Indian Aesthetics: Its Techniques and Assumptions

Abstract

of traditional Hindu India, i.e., India before the coming of the Moslems, is full of surprises, and none is more surprising than that authorities do not agree as to the role, or even the existence, of in India. Heinrich Zimmer begins his book Art of Asia with this confident statement: Indian art, besides documenting the history of a majestic civilization, opens a comparatively simple, delightful way into the timeless domain of the Hindu spirit; for it renders in eloquent visual forms the whole message that India holds in keep for mankind.' Two scholars agree as to the centrality of in culture. Vasudeva A. Agrawala writes, The spiritual and religious content of India's creative genius has found full and perfect expression in her aesthetic creations.2 Radhakamal Mukerjee states, Indian has been through the centuries a sensitive organ of the man's progressive apprehension of total Reality.3 Yet the excellent four-volume work published by the Institute of Culture of the Ramakrishna Mission (Calcutta) entitled Cultural Heritage of India contains essays on almost every religious and philosophical movement of the subcontinent, but not one essay on art. Moreover, there is no word for art in the Sanskrit language. nearest equivalent is shilpa, a word meaning diverse or variegated. This term was used originally to mean ornamentation, but in time it was used to denote skills in the broadest sense: painting, horsemanship, archery, cooking, etc. Ananda K. Coomarswamy has warned, 'Art in India' and 'art' in the moder world mean two very different things. In India, it is the statement of a racial experience, and serves the purposes of life,