28 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM*

the true impressionism of the East, based on the idea that
the whole aim of art is the expression of rasa, i.e., passion,
in the sense of the above quotation.* Beside this true
standard of art criticism, questions of archaeological or
•anatomical accuracy sink into relative insignificance.

It will be seen that impressionism, as now understood
in the West, is of a quite different character.

Indian art is essentially religious. The conscious aim
of Indian art is the intimation of Divinity. But the
Infinite and Unconditioned cannot be expressed in finite
terms ; and art, unable to portray Divinity unconditioned,
•and unwilling to be limited by the limitation of humanity >
is in India dedicated to the representation of Gods, who
to finite man represent comprehensible aspects of an infinite
whole.

Sankaracharya prayed thus: " 0 Lord, pardon my
three sins: I have in contemplation clothed in form Thy-
self that hast no form ; I have in" praise described Thee
who dost transcend all qualities ; and in visiting shrines
I have ignored Thine omnipresence." So, too, the Tamil
poetess Auwai was once rebuked by a priest for irrever-
ence, in stretching out her limbs towards an image of God :
4i You say well, Sir," she answered, " yet if you will point
out to me a direction where God is not, I will there stretch
out my limbs." But such conceptions, though we know
them at heart to be true and absolute, involve a denial of
all exoteric truth ; they are not enough, or rather they
are too much, for ordinary men to live by :

" Exceeding great is the toil of these whose mind is
attached to the Unshown ; for the Unshown "Way is pain-
fully won by them that wear the body.

" But as for them who, having cast all works on Me
* See also pp. 37, 38 below. """