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202 ANUPA PANDĘ

by virlue of ils aesthctic or sense-perceplible character. Rupa and pram&na are objcctive “aesthelic" fcatures, bul Ihey are so fashioned by ihc artist as to cxprcss fell lovcliness, bh8valśvanyayojanam.

How docs form express fceling and beauly? It is obvious Ihat Ihere cannot be any fixed formula here as is shown by numerous examplcs where the traditional formulae are followed, but the results are poor. As Stella Kramriseh has noted thal the stiffness and lifclessness of such images ⁴⁴ is due to many of the craftsmen not being artists. These mercly proceed according to prescribcd formula. Their mechanical rendering serves well enough the purpose of image and makes it a fit object for worship. But the prescriptions laid down for this purpose were never inlended for the achievement of artistic quality still, apart from the demands of cult, the bom artists amongst the craftsmen could not help, while obeying the rules, to reinvest their work with a significance, in relation to which these rules were but helps and stepping - stones towards visualisalion ".⁴

Now artistic crealivity may be conceived as essentially universal but manifesling itself individually in each artist and artistic creation. In the search for Indianness, neithcr would be relcvant exccpt as poinlers to somelhing in relation to which the search for Indianness would have meaning. The Indianness of art in India should not be conceived simply in terms of its themes, molifs and conventions as is done often enough. Amrita Shergil, for example, has painted Indian themes. Would that by itself make her a painler in the Indian tradition? Anothcr approach is to seek Indianness in the techniąue or the craft which the artist inherils from his tradition. Thus, it is well-known how some sculptures of the Mauryan period have become the standard occasion for contrasting Indian and Hellenistic techniques. Thus, Marshall contrasts the ⁴⁴primilive treatment of the statuę from Parkham in the Malhura Museum with the highly developed modelling of the Samath Capital.”⁵ The former is trammelled by the law of ‘frontalily’ which besets all primitive art, the lattcr cvinces mastery in modelling. So Marshall concludes that only a Hellenistic artist could possibly execute the living forms of the Sarnath Capital. Indian art was still beginning and groping to find its fcet under Hellenistic inspiration and cxample, a proccss which went on for nearly five centuries. It is only in the Gupta age that it evolved a plastic idiom adcquate to its tastes and ideas.

This formulation of the history of Indian sculpture is widely followed, lhough often in an eclcctic manner, combining elcmcnts drawn from Havel and Coomaraswamy. In a way, this search was revivcd in a practical fashion in the early years of the present century when Havel sought to organise the tcchnique of art in India in a manner which was to be in linę with the Indian tradition and thus different from copying mcrely European schools. The work of Abanindranath gavc the programme a practical shape while