Excerpt from Some Notes on Indian Artistic Anatomy Art is not for the justification of the Shilpa Shastra, but the Shastra is for the elucidation of Art. It is the concrete form which is evolved first, and then come its analyses and its commentaries, its standards audits proportions - codified in the form of Shastras. The restraints of childhood are to keep us from going astray before we have learnt to walk, to give us the chance of learning to stand upright; and not to keep us cramped and helpless for ever within the narrowness of limitations. He who realizes Dharma (the Law of Righteousness) attains freedom, but the seeker after Dharma has at first to feel the grappling bonds of scriptures and religious, laws. Even so, the novice in Art submits to the restraint of shastric injunctions, while the master finds himself emancipated from the tyranny of standards, proportions and measures, of light, shade, perspective and anatomy. As no amount of familiarity with the laws of religion can make a man religious, so no man can become an artist by mere servile adherence to his codes of art, however glibly he may able to talk about them. What foolishness is it to imagine that a figure modelled after the most approved recommendations oi the Shastras, would gain us a passport, through the portals of art, into the realms beyond where art holds commerce with eternal joy. When the inexperienced pilgrim goes to the temple of Jagannath, he has to submit to be led on step by step by his guide, who directs him at every turn to the right or to the left, up and down, till the path becomes familiar to him, and the guide ceases to be a necessity. And when at last the deity chooses to reveal himself, all else cease to exist for the devotee, - temples and shrines, eastern and western gates and doorways, their symbols and their decorations, up and down, sacerdotal guidance and the mathematical preciseness of all calculating steps. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Some Notes on Indian Artistic Anatomy Ceases to be a necessity. And when at last the deity chooses to reveal himself, all else cease to exist for the devotee, - temples. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Art history as it is largely practiced in Asia as well as in the West is a western invention. In India, works of art-sculptures, monuments, paintings-were first viewed under colonial rule as archaeological antiquities, later as architectural relics, and by the mid-20th century as works of art within an elaborate art-historical classification. Tied to these views were narratives in which the works figured, respectively, as sources from which to recover India's history, markers of a lost, antique civilization, and symbols of a nation's unique aesthetic, reflecting the progression from colonialism to nationalism. The nationalist canon continues to dominate the image of Indian art in India and abroad, and yet its uncritical acceptance of the discipline's western orthodoxies remains unquestioned, the original motives and means of creation unexplored. The book examines the role of art and art history from both an insider and outsider point of view, always revealing how the demands of nationalism have shaped the concept and meaning of art in India. The author shows how western custodianship of Indian "antiquities" structured a historical interpretation of art; how indigenous Bengali scholarship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries attempted to bring Indian art into the nationalist sphere; how the importance of art as a representation of national culture crystallized in the period after Independence; and how cultural and religious clashes in modern India have resulted in conflicting "histories" and interpretations of Indian art. In particular, the author uses the depiction of Hindu goddesses to elicit conflicting scenarios of condemnation and celebration, both of which have at their core the threat and lure of the female form, which has been constructed and narrativized in art history. Monuments, Objects, Histories is a critical survey of the practices of archaeology, art history, and museums in nineteenth- and twentieth-century India. The essays gathered here look at the processes of the production of lost pasts in modern India: pasts that come to be imagined around a growing corpus of monuments, archaeological relics, and art objects. They map the scholarly and institutional authority that emerged around such structures and artifacts, making of them not only the chosen objects of art and archaeology but also the prime signifiers of the nation's civilization and antiquity. The close imbrication of the "colonial" and the "national" in the making of India's archaeological and art historical pasts and their combined legacy for the postcolonial present form one of the key themes of the book. Monuments, Objects, Histories offers both an insider's and an outsider's perspective on the growth of these scholarly fields and their institutional apparatus, analyzing the ways they have constituted and recast their objects of study. The book moves from a period that saw the consolidation of western expertise and custodianship of India's "antiquities," to the projection over the twentieth century of varying regional, nativist, and national claims around the country's architectural and artistic inheritance, into a current period that has pitched these objects and fields within a highly contentious politics of nationhood. Monuments, Objects, Histories traces the framing of an official national canon of Indian art through these different periods, showing how the workings of disciplines and institutions have been tied to the pervasive authority of the nation. At the same time, it addresses the radical reconfiguration in recent times of the meaning and scope of the "national," leading to the kinds of exclusions and chauvinisms that lie at the root of the current endangerment of these disciplines and the monuments and art objects they encompass.