Hindu art: its humanism and modernism; an introductory essay

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Hindu Art

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HINDU ART

HINDU ART:

ITS HUMANISM AND MODERNISM

An introductory essay

by i.

Benoy Kumar Sarkar

Professor, National Council of Education, Bengal.

Author of Love in Hindu Literature, The Bliss

of a Moment, Chinese Religion Through

Hindu Eyes, Hindu Achievements

in Exact Science, etc.

New York, B. W. HUEBSCH, Inc., Mcmxx

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY B. W. HUEBSCH, INC.
PRINTED IN U. S. A.

PREFACE

"The Giottos of Hindu art," I wrote
in an article on "Oriental Culture in
Modern Pedagogics" in School and
Society (April 14, 1917) , "would be
well known 'great masters' to the stu-
dents of early Renaissance painting,
and the post-impressionists and futur-
ists of Eur- America would be found to
have as their comrades in new ventures
and experiments the Hindu painters of
the modern nationalist school."

Such was the message also of my talks
at the Pen and Brush Club, Columbia
University, the Civic Club, and other
institutions in the United States, the
outcome of which is this little book.
Parts of it have appeared in the Jour-
nal of Race Development, and in the
Modern Review (Calcutta).

CONTENTS

SECTION PACE

I Art-Criticism in Shakoontala . . 9

II Comparative Art-History .

III Humanism in Hindu Art .

IV Hindu Technique in Post-Impres

sionism

16

28

35

HINDU ART

ITS HUMANISM AND MOD-
ERNISM

SECTION I

ART-CRITICISM IN SHAKOONTALA

In Kalidasa's play, Shakoontala (fifth
century A. C), we have among the
dramatis personae Anasuya, a dam-
sel of the hermitage, who is skilled in
painting. Besides, a considerable por-
tion of Act VI, Sc. ii is a study in art
criticism. It introduces us to some of
the themes of the Hindu painters, their
methods of execution, and the aesthetic
taste of the spectators.

King Doosyanta has through inad-
vertence dismissed his wife Shakoon-

9

HINDU ART

tala from the palace. He soon per-
ceives his mistake and becomes love-
sick. A picture of Shakoontala is then
painted. The king hopes to derive
some relief from this likeness.

"(Enter a maid with a tablet.)
Maid. Your Majesty, here is the picture
of our lady.

(She produces the tablet.)
King (gazing at it). It is a beautiful
picture. See!
A graceful arch of brows above great

eyes;
Lips bathed in darting, smiling light

that flies
Reflected from white teeth; a mouth as

red
As red karkandhu-fruit; love's bright-
ness shed
O'er all her face in bursts of liquid

charm —
The picture speaks, with living beauty
warm.
Clown (looking at it). The sketch is

10

HINDU ART

full of sweet meaning. My eyes seem

to stumble over its uneven surface.

What more can I say? I expect to see

it come to life, and I feel like speaking

to it.
Mishrakeshi. The king is a clever

painter. I seem to see the dear girl

before me.
King. My friend,

What in the picture is not fair,

Is badly done;

Yet something of her beauty there,

I feel, is won.

• •»•••

{Sighing.)
I treated her with scorn and loathing

ever;
Now o'er her pictured charms my heart

will burst.

Clown. There are three figures in the
picture, and they are all beautiful.
Which one is the lady Shakoontala?

King. Which one do you think?
Clown (observing closely). I think it

ii

HINDU ART

is this one, leaning against the creeper
which she has just sprinkled. Her face
is hot and the flowers are dropping from
her hair; for the ribbon is loosened.
Her arms droop like weary branches;
she has loosened her girdle, and she
seems a little fatigued. This, I think,
is the lady Shakoontala; the others are
her friends.

King. You are good at guessing. Be-
sides, here are proofs of my love.
See where discolorations faint
Of loving handling tell;
And here the swelling of the paint
Shows where my sad tears fell.

Chatoorika. I have not finished the
background. Go, get the brushes.
...♦••

Clown. What are you going to add?

Mishrakeshi. Surely, every spot that
the dear girl loved.

King. Listen, my fiiend.

The stream of Malini, and on its sands
The swan-pairs resting; holy foot-hill
lands

12

HINDU ART

Of great Himalaya's sacred ranges,

where
The yaks are seen; and under trees that

bear
Bark hermit-dresses on their branches

high,
A doe that on the buck's horn rubs her

eye.

And another ornament that Shakoontala
loved I have forgotten to paint.

• •••••

The siris-blossom, fastened o'er her ear,

Whose stamens brush her cheek;

The lotus-chain like autumn moonlight

soft
Upon her bosom meek.
Clown. But why does she cover her face
with fingers lovely as the pink water-
lily? She seems frightened. {He
looks more closely.) I see. Here is
a bold, bad bee. He steals honey, and
so he flies to her lotus-face.

• •••••

King. Sting that dear lip, O bee, with
cruel power,

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HINDU ART

And you shall be imprisoned in a flower.
Clown. Well, he doesn't seem afraid of

your dreadful punishment. . . .
King. Will he not go, though I warn

him?

Clown {aloud). It is only a picture,
man."

(Ryder's version.)

There is no touch of pessimism,
idealism, or subjectivism in all these re-
marks and suggestions. A modern
lover examining the photo or oil paint-
ing of his darling could not be more
realistic.

Does this conversation open up to us

a society of ascetics or yogins waiting
for Divine illumination to evolve
shilpa (art) out of the neo-Platonic
meditation or the Hindu dhyana? Or
does it make the India of the fifth cen-
tury a cognate of the modern world in

HINDU ART

its matter-of-fact sober grasp of the
realities of flesh and blood?

It is really a specimen of Hindu pos-
itivism that Kalidasa, the Shakespeare
of Hindu literature, has furnished in
this bit of discussion in pictorial art.
We feel how profound humanists the
Hindu audiences were in their outlook,
how non-mystical in their views and
criticisms in regard to chitra-lakshana
(i. e.j "marks" of a painting).

i*

SECTION II

COMPARATIVE ART-HISTORY

AND yet European and American
scholars as well as their Asian para-
phrasers have tried to discover and
demonstrate an Oriental pessimism in
the arts and crafts of the Hindus. It is
generally held that the inspiration of
Hindu painters and sculptors is totally
different from that of the Westerns.
The images and pictures executed by
the artists of India are believed to have
been the products of Yoga, of an ultra-
meditative consciousness. They are
said to reveal a much too subjective or
idealistic temperament. Further, they
are all alleged to be religious or mytho-
logical in theme.

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HINDU ART

Comparative art-history would indi-
cate, however, that Hindu plastic art
or drawing has not been the handmaid
of theology to a far greater extent than
the classical and medieval works of
Europe. Is it not Greek mythology
that we see embodied in the sculptures
of Phidias? Similarly are not the
Catholic and Russian paintings mere
aids to the popularization of the Bible
stories? Indeed, art has long been
more or less "illustrative" of history,
legends, traditions, and myths both in
the East and the West.

We do not know much of the Greek
paintings. But we know the legends
in the drawings on the Greek vases of
the fifth century B. C. In one the ser-
pent is being strangled by Heracles, al-
most as if the hydra Kaliya is being
quelled by Krishna; in another Theseus

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HINDU ART

is fighting the Amazons ; and in a third
Gorgon is pursuing Perseus or Kadmos
killing the dragon. What else are the
themes of the medieval Purana-paint-
ers? And Hindus whose infancy is
nurtured on the stories and paintings of
the Ramayana will easily remember fa-
miliar scenes in the colored terra cot-
tas of Hellas which portray, for in-
stance, a Paris in the act of leading
away Helen, or the parting of Hector
and Andromache.

It may be confidently asserted, be-
sides, that the spiritual atmosphere of
Gothic cathedrals of the thirteenth
century with their soul-inspiring sculp-
tures in alabaster and bronze has not
been surpassed in the architecture of
the East. The pillars at Chartres with
has reliefs of images and flowers could
be bodily transported to the best relig-

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HINDU ART

ious edifices of Hindustan. The elon-
gated Virgin at the Paris Notre Dame
is almost as conventionalized as a Kor-
ean Kwannon. The representation of
virtues and vices on the portal of the
Savior at the Amiens Cathedral sug-
gests the moralizing in woodwork on
the walls of Nikko in Japan. And
scenes from the Passion on the tym-
panum at Strassburg or from the Last
Judgment on the tympanum of the
north door in the Cathedral at Paris are
oriented to the same psychological
background as the has reliefs depicting
incidents in the holy career of Buddha
with which the Stoopas (mounds) of
Central India make us familiar, or of
the Dalai Lama on the surface of the
marble pagoda at Peking.

Further, it may be asked, can any
Classicist rationally declare that the

19

HINDU ART

Greek Apollos are not the creations of
subjective, the so-called yogic or medi-
tative experience? In what respects
are the figures of the Hindu Buddhas
and Shivas more idealistic? Polyklei-
tos, for instance, dealt with abstract hu-
manity, ideals, or "airy nothings" in the
same sense as the artists of the Goopta
period (A. c. 300-600) or Dhiman and
Vitapala of the Pala period (780-
1 175) in India. Nowhere has a sculp-
tured image, has relief, or colored
drawing been completely "photograph-
ic." Art as such is bound to be inter-
pretative or rather originative; and
identification of the artist's self with his
theme is the sine qua non of all creative
elan, in science as in art.

We have to recognize, moreover, that
saints and divinities are not the exclu-
sive themes of art work in India.

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HINDU ART

Hindu art has flourished in still life,
social (genre), natural, plant, and ani-
mal studies as well. The avoidance of
the nude in early Christian art has its
replica in the East. Physical beauty
was not more often a taboo in Hindu
art-psychology than in the Western.
The dignity of the flesh has left its
stamp on India's water colors, gouache
paintings, and stone and bronze.

Even the figures of the Hindu gods
and goddesses are to be perceived
as projections of the human person-
ality. The medieval Rajput paint-
ings of the Radha-Krishna cycle and
the Shiva-Doorga cycle can have but
one secular appeal to all mankind.
Accordingly we are not surprised to,
find in Dhananjaya the medieval
dramaturgist's Dash'a-roopa the dic-
tum that anything and everything can

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HINDU ART

be the theme of art (IV, 90, Haas's
transl.).

Lastly, can one forget that the condi-
tions of life that produced the Byzan-
tine and Italian masterpieces were al-
most similar to the milieu (economic
and socio-religious) including court
patronage and guild control, under
which flourished the celebrated Ajanta
painters and Bharhut sculptors? For
in the Middle Ages in Asia as in Eu-
rope the church or the temple was the
school, the art-gallery, and the mu-
seum; the priests and monks were
painters, poets, calligraphists and peda-
gogues; and the Scriptures constituted
the whole encyclopaedia. And if to-
day it is possible for the Western mind
to appreciate Fra Angelico, Massaccio,
and Giotto, it cannot honestly ignore
the great masters of the Hindu styles,

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HINDU ART

especially in view of the fact that the
works of the Oriental medievals are
not more "imperfect" in technique ac-
cording to modern ideas than those of
their Occidental fellow-artists.

The fundamental identity of artistic
inspiration between the East and the
West, allowing for the differences in
schools and epochs in each, is inci-
dentally borne out by coincidences in
social life for which art work is respon-
sible. Thus, the interior, nave and
aisles of the Buddhist cave temples do
not impress an observer with any feel-
ings different from those evoked by the
early Christian churches and Norman
Cathedrals. The towers and contours
of the twelfth century Romanesque
Cathedral at Ely and the sixteenth cen-
tury Gothic structure at Orleans have
the ensemble of the gopoorams of

23

HINDU ART

Southern India. And the Gothic tap-
estries representing the hunting scenes
of a Duke of Burgundy suggest at the
very first sight the aspects of medieval
Hindu castles and the figures and head-
dresses of the Indo-Saracenic Moghul
styles.

It may sometimes be difficult for a
non-Hindu fully to appreciate the im-
ages and paintings of India because
their conventions and motifs are so pe-
culiarly Hindu. Exactly the same dif-
ficulty arises with regard to Western
art. Who but a Christian can find in-
spiration in a Last Supper or a Holy
Family or a God dividing light from
darkness? For that matter, even the
Aeneid would be unintelligible to the
modern Eur- American lovers of poetry
unless they made it a point to study
Roman history. Nay, a well-educated

24

HINDU ART

Jew may naturally fail to respond to
the sentiments in the Divine Comedy
or Signorelli's Scenes from Dante.

But the difficulties of appreciation
by foreigners do not make an art-work
necessarily "local" or racial. It may
still be universal in its appeal and thor-
oughly humanistic. There are hardly
any people who in modern times can
enter into the spirit of the Ka statues
which stand by the sarcophagi in the
cave tombs of the Pharaohs. And yet
how essentially akin to modern man-
kind were the Egyptians if we can de-
pend on the evidences of their letters 1
A Ka is described in one of the inscrip-
tions thus: "He was an exceptional
man; wise, learned, displaying true
moderation of mind, distinguishing the
wise man from the fool; a father to the
unfortunate, a mother to the motherless,

25

HINDU ART

the terror of the cruel, the protector of
the disinherited, the defender of the op-
pressed, the husband of the widow, the
refuge of the orphan." There is no
gap in fundamental humanity between
the men and women of to-day and the
race that could write such an epitaph,
in spite of the fact that many of its con-
ventions and usages seem entirely mean-
ingless.

The student of foreign literature has
specially to qualify himself in order
that he may understand the unfamiliar
idioms of its language and the peculiar
turns of expression. No other qualifi-
cation is demanded in modern men and
women for an appreciation of the old
and distant carvings, statuettes and
drawings. The chief desideratum is
really an honest patience with the ra-

26

HINDU ART

cial modes and paraphernalia of for-
eign art.

With this elementary preparation the
Occidental connoisseur should be able
to say about Hindu sculptures and
paintings what Max Weber writes about
all antiques in his essay on "Tradition
and Now" : "Whether we have changed
or not, I believe, in spite of all the man-
ifestos to the contrary, in whatever
tongue they be written or spoken, that
the antiques will live as long as the sun
shines, as long as there is mother and
child, as long as there are seasons and
climes, as long as there is life and
death, sorrow and joy." (Essays on
Art.)

27

SECTION III

HUMANISM IN HINDU ART

IN Shookra-neeti, a Hindu sociolog-
ical treatise, we read a few injunc-
tions against the construction of human
images. We are told that "the images
of gods, even if deformed, are for the
good of men. But the images of men,
even if well formed, are never for hu-
man good." Shookra's generally rec-
ognized dictum seems to be that "the
images of gods yield happiness to men,
and lead to heaven; but those of men
lead away from heaven and yield
grief." (Ch. IV, Sec, iv, lines 154—
158, Sarkar's transl.)

Verses of a similar import from
shilpa-shastras (treatises on arts and

28

HINDU ART

crafts) may be used as texts by those
who want to prove the wholly non-sec-
ular character of Hindu art. But such
art critics would commit the same fal-
lacy as those psychologists who formu-
late the race-ideal of the entire Hindu
population of all ages on the strength
of a few sayings of Shakya the Buddha
and other moralists. In spite of
Shookra, Hindus have had sculptures
of human beings in the streets and pub-
lic places, has reliefs of warrior-kings
on coins, and paintings of men and
women on the walls of their houses, pal-
aces, and art galleries. Secular art was
an integral part of their common life.
Imagery and similes from the worldly
paintings and sculptures are some of
the stock-in-trade embellishments of
every literary work, e. g., poetry, fic-
tion, drama, in India.

29

HINDU ART

In Soobandhu's prose romance, Vas-
avadatta (sixth century A. C), there is
a description of the Vindhya mountain.
One of the objects mentioned is the lion
"with his sinewy frame, now rising
high behind and now before." And
the author is at once led to think of the
scene as a possible theme of painting.
Thus,

"His ears erect, in sudden onslaught

skilled,
His mane astart, and jaws all hideous,
His stiffened tail high-waving in the

breeze —
No artist could portray this awful beast
What time he croucheth on the mighty

brow
Of some great elephant, shrill trumpeting
Adown the lonely dells of Vindhya's

mount."

(Gray's version.)

Painting was an accomplishment of
the literary women. The box of

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HINDU ART

paints, canvas, pencil, tapestry, and pic-
ture-frames are referred to in Charu-
datta, Clay Cart, Raghu-vamsha, Oot-
tara-rama-charita and Kadambaree.
All these references apply to mundane
paintings. In Vasavadatta, again, Pa-
talipootra (Patna) is described as a city
of which the conspicuous objects are
the statues, which adorn the white-
washed houses.

It is almost a convention with the
heroes and heroines of Hindu literature
to speak of the faces of their beloved as
"pictures fixed on the walls of the
heart." This conceit occurs even in
Krishnamishra's morality-play, Pra-
bodha-chandrodaya (ele^^enilx cen-
tury).

In Soobandhu's romance the heroine
Vasavadatta is seen by Kandarpaketu
in a dream. She "was a picture, as it

3i

HINDU ART

were, on the wall of life." And when
he awoke he "embraced the sky, and
with outstretched arms cried to his be-
loved, as if she were painted in the
heavens, graven on his eyes, and carven
on his heart." Kandarpaketu goes to
sleep "looking on that most dear one as
if limned by the pencil of fancy on the
tablet of his heart."

Similarly Vasavadatta thinks of
Kandarpaketu "as if he were carven on
her heart ... as if he were engraved
there, inlaid, riveted." She exclaims
to one of her maidens: "Trace in a
picture the thief of my thoughts."
And, "over and over thinking thus, as
if he were painted on the quarters and
sub-quarters (of the sky), as if he were
engraved on the cloud, as if he were re-
flected in her eye, she painted him in a
picture as if he had been seen before."

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HINDU ART

The joy of life in all its manifesta-
tions is the one grand theme of all
Hindu art. It is futile to approach the
sculptors and painters of India with the
notion of finding a typically Hindu
message in them. The proper method
should be to watch how far and in what
manner the artist has achieved his ends
as artist; i. e., as manipulator of forms
and colors. Interpretation of life, or
"criticism of life" may be postulated of
every great worker in ink, bronze, or
clay, whether in the East or in the
West. The only test of a masterpiece,
however, is ultimately furnished by the
questions: "Is it consistent in itself?
Does this handiwork of man add to the
known types of the universe? Has it
extended the bounds of Creation?"

Human ideals are the same all the
world over. One piece of art in India

33

HINDU ART

may be superior to another in Europe,
and vice versa. But this superiority is
not necessarily a superiority in art-ideal
or race-genius. It has to be credited to
the individual gifts of the master in
workmanship, or perhaps to the group
psychology of a creative epoch. There
is but one standard for all art (shilpa),
but one world-measure for all human
energy (shakti). And since neither
the Eastern nor the Western evolution
can be summed up in single shibboleths,
types, or schools, it would be absurd to
try to appraise Indian experience solely
in terms of the aesthetics that found one
of its most powerful expressions in the
art-theory of the Young Germany rep-
resented by Cornelius, Overbeck, Schil-
ler and others (cf. Schiller's Use of the
Chorus).

34

SECTION IV

HINDU TECHNIQUE IN POST-IMPRES-
SIONISM

"MODERN" is the term that seems to
have been monopolized by the artists
who claim Cezanne as their inspirer.
And yet in this modernism Old India's
paintings and sculptures have been a
stimulating force.

The plastic art-creations at Bharhut
and the frescoes at Ajanta constitute in
stone and color, as we have indicated,
the poetry of the whole gamut of hu-
man emotions from "the ape and tiger"
to the "god-in-man." The encyclo-
paedic humanism of Hindu art is in-
deed comparable only to the compre-

35

HINDU ART

hensive secularism in the painted bas
reliefs of Egyptian hill-caves and the
stately Kakemonos of the Chinese mas-
ters. While the message of the artists
and craftsmen of India is thus universal
as the man of flesh and blood, they de-
veloped certain peculiarities in the
technique and mode of expression
which "he that runs may read."

The most prominent characteristic of
Hindu sculptures and paintings is what
may be called the "dance-form." We
see the figures, e. g., Shiva, the prince
of dancers, or Krishna, the flute-player,
in action, doing something, in the sup-
ple movement of limbs. Lines of
graceful motion, the play of geometric
contours, the ripple of forms, the flow-
ing rhythm of bends and joints in space
would arrest the eye of every observer
of the bronzes, water-colors, and gou-

36

HINDU ART

ache works in India. Another charac-
teristic that cannot fail to be noticed is
the elimination of details, the suppres-
sion of minuter individualities, on the
one hand, and, on the other, the occa-
sional elongation of limbs, the exagger-
ation of features, etc. All this is
brought about by the conscious impro-
vising of a new "artistic anatomy" out
of the natural anatomy known to the ex-
act science of Ayurveda (medicine).
In the swollen breasts, narrowed waists,
bulky hips, etc., of Late Minoan or
Cretan (c. 1500 B.C.) works which
bridged the gulf between the Pharaonic
and the primitive Hellenic arts we can
see the analogues or replicas of some of
the Hindu conventions.

Leaving aside other characteristics,
e. g., the absence of perspective, the
grouping of color-masses, the free lais-

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HINDU ART

sez faire treatment of sentiments, and
so forth, one can easily pick up the
Hindu elements from the Cezannesque
paintings and Rodin's sculptures and
drawings.

Let us listen first to Rodin lecturing
on the beauties of Venus of Melos:

"In the synthesis of the work of art
the arms, the legs, count only when they
meet in accordance with the planes that
associate them in a same effect; and it is
thus in nature, who cares not for our an-
alytical description. The great artists
proceed as nature composes and not as
anatomy decrees. They never sculp-
ture any muscle, any nerve, any bone,
for itself; it is the whole at which they
aim and which they express." (Dud-
ley's transl., p. 15.) It is this theoriz-
ing that virtually underlies Hindu art
work.

38

HINDU ART

Similarly Vincent Van Gogh (1830-
1890) , the Dutch painter, who, if not in
execution like Cezanne, has, at least in
ideal, pioneered the new art movement
of to-day, seems almost to have given
the theory of Hindu art from the side
of painting. Says he:

"I should despair if my figures were
correct; ... I think Michaelangelo's
figures magnificent, even though the
legs are certainly too long and the hips
and the pelvis bones a little too broad.
. . . It is my most fervent desire to
know how one can achieve such devia-
tions from reality, such inaccuracies
and such transfigurations, that come
about by chance. Well, if you like,
they are lies, but they are more valuable
than the real values." ( The Letters of
a Post-Impressionist, transl. from the
German by A. M. Ludovici, p. 23.)

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HINDU ART

Rodin was charged with the crime of
being an "innovator" in art, for he in-
troduced movement and action in stat-
uary. His St. Jean Baptiste (1880) is
a specimen in point, as also the inter-
laced figure's like the Hand of God
holding man and woman in embrace,
Cupid and Psyche, Triton and Nereid,
etc. In regard to this "new tech-
nique," the representation of activity,
we are told by Van Gogh that the "an-
cients did not feel this need." "To
render the peasant form at work is," as
he reiterates, "the peculiar feature, the
very heart of modern art, and that is
something which was done neither by
the Renaissance painters nor the Dutch
masters, nor by the Greeks." {The
Letters, 22, 24.)

It is thus clear why the theory and
practice that seek movement in art-

40

HINDU ART

forms, appreciate an "incorrect" anat-
omy, and look upon arbitrary propor-
tions not as distortions but rather as
"restorations," should find an affinity
with the work of the Hindu masters.
And the psychology of this post-im-
pressionist a.rt-credo is perfectly nat-
ural, because like the previous pre-
Raphaelitism and the still earlier ro-
manticism, the new art movement is es-
sentially a revolt. It is a reaction
against the Academicians' rule of
thumb. It is born of a Bolshevistic
discontent with the things that be, and
of a desire to search for truth and
beauty from far and old.

This latest revolution against the
status quo of art was brought about
when Gauguin, the French master, con-
ceived "the truth that the modern Eu-
ropean and his like all over the globe,

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HINDU ART

could not and must not, be the type of
the future. Any thing rather than
that! Even black men and women
were better than that — cannibals, idol-
ators, savages, anything!" (Ludovi-
ci's introduction to The Letters, p. xii) .
Such being their article of faith, con-
temporary artists have been seized by
Wanderlust. To-day they draw their
inspiration from the Mexicans, May-
ans, and other American-Indians, from
the Negro art of the Congo regions,
from Karnak and Nineveh, from the
Tanagras of Greece and the "primi-
tives" of Italy. And they roll their
eyes from "China to Peru." Conse-
quently the Buddhist, Shaiva, Vaish-
nava, Moghul, and Rajput art of the
Hindus could not but have been requi-
sitioned to enlarge the list of the new
Ossians and Percy's Reliques as whet-

42

HINDU ART

ters of the futuristic imagination in the
Western World.

And the creative art endeavors of
Young India's futurists are neither
mere calls for "Back to the Past" nor
harangues inciting to "Down with the
West," as superficial observers or pro-
fessional spiritualitarians would seem
to read in the literary proclamations of
the school. These are but the initial
surgings of a dynamic shakti (energy)
that had been pent up for a century and
a half, — in its sadhana (effort) toward
achieving the assimilation of this cos-
mic neo-eclecticism of the modern
world; so that a synthetic stage of cul-
tural sva-raj (self-determination) may
ultimately evolve, on which Asia will
be enabled, as of old, freely to move
and to strive, to un-make and to make,
— boldly to borrow and to lend as an in-

43

HINDU ART

dependent unit in the bourse of spir-
itual exchange, — unhampered to strug-
gle, to experiment, to live.

U

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