NATIVE GOLD JEWELRY OF POONA, BOMBAY.
Let these examples suffice to show that India did not originate all the arts it now practises. Unfortunately, all that has been borrowed by it has not been to its advantage—such as the Dutch black-wood carving at Bombay—and it is scarcely possible that Anglo-Indian art will add anything to the laurels won by the workmen of the same presidency. It is moreover to be feared that the machine-made dry goods of England, the French patterns of Cashmere, the introduction of machinery, the absorption of hand-weavers by factories, and, above all other things, the establishment of art-schools, may ultimately break down the barriers which for two thousand years and more have, in spite of war, commerce and the introduction of new arts, preserved in the work of the art-craftsmen of India an element essentially indigenous.
Many conservative agencies were no doubt at work in preserving to Indian art a distinctively national character. Amongst these the religious epics and the Code of Manu come first. Of the former, those already referred to, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, show what the art and life of the Hindus were between the fifth and the third centuries before Christ. The Code gave them a form which they preserve to-day in at least all essential respects. The arts have been handed down from father to son for countless generations, and traditional skill has reached its high perfection chiefly by the village-system of the Code. The centre of the political interest of the Hindu is his own village. In our sense of the word he has no country, but he has a village home, and his loyalty is absorbed by the administrators of that home's affairs. He is unmoved either by conquest or commerce. His life has crystallized into a certain form. It is the life his forefathers led, and it is the life his children will lead. His village is to all intents and purposes an independent community. This is the account of a traveller: "Outside the entrance, on an exposed rise of ground, the hereditary potter sits by his wheel moulding the swift-revolving clay by the natural curves of his hands. At the back of the houses which form the low irregular street there are two or three looms at work in blue and scarlet and gold, the frames hanging between the acacia trees, the yellow flowers of which drop fast on the webs as they are being woven. In the streets the brass- and copper-smiths are hammering away at their pots and pans; and farther down, in the veranda of the rich man's house, is the jeweller working rupees and gold mohrs into fair jewelry—gold and silver ear-rings and round tires like the moon, bracelets and nose-rings and tablets, and tinkling ornaments for the feet—taking his designs from the fruits and flowers around him or from the traditional forms represented in the paintings and carvings of the great temple which rises above the groves of mangoes and palms at the end of the street above the lotus-covered village-tank." By and by the work-day closes with feasting and music and the songs chosen from the religious epics. In the morning the same routine begins again: the same sounds are heard, the same sights seen, the same pleasures indulged in. It is the life of the Code and of the great epics—a happy, contented, frugal and, in a sense, cultured life, based upon a religion which gave it expression and form long before our era began, and fenced it in from the influences of external change. All its conquerors have succumbed to the social and religious life of India. They came and found themselves within a magic circle. All that they brought of art was Indianized. A new art meant nothing more than a new illustration of Hindu religion. We have seen the craftsmen at work, and the fountain of their inspiration is not far to seek when we are told that the stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are told nightly all over India to listening millions. Let us suppose the village-festival is approaching its close. Then "a reverend Brahman steps upon the scene with the familiar bundle of inscribed palm-leaves in his hands, and, sitting down and opening them one by one upon his lap, slow and lowly begins his antique chant, and late into the starry night holds his hearers, young and old, spellbound by the story of the pure loves of Rama and Sita, or of Draupadi who too dearly loved the bright Arjuna, and the doom of the froward sons of Dhritarashtra."
COPPER-GILT SACRIFICIAL VASE: MADURA.
Can we wonder, then, that from these legends of the heroic age are taken figures for the sculptor, scenes for the carver and the graver, and subjects for the jeweller and the worker in ivory? Religion is thus the greater conservator of Indian art as it appeared in its earlier forms, and reduces into conformity with it all that comes from abroad.
Further agencies toward the same end are the caste-system, in the large cities trade-guilds—or, as we would call them, trades unions—and, finally, hereditary offices in both village and city. Under the village-system artisans may be said to have undergone successive generations of training, and the result is that in a country where manufacture means, literally, "making by hand," any object of industrial art represents the development of hereditary skill. His craftsmanship is the father's richest legacy to his son.
One point more deserves consideration. In America and Europe nearly everything is done by machinery: in India nearly everything is made by hand. Whatever is done, therefore, is the expression of a thought; and that art in the East is not trammelled by tradition may be inferred not less from the variety of its productions than from the Indianizing process to which foreign arts are subjected. The hand leaves almost unconsciously the impress of the workman's individuality. There is room there for patronage to lead to superexcellence. The saving of time and rapidity of output are not important objects when a prince lends his encouragement to art and his influence to its elevation. In the East—in China, in Persia and in India—artisans have worked directly under the imperial power. All that was asked of them was good work. In India offices of this kind were, in the imperial workshop as in the villages, hereditary; and without trouble about subsistence, without a thought of time, without limit in expense—without, in short, one disturbing element—the art-workers labored only for their art and for the approval of their king or chief. In the museum is a rug of silk woven by deft fingers which have for possibly three centuries been still. Four hundred knots occupy every square inch, and the size of the rug leads to the total of three and a half millions of knots, between every two of which the pattern demanded a change in the treadles of the loom. We turn from this to a bowl of jade beautifully engraved upon which were expended the labors of three generations of workers in the employ of the emperors of Delhi. It is in this way the best work of all kinds is produced to-day. Spinning, weaving and embroidering are, moreover, practised all over the country in the homes of the rich and in the dwellings of the poor. "Every house in India," says Doctor Birdwood, "is a nursery of the beautiful." The words are suggestive. They imply that correct taste is best formed by practice. We who have lectures on decorative art and technological schools live in too fast an age ever to rival the industrial art of India, and shall in our hurry do well if we arrive at something like an understanding appreciation of the works of the villagers of Hindostan.
