Birds and animals are often fashioned in metal, and always with purely decorative intent. The resolute conventionalism of the Indian artisan is shown in the silver mouse from Muttra here sketched with half a dozen small wares, and in the brass owl from Bengal. The parrot and the peacock are old and constant types, but the brass bison is the work of a jungle artist, who from direct observation has learned that a bison's horns meet and join over its brow. And there his lesson ended.
BIRDS BY AN INDIAN DRAUGHTSMAN
A Muhammadan artist who is skilful in Hindu mythology and produces many lithographs and illustrations, has been kind enough to sketch for me half a dozen birds as they are rendered to-day—a peacock, a pigeon, a heron, a partridge, a parrot, and a bird which he describes by the word we use for wild duck, but which is evidently a water-fowl of another kind. In coloured work the forms would be carefully filled up and finished, but the outline would remain the same, and speaks here for itself. All are yek chashm,—one-eyed,—the Persian draughtsman's idiom for in profile. A full face picture is do chashm, two-eyed; but birds are never shown full front. In illuminations for poems and romances the yellow mango bird, the hoopoe, and the maina are occasionally shown, but the distinctive differences lie more in the colouring than in the form. A pair of cranes stands as in Chinese and Japanese pictures (e.g. the willow pattern plate) for an emblem of the souls of lovers. A pair of Brahminy ducks sporting in the water, or a pair of pigeons, serves the same purpose. The bird of ancient myth, Garuda, whose name in Southern India is given to the common kite, is a Hindu conventionalisation of aquiline forms from which eagle character is usually omitted. In bazaar prints he carries three or four elephants as he flies or serves as a steed to Vishnu in one of his forms, and sometimes he appears as half man half bird. He is borne in the arms of the Maharaja of Mysore, with whom in heraldic guise is associated the Yali, the strange, horse-like beast that is carved as a ramping corbel or truss on some of the Hindu temples in Southern India.
A PERI ON A CAMEL
The name Shikargah (hunting pattern) is given to a diaper or border of antelopes, tigers, and horsemen often combined with foliage. In old work the designs are often beautiful, as on the margins and backs of Persian MSS., in embroidery, carpets, metal-chasing, and decorative painting. Modern commerce does not encourage this kind of art, but there are still artists capable of good work.
