Our tree of art, with its manifold branches, flowers, and fruits, rooted in the unknown origin of the three great groups of humanity, shows that the Negro, or black branch, had a very short growth. It still lives on in savage art, but is crippled, and has no vitality. Next we have seen the long line of Turanian art, represented by the Chinese; it originates in the geological age, passes through the mythical, traditional, and historical periods, and continues uninterruptedly to modern times. We have up to this point treated of the artistic productions of the Negro and Turanian groups, both of which stand without the pale of real history.
We now take up the art-history of the Aryan, the historical group. The birth-place of this group undoubtedly was Central Asia. Thence the pure Aryan group took two divergent roads. One division crossed over the Himâlâya Mountain chain, and settled round the Brahmapootra, the Indus and Ganges rivers, and the other remained on this side of the mountains. The Aryans may, therefore, be best divided into Trans-Himâlâyans and Cis-Himâlâyans. In these two groups we find the oldest traces of a power slowly awakening to full consciousness. We can perceive in remote ages, only measurable by means of analogy and deduction, an endeavour to solve the greatest problems of our existence.
To find answers to these three questions: Where from? What for? Where to? To measure the three dimensions of space and time; to trace the cause of which the three, ever stable and still ever varying, phenomena are the effect; and to know what creation, preservation and annihilation, or rather only transformation, are, has been the chief aim of the Aryan mind; and, as history teaches us, they have found more or less distinct answers to these questions. We are not only capable of philologically tracing the development of the different languages of the Aryan group step by step to one common parent-language—the Sanskrit, but the art-historian may trace every mysterious conception of the powers of nature, every form of personification or incarnation, and every religious tenet or mystery, symbol or myth, to these same Indians, who with the words Pitâ, Matâ, Brahtâ, Duihtâ, have taught us the holiest relations of our family life. For words, like pictures, are only representatives of outward impressions. To the Trans-and Cis-Himâlâyan Aryans we can trace all theogonies, cosmogonies, systems of esoteric pathology and mythic anthropology. They first saw in geometrical forms the phenomena of the material as well as the spiritual world; gave meaning and interpretation to these mystic types; peopled heaven and earth with visible and invisible, good and evil, gods, goddesses, and spirits. They first acknowledged the ‘noumenal,’ or invisible, divine nature with its creative force; and recognised the ‘phenomenal,’ or visible, nature of the world as an emanation, evolution, development, outgrowth, or mere work of the invisible Creator. All the gods of the Persians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and a great number of the customs of Hebrews and Christians, may be traced back to Indian conceptions, forms, and modes of worship.
Not historical events only, but the whole life of humanity centres round religion. For science and art were in olden times the direct offsprings of religion. Neither science nor art can be understood, unless we have a clear insight into the mythologies and religious conceptions of the ancient peoples. Our great mistake has been, that till very lately we detached one of the different branches of the tree of knowledge. We criticised its bark, leaves, blossoms, and fruits separately, never concerning ourselves about the ramifications of the root, the soil in which it first spread, the chemical substances on which it fed, the conditions of climate under which it flourished or withered, never enquiring whether it brought forth only flowers and never fruits, or for what purposes its fruits and flowers were used by those who gathered both. Now without such understanding artists are mere unconscious machines, groping in the dark of ignorance, never capable of a clear reproduction of forms. Education and a higher conception flow like invisible magnetic streams through the hand, whether it hold pencil, paint-brush, chisel, or engraver’s needle, and endow the work of art with a vitality which forms its real charm. It is never the technical correctness that appeals to us most strongly when contemplating even the smallest work of art, but the thought which animated the artist when constructing his forms.
Whilst the savage scarcely ever acquires a correct notion of time and space, and the Turanian only a limited one, the Aryan gathers from them the first dim recognition of the Infinite. In time and space perceptible changes take place, through the influence of an invisible power which creates all visible things. In time and space all created things are preserved, and in time and space all either perish or assume different forms. The Aryans endeavoured to express these abstract, yet concrete phenomena by signs. A triangle with three equal sides appeared best to express the mystery of the three equally powerful forces—creation, preservation, and transformation.
In the very earliest dawn of civilisation, therefore, the triangle became the hallowed symbol of the Divinity. After the Symbolic and Dialectic period had given place to the Mythological, time and space were looked upon as the origin of all things, out of which Brahmā, Vishnu, and S’iva had sprung. These three incomprehensible forces were expressed by geometrical figures, or, so to speak, crystallised, before they became incarnate persons. The creator had the sign of a double triangle
which formed three triangles symbolically representing the three forces in ONE, the CREATOR. Vishnu was designated by an equilateral triangle with the apex pointing downwards,
meaning the preserver; whilst S’iva had for his symbol a triangle with the apex upwards,