carried religious significance. The most celebrated object is the bronze Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro, which shows remarkably advanced modelling of the human figure for so early a date. Small terracotta and stone figurines of girls in dancing poses point to some forms of dance, alongside modelled cows, bears, monkeys, and dogs. Then the figures stop. After this civilization fell, and through the Vedic period that followed, there is a near-total absence of anthropomorphic depiction, as the early Vedic religion focused on elementary forces of nature worshipped through elaborate sacrifice.

• 4. The First God In Stone

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  Yakshas were the object of an important cult in the early periods of Indian history. They are a broad class of nature-spirits, usually benevolent but sometimes mischievous, tied to water, fertility, trees, the forest, treasure and wilderness, with named figures such as Kubera, king of the Yakshas, Manibhadra and Mudgarpani. In the 2nd century BCE, these spirits became the focus of colossal cultic images, typically around 2 meters or more in height, considered probably the first Indian anthropomorphic productions in stone. They are often pot-bellied, two-armed and fierce-looking, sometimes shown with weapons. The Yaksha Mudgarpani holds a mudgar mace in his right hand and, in his left, a small standing devotee or child joining hands in prayer. The female equivalent, the Yakshinis, were associated with trees and children, and their voluptuous figures became omnipresent in Indian art. A foreign current may run through this stone. Some Hellenistic influence has been suggested in the geometrical folds of the drapery and the walking stance. John Boardman wrote of one statue's dress that it has no local antecedents and looks most like a Greek Late Archaic mannerism, possibly derived from the Hellenistic art of nearby Bactria. In carving these colossal figures in the round, the art of Mathura is considered the most advanced in quality and quantity, and Mathura would remain a center long after the Yakshas. It is often suggested the style of these statues shaped the later divine images and human figures of India.

• 5. When Empires Polished Stone

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  The Maurya Empire flourished from 322 BCE to 185 BCE, and at its height controlled most of the subcontinent, fusing indigenous traditions with influences from ancient Persia and the Hellenistic world, as shown by the Pataliputra capital. Emperor Ashoka, who died in 232 BCE, adopted Buddhism about halfway through his 40-year reign and patronized several large stupas at key sites from the life of the Buddha. The most famous Mauryan survivals are the large animals atop the Pillars of Ashoka. The detached Lion Capital, with four animals, was adopted as the official Emblem of India after independence. Mauryan work is marked by a very fine polish given to the stone, rarely found in later periods. The great tradition of Indian monumental stone sculpture appears to begin relatively late, with Ashoka's reign from 268 to 232 BCE, his pillars carrying his edicts and topped mostly by lions, of which six survive. After the Mauryas, control returned to regional dynasties. The Shunga Dynasty of central India, dated around 185 BCE to 72 BCE, oversaw some of the most significant early Buddhist architecture. The Great Stupa at Sanchi, thought to be founded by Ashoka, was enlarged under the Shungas to its present diameter of 120 feet, given a stone casing, topped with a balcony and umbrella, and ringed with a stone railing. Concurrent in the south, the Satavahana dynasty issued coins in copper, lead and potin, later silver, with detailed portraits of rulers and inscriptions in Tamil and Telugu.

• 6. Carving The Buddha

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  The Buddha was never shown in human form before the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara, only through some of his symbols. This change developed in the far north-west, in Gandhara, covering what is now southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, where Greek and Persian artistic influence met Indian iconography. The Gandharan school is said to have contributed wavy hair, drapery covering both shoulders, shoes and sandals, and acanthus leaf decorations. Under the Kushan Empire, dated around 30 CE to 375 CE and established by Kujula Kadphises, the human Buddha first appeared as Mahayana Buddhism flourished. From 127 to 151 CE, Gandharan art reached its peak under Kanishka the Great. The Buddha was depicted with 32 major lakshanas, or distinguishing marks. These included an ushnisha, a protuberance on the top of his head, elongated earlobes, the impression of a chakra on his palms and soles, and the urna, a mark between his eyebrows. Gandharan sculpture is bound to the naturalism of Hellenistic art, with three-dimensional drapery of unregularized folds and solid, muscular bodies. The pink sandstone sculptures of Mathura, from the 1st to 3rd centuries CE, blended native Indian traditions with these Western influences and established the basis for later Indian religious sculpture. That foundation carried into the Gupta period, dated around 320 to 550, a classical peak for north Indian art across all the major religious groups, when the iconic carved stone deity emerged in Hindu art and the earliest constructed Hindu temple architecture appeared. The Kushans also briefly commissioned large statues that were portraits of the royal dynasty.

• 7. Temples Of The South

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  Inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka name the triumvirate of Chola, Chera and Pandya Tamil dynasties, south of the Vindhya mountains. As these kingdoms rose and fell, Hinduism was renewed, fostering numerous temples and sculptures. The Shore Temple at Mamallapuram, built by the Pallavas, symbolizes early Hindu architecture, with monolithic rock relief and sculptures of Hindu deities, its finely carved granite cut like bricks and dating from the 8th century. The Pallavas were succeeded by the Cholas, prolific patrons whose Great Living Chola Temples are known for maturity, grandeur and attention to detail, and recognized as a UNESCO Heritage Site. The Chola period, dated around 850 to 1250, is celebrated for lost-wax bronze casting and for the iconic form of Shiva as Nataraja, many bronzes designed to be carried in processions. Chola frescoes were discovered in 1931 within the circumambulatory passage of the Brihadisvara Temple at Thanjavur, the first Chola specimens found, painted with natural organic pigments over a limestone batter that took two to three days to set. During the later Nayak period, those Chola paintings were painted over. Rock-cut and free-standing temples developed in parallel, with free-standing structures beginning in the 5th century and rock-cut temples excavated until the 12th. A constant runs through it all: the different religions shared a very similar artistic style at any particular place and time, with probably the same groups of artists working for different faiths regardless of their own affiliation. The last southern empire left spectacular remains of Vijayanagara architecture, especially at Hampi in Karnataka.

• 8. Painters Of The Court And The Nation

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  Emperor Humayun, during his reestablishment of the Mughal Empire in 1555, brought back two of the finest painters from Persian Shah Tahmasp's renowned atelier, Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd al-Samad. Their arrival seeded a workshop that would explode in size. During the reign of Akbar, from 1556 to 1605, the number of painters grew from around 30 during the creation of the Hamzanama in the mid-1560s to around 130 by the mid-1590s. The court historian Abu'l-Fazal recorded that Akbar inspected his painters regularly and rewarded the best, and Persian artists folded local Indian flora and fauna into their work. Under Jahangir, from 1605 to 1627, distinct individual styles emerged, including those of Bishan Das, Manohar Das, Abu al-Hasan, Govardhan, and Daulat, and Jahangir could identify each artist's hand even when the work was unnamed. His reign produced the Razmnama, a Persian translation of the Mahabharata, and his illustrated memoir, the Tuzuk-i Jahangiri. Shah Jahan, from 1628 to 1658, favored formal court scenes and built the Taj Mahal. His son Aurangzeb, from 1658 to 1707, held orthodox Sunni beliefs and banned music and painting in 1680, sending Mughal patronage into decline. The center then shifted. As imperial painting faded, the style spread to princely courts, growing into regional schools of Rajput, Pahari, Deccan and Kangra painting. British colonial rule brought a further turn. The oldest art school, the Government College of Fine Arts, Chennai, was established in 1850, and the Company style of watercolours blended Western prints with Mughal painting. Against this, the Bengal School of Art rose in the early 20th century, tied to Indian nationalism and led by Abanindranath Tagore, who lived from 1871 to 1951 and has been called the father of Modern Indian art. After independence in 1947, six artists including M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza and Francis Newton Souza founded the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group in 1952. The group dissolved in 1956, but it had already changed the idiom of Indian art, and in 1997 R. Siva Kumar's exhibition A Contextual Modernism restored the Santiniketan artists, including Nandalal Bose and Ramkinkar Baij, as originators of an indigenous modernism reaching back to the 1930s.