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The arts consist of a wide range of human activities creating creating visual, motion (dance), auditory (music), literary and or performing (drama) works. They express the creators imaginative, conceptuals,and technical skill. They are apraised for their beauty or emotional power. In addition to the aesthetica and the pursuit of beauty, a society's art conveys a great deal of information about its culture, values, history, economy, technology, and much more. India has one of the world's richest artistic traditions. As with other artistic traditions, it began with cave painting. And relogion was a major cultural onflience. This included Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and Islam. And unlike Christianity in Rurope, there was a complex mixture of religious traditions in India resuled in artistic styles bring influenced by a changing mix of religious infuences.
Indian art is probably the least appreciated in the West because of the surealistic images that it conveys, but that of course is a value judgement. For HBC/CIH we are primarily concerned with the visual artsm especially painting. For most societies, the most important visual art is painting. A factor here is economics. It is less expensive to produce a painting than a sculpture. Sculpture is particularly important in Indian art, arguably more imprtant than paonting. Studying Indian art is comolicated, because India until modern times has never been a unuted polity inul the arrival of the British and creation of the Raj. And even now is divided alomg religious lines by the Indian/Pakistani split.
We with our Western background know next to nothing about Indian painting. The Indian art we are most familar with is sculpture in various media. Indian painting has the same lengthy tradition which prehistoric cave paintings just like Europe. Petroglyphs as found in places like Bhimbetka rock shelters, some of the Stone Age rock paintings found among the Bhimbetka rock shelters are dated to about 30,000 BP. Artistic expression seems to be a basic human impulse. This is about the same chronological age as European cave paintings, even though human presence on the Indian Subcontinent far outdates that of Europe. There is nothing like the ancient Egyptian painting in the Indian tradition. The earlists painting other than tge cave paintings seems to be found in Buddhist literature which describe palaces of the military and ristocratic class decorated with paintings. These appear to be paintings on walls as was the primary form of paintings at the time. The Ajanta Caves are the most significant of actual surviving early Buddhist paintings. Art scholars believe that small-scale painting was executed in manuscripts like European illustrted Bibles, but the only surviving examples date fromthe medieval era. The most famous early Indian paintings date from the modern era -- Mughal paintings. They were minatures displayed in books rather thn painted on or hung on walls. This was a painting tradition resulting from a fusion of the Persian miniature with ancient Indian traditions (16th century). It is a rare devloped painting tradition from a Muslim society which as aesult of Koranic teachings prohibited the depiction of the himan form. This style spread throughout India as a result of Mughal conquests, nearly uniting India (17th century). It was adopted by the Indian princely courts of all religions and developed into an Indian style with many destinctive local diffrences. With the arrival of the British (18th century), Indian companies prodiced portaits for British clients. And during the Raj art schools appeared teaching European techniques. Modern Indian painting shows both the Western influence and the Indian roots.
Sculture begins in India with primitive cupule art in prehistoric times at the dawn of modern humans (0.7 milion BP)---before the appearance of modern humnas. The earliest example is the Bhimbetka Petroglyphs (Auditorium Cave and Daraki-Chattan Rock Shelter, Madhya Pradesh). India is renouned for metal working. And by the Bronze Age, sculpture was the predominant form of artistic endevor. Mural painting was also imprtant. Sculpture was imprtant to all the Indian religious faiths (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism) -- all except except Islam. The origin of sophisticated sculpture is found in the Indus Valley (Harappan) Civilization of northwestern India. Small terracotta sculptures have been found in large numbers. There were also pioneering bronze figures. Notable dculpturs include: the Buddhist Pillars of Ashoka of the Mauryan period, with beautiful carved capitals (3rd century BC); the figurative Greco-Buddhist sculpture of the Gandhara and Mathura schools, and the Hindu art of the Gupta period (1st-6th century AD). The female nude was epecially imprtant in Induan sculpture, which offened many Muslims. Sculptures depicted the numerous incarnations ot the many gods. They were andowed with multiples and varried heads as well as arms. Individuality was not promoted. Rather the idea was to honor to tradition and depict eternal values. The scupture was usually was based on standard ouflines. Figues were commonly graceful and slender.
We have no information on Indian literature at this time. Hopefull our Indian readers will provide us some information on Indian literature with boy characters. The Rig Veda appears with the Aryan Vedic culture. It is believed that it was written About 1500-1200 BC. One reader describes it as 'the oldest book in the world'. The word book confuses the issue, but it does appear to be one of the oldest extant texts in any Indo-European language. Of course the story of Buddha is about the transformation of a spoled young prince. Today Budahism is associated more with Tibet, China (before the Revolution), and Southeast Asia, but it originated in India before it was virtually irradicated by Hindus. We do know of two books about English boys in India. The first is Kipling's classic Kim. The other is a beautiful, but less well known Old Mali and the Boy. A mahot problem withnIndian literature is the manynlanguages spolen in India. The only commom languagevis English.
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