Goodyear remarks, “At a later date Hindu art became saturated with Mahommedan lotus patterns. These were all originally borrowed in the countries conquered by the Mohammedan Arabs, during the seventh century A.D., Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Persia.” Islam swept into her net the decorative art of the countries she conquered, and as realism was denied to her owing to the Prophet’s injunction against depicting human or animal forms, she had to fall back on patterns, but, unknown to her, many of these were lotus derivatives. It was these patterns that the Arabs brought with them to India.[82]
“The history of India,” continues Goodyear, “thus explains why its apparently favourite water-lily [the Nelumbium] has had so little influence on its ornamental patterns. Although naturalistic rendering of the rose water-lily is found in ancient and modern Oriental art, it must be remembered that this has nothing to do with the dominance of a pattern, which is a matter of technical tradition. It appears that the famous Indian water-lily exercised no visible influence on the art of Egypt, and that Egyptian patterns have invaded its own home by many paths, at many times, borne by waves of historic influence which are admitted to have determined the character of Hindu art since the third century B.C., which is the first century in which this art is known to us.”
Examples of Indian forms of the anthemion will be found on Sindh pottery (Plate [VIII.], Fig. 11), on Delhi and Cashmere shawls, and on innumerable other objects and temple carvings. If one compares the anthemion combined with an “astragal” moulding in Fig. [80], which is from the Lât at Allahabad, with Figs. 7 and 5, Plate [V.], which are purely Greek, it will be evident that borrowing has taken place. One cannot follow Sir George Birdwood[83] when he says this “necking immediately below the capital represents with considerable purity the honeysuckle ornament of the Assyrians, which the Greeks borrowed from them with the Ionic order. Its form is derived originally from the Date Hom, but it really represents, conventionally, a flowery lotus, as the Bharhut sculptures enable us to determine. The ‘reel and bead’ pattern running along the lower border of the necking represents the lotus stalks.” This author does not state which lotus he refers to, probably it is the Nelumbium or Rose water-lily, but the stalked flowers added on each side of the central anthemion have no distinctive character, nor can I see that the figures he gives of the Bharhut sculptures are any more definite.
Fig. 80.—Anthemion and astragal moulding from the Lât (stone column) at Allahabad; from Birdwood, after Fergusson.
The Buddhist missionaries carried this pattern with them to China, where on some of the pottery unmistakable lotus derivatives occur, and those too of the anthemion series.
From the Orient we must retrace our steps westward. Persian art may be left on one side, as it was largely a legacy of Assyrian.
Among the Mediterranean peoples the Phœnicians claim first attention on account of their early assumed rôle of middle-men. But as Perrot and Chipiez remark, “In the true sense of the word we can hardly say that Phœnicia had a national art. She built much and sculptured much, so we cannot say she had no art at all; but if we attempt to define it, it eludes us. Like an unstable chemical compound it dissolves into its elements, and we recognise one as Egyptian, another as Assyrian, and yet another, in its later years, as purely Greek. The only thing that the Phœnicians can claim as their own is the recipe, so to speak, for the mixture.” Herodotus tells us that the Phœnicians had in their ship “Egyptian and Assyrian goods.”[84]
Not only did the Phœnicians barter in foreign objects, but they manufactured articles for trade, and were expert craftsmen. At the funeral games in honour of Patroklos “the son of Peleus set forth other prizes for fleetness of foot; a mixing-bowl of silver, chased; six measures it held, and in beauty it was far the best in all the earth, for artificers of Sidon wrought it cunningly, and men of the Phœnicians brought it over the misty sea.”[85] As their home-made goods were intended for foreign markets, they probably copied more or less exactly from Egyptian and Assyrian sources. They were artificers rather than original artists, their object was gain.