Indian Art and Letters

Author(s): India Society
Publisher: India Society
Catalog link: https://jainqq.org/explore/011125/1

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INDIAN ART AND LETTERS NEW SERIES. VOL. VIII., NO. 2 YAGE THE INDIA SOCIETY'S EXHIBITION OF MODERN INDIAN ART - 85 MODERN ART IN WESTERN INDIA. By W. E. Gladstone Solomon - 100 ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS IN INDIA, 1932-33. By Rar Bahadur Daya Ram Sahn ANGKOR IN THE NINTH CENTURY. By Victor Goloubeff - 123 PRA VIHAN (VIUARA) By Reginald le May THE MUSIC OF JAVA By J Kunst BOOK REVIEW Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, No 48 INDEX SOCIETY INDIA ONDON. MDXOOOOX Published bt-annually by THE INDLA SOCIETY 3 VICTORIA STREET, LONDON, S.A per 14 len Shillings per annum

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UNIVERSAL LIBRARY OU_172300 LIBRARY UNIVERSAL

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INDIAN ART AND LETTERS INDEX TO VOLUME VIII. (New Series) Vol. VIII., No. 1 . No. 2 . Pages 1-84 . 85-146 . SOCIET INDIA NOIN MDOO Published twice annually by THE INDIA SOCIETY 3 VICTORIA STREET, LONDON, S.W. 1 5s. per issue Ten Shillings per annum (All nghts reserved)

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INDEX TO VOL. VIII (New Series) ART CENTRAL ASIAN WALL-PAINTINGS, BY F H ANDREWS - - - ARCHAEOLOGY IN INDO-CHINA, BY Georges CEDES . THE RECENI WORK OF THE FRENCH ARCHAEOLOGICAL DELEGATION AT BAMIYAN, BY JOSEPH HACKIN . . . . . . . . . 36 THE SACRED BOOKS OF INDIA AND THE MALAY AND SIAMESE THEATRES IN KELANTAN, BY JHANNE CUISINIER CREATIVE ART OF ANCIENT INDIA, BY KANAIYALAL H VAKIL DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF INDIAN Music, BY DK ARNOLD A BAKE THE INDIA SOCIETY'S EXHIBITION OF MODERN INDIAN ART MODERN ART IN WESTERN INDIA, BY W E GLADSIONE SOLOMON . - 100 ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS IN INDIA, 1932-33, BY RAI BAHADUR DAYA RAM SAHNI 116 ANGKOR IN THE NINTH CENTURY, BY VICIOR GOLOUBEHF * 123 P'RA VIHAN (VIHARA), BY REGINALD LE MAY . * 130 THE MUSIC OF JAVA, BY J KUNST - 135 BOOK REVIEWS ANNUAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF INDIAN ARCHAEOLOGY (1932) . . . . . His rory of the RASHTRAKOTAS (RAT HODAS), BY Pandir BishesHwAR Nath Rev . MEMOIRS OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF India, No 48 (EXPLORATIONS IN SIND), BY N G. MAJUMDAR - - - - - - - - . 82 84 145 INDIA SOCIETY'S ANNUAL REPORT ANNUAL MEETING - . 75 . . . 81

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INDIAN ART AND LETTERS [The views expressed in these pages must be taken as those of the individual contributors. The India Societv does not hold itself responsible for them.] NEW SERIES. VOL. VIII., No. 2 THE INDIA SOCIETY'S EXHIBITION OF MODERN INDIAN ART IN LONDON, DECEMBER, 1934 (REPORT BY THE HONORARY ORGANIZER) THE great event of last year among the India Society's activities was the holding of an Exhibition of Modern Indian Art at the New Burlington Galleries in London, which Her Royal Highness the Duchess of York was graciously pleased to open The arrangements in England were made by the Council of the Society, and those in India by five Regional Committees, particulars of which will be found hereafter, Mr. John de La Valette acting as honorary organizer. From the outset the undertaking enjoyed the support of Their Excellencies Lord and Lady Willingdon and of the Provincial Governments in India, while the following gentlemen extended their patronage to it The Most Hon. the Marquess of Reading, P.C., G.C.B., G.C.S.I., G C.I.E., G.C.V O., The Right Hon. Viscount Halifax, PC., K.G., G.CSI., G.C.I.E.; The Right Hon Sir Samuel Hoare, P.C., G C.S.I., G.BE, M.P., Sir Bhupendra Nath Mitra, K.C.S.I., K.C.I E, C.B.E. Mr. F. J. P. Richter and Mr. F H. Brown took an active part in the preparatory work, while the heavy task of arranging and cataloguing the exhibits was kindly undertaken by Mr. Lionel Heath and Mr. F. H. Andrews. To Captain Gladstone Solomon and Mr. Barada Ukil, who came to London before the opening of the Exhibition, the Council is indebted for much assistance in the final arrangements of the Bombay and Northern India sections. For much helpful work in India in collecting and selecting the exhibits the Council has to express its thanks to the Regional Committees in India and to their Honorary Secretaries. If the final effect of the works upon visitors was as favourable as it was generally stated by critics to be, this result is due to the sound discrimination exercised by the Regional Committees in organizing their respective sections. Some of the public activities which accompanied the Exhibition are NEW SERIES. VOL. VIII, NO. 2. G 85

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India Society's Exhibition of Modern Indian Art enumerated hereafter. It will be seen that the Exhibition has amply fulfilled its purpose of acquainting the public in England with the healthy art movements which are developing in all parts of India, and future exhibitions of a similar kind are looked forward to by artists as well as the general public in England with keen anticipation. PRESS LUNCHEON Prior to the opening of the Exhibition Sir Francis Younghusband presided at a luncheon on December 7, 1934, at the Royal Societies Club, to a number of representatives of the Press, and acquainted them with the general aims of the Exhibition, after which Mr. de La Valette addressed those present in the following terms : I am doubly glad to have the opportunity of seconding Sir Francis Younghusband in wishing a hearty welcome to the representatives of the Press, because I feel that the occasion which brings us together sets its seal on the efforts of the India Society throughout the well-nigh twenty-five years during which it has been my privilege to have been associated with its work. As you are no doubt all aware, when the India Society was founded in 1910 by a number of English and Indian lovers of the art of the East, the words Indian and Art were almost looked upon as contradictory. If Indian work was accepted as being good art, it was generally assumed to be either Persian or Chinese or anything else except Indian. I may say that the immediate cause of the founding of the Society was a remark to this effect made by an eminent authority who, alas! is no longer with us, and consequently unable to admit with the fairness which was his outstanding characteristic that the views which he then expressed were unfounded. The interest in Indian art which has been growing during the last twentyfive years has been greatly stimulated by the work done by the Archaeological Survey of India since its reorganization by Sir John Marshall under the aegis of Lord Curzon. It is not only that the actual discoveries made by Sir John Marshall and his enthusiastic collaborators have provided materia 86

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India Society's Exhibition of Modern Indian Art for the forming of a truer judgment on the valuable contribution made by India to the art treasures of the world, but the interest aroused by the work of the survey and the enthusiasm which it has stimulated among Englishmen and Indians alike have caused many of the important Indian States to take a systematic interest in the artistic movements within their borders, not only those of the past, but also of the present. Foremost amongst them is of course Hyderabad State with its famous treasures at Ajanta, Ellora, Warangal, Bidar and elsewhere in the Nizam's dominions. Interesting work of conservation was also done in the case of the Bagh Caves in Gwalior State. The outcome of all this research into past achievements and the support of present-day artistic activities has been a renaissance of Indian art in all parts of the Peninsula both in British India and in the States. At the beginning of this century a vigorous movement of artistic revival started in Calcutta under the inspiring lead of several members of the Tagore family which was based upon a continuity of tradition with the artistic past of India. This movement spread outside the borders of Bengal, partly through Bengali artists who settled in other parts of the country, and partly because young artists from other parts of the Peninsula visited the School of Oriental Art at Calcutta and the Institute founded by the poet Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan. During the same period an equally vigorous revival of Indian art took place in Western India under the influence of the Sir J. J. School of Art at Bombay, which during the last fifteen years has been under the energetic leadership of Mr Gladstone Solomon. The underlying principle of this artistic movement was that Indian art students should avail themselves of European technique and methods for the purpose of acquiring greater skill with which to give effect to their artistic aspirations, whether these were based on purely Indian conceptions or influenced by a European outlook In view of the strong local traditions in all the arts and crafts which have persisted in India from remote times to the present day it is not surprising to find that the foregoing trends of artistic development should have been modified in other parts of India by local influences to the extent of representing more or less well-defined local schools of artistic thought and achievement. In Southern India, for instance, the traditions which have d in the great States of Travancore and Mysore, and the patronage extended to the arts by their rulers, have exercised a definite influence on the art of Southern India, of which you will find indications in the works sent in by the Regional Committee of Madras. At the other end of India in places like Lucknow and Lahore the influences of the Moghul invasion have survived ook 87

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India Society's Exhibition of Modern Indian Art in so many vigorous examples that they are bound to affect the artists of those centres. At Delhi, now the capital of the whole of India, there has also in recent years grown up a strong local artistic movement in which the brothers Ukil, themselves offshoots of the Bengal School, have taken an active part. Finally, one might perhaps again refer to Hyderabad and say that the interesting collections of pictures, assembled by that great art lover Sir Akbar Hydari, and the researches to which they have led, have made it clear that there has existed in the Deccan a local tradition of painting holding an intermediate place between the Moghul painting of the North and the Southern Schools and which has persisted with an unbroken tradition, if not always at the same level of achievement, down to our day. The problem of the India Society in arranging the present Exhibition has been to try to combine within one London art gallery a bird's-eye view of so much of all these different schools of thought and achievement as has preserved or recently developed its strength and vigour. For this purpose the Council of the Society got in touch with its good friends in all parts of India with a view to forming Regional Committees which were to arrange for really representative collections being sent from their respective regions. In Bombay the assistance of Mr. Gladstone Solomon, the Principal of the Bombay School of Art, and Mr. Kanaiyalal Vakil was forthwith secured on the practical side, while Sir Pheroze Sethna, Mr. Jayakar and others extended the benefit of their experience and their enthusiasm as art lovers to the undertaking, with the result that an influential Regional Committee was formed for Western India under the patronage of the Governor of Bombay, Lord Brabourne. In Calcutta, with the support of Mr. Mukul Dey, the Director of the School of Art, various members of the Tagore family and other art lovers in Bengal, a similar Representative Committee was formed under the patronage of Sir John Anderson. In Madras equally satisfactory and helpful arrangements were made for us through the kind assistance of Professor Krishnamaswami Aiyengar and Mr. Roy Chowdhuri, the Principal of the Madras School of Art, with the support of the Madras Government. At New Delhi we were fortunate in securing the energetic services of Mr. Barada Ukil, one of three artistic brothers, to whom the present art movement in that part of India owes much of its vigour. Through the support of Mr. J. N. G. Johnson, the Commissioner for Delhi, and many influential art lovers, both Indian and British, Mr. Ukil was able to bring to London a very noteworthy collection of works not only from Northern Indian artists, but also from the private collections of Their Highnesses the Maharajas of Patiala and Indore. 88

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India Society's Exhibition of Modern Indian Art At Lucknow the Director of the School of Art, Mr. Asit Kumar Haldar, himself a delicate artist, supported by the Provincial Government, likewise sent in a collection of the excellence of which you will be able to judge for yourselves in the Galleries. From the Art Schools of the States of Baroda, Kashmir and Jaipur works were also received, which add to the interest and comprehensive character of this display. Finally, we have to acknowledge the courtesy of art collectors in this country for lending us some of their treasures. Foremost among these is Her Majesty the Queen, who graciously granted permission for the inclusion of two interesting paintings, one by Mr Fyzee Rahamin and the other by Mr. Ranada Ukil. I think you will see from the foregoing that the India Society has made a serious, and I hope you will find a successful, effort to present for the first time outside India a truly comprehensive survey of all the artistic movements which are alive in India to-day. How you are to judge the results is a matter on which fortunately it is not my duty to advise an illustrious body of critics. But I may, perhaps, be allowed to sympathize with you in the difficulty of your task, especially in view of the great importance which will be attached to everything which you will say. The difficulty for a European art critic in trying to assess at its proper value the achievements of artists whose outlook, aims, and motives are so different from any with which Europeans are familiar must singularly complicate your present task. art. As for the responsibility which you bear in passing judgment, it is accentuated by the fact that Indian artists are rarely afforded a chance to have their achievements judged by independent critics not already intimately acquainted with, and perhaps biased by, certain specific currents in Indian I believe that what Indian artists need before all else is sound criticism; criticism which will be neither warped by preconceived European notions nor, as is sometimes the case in India, by equally biased nationalistic conceptions. Art may well be a universal language, but the ideas expressed by specific works of art are not necessarily of equal universal appeal in all countries. Nor can they always be freely understood without some philosophic or religious preparation Take, for instance, the Italian primitives. What we in the India Society have found is that there is a large body of men and women in this country who are genuinely interested in what Indian artists have to say and the manner in which they say it. What we hope from the work of those of you who are present here to-day is that on the one hand you will add to the understanding of Indian art by the people of this country, and on the other that you will be helpful to Indian artists by your unvarnished, 89

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India Society's Exhibition of Modern Indian Art and yet friendly and constructive, criticisms of their achievements or their shortcomings. For true friendship should prove itself as much by praise as by just correction. To the extent that you will succeed in these two directions you will, I can assure you, have rendered a great service both to this country and to India, for you will have made for a better understanding between the two peoples at a time when such understanding was more valuable and more urgently necessary than at any other time in this country's history OPENING CEREMONY On Monday, December 10, 1934, at noon, Her Royal Highness the Duchess of York, attended by the Lady Helen Graham, opened the Society's Exhibition of Modern Indian Art at the New Burlington Galleries Her Royal Highness was received by the Marquess of Zetland (President), Sir Francis Younghusband (Chairman), Mr John de La Valette (Hon. Organizer of the Exhibition and Vice-Chairman), and members of the Council. The Maharaj-Kumari Sudharani of Burdwan presented Her Royal Highness with a bouquet. Members and guests who accepted invitations to be present included. The Marchioness of Zetland, Lady Younghusband, the Marquess and Marchioness of Reading, the Duchess of Atholl, Lord and Lady Ampthill, the Maharaja of Burdwan, the Maharaj-Kumar of Burdwan, the Chinese Minister and Madame Quo, Sir Austen and Lady Chamberlain, Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, the Hon W. G. Ormsby-Gore, Lord and Lady Iliffe, Sir William Llewellyn (President of the Royal Academy). Lord and Lady Augustus Loftus, Lord and Lady Lloyd, Mr. J. A. Milne (Chairman of the Royal Society of Arts), His Excellency the Nepalese Minister, Sir Basil and Lady Blackett, Sir Denys and Lady Bray, Sir Felix and Lady Brunner, Sir Albion Banerji, Sir Charles and Lady Bayley, Mr. R. A. Butler, M.P., and Mrs. Butler, Lady Butler, Lady Beauchamp, Sir Ross and Lady Barker, Lady Carmichael, Sir Atul and Lady Chatterjee, Sir John and Lady Coleridge, Sir John Cumming, Sir William and Lady Crawford, Sir Hugh and Lady Cocke, Lady (Alexander) Campbell, Sir Alfred and Lady Chatterton, Sir William Ovens Clark, Sir Louis and Lady Dane, Sir Weldon and Lady Dalrymple-Champneys, Lady Dawkins, Mrs. John de La Valette, the Hon. Mrs. Grant Duff, Lady Eckstein, Sir William and Lady Foster, Sir Charles and Lady Fawcett, Sir Hamilton and Lady Grant, Sir Reginald and Lady 90

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India Society's Exhibition of Modern Indian Art Glancy, Sir Edward and Lady Gait, Sir Murray and Lady Hammick, Lady Hartog, Sir Stanley and Lady Jackson, Sir Reginald Johnston, Sir Cecil and Lady Kisch, Lady Keymer, Mr. and Mrs. Rudyard Kipling, Sir Walter Lawrence, Sir Edward and Lady Maclagan, Sir Reginald and Lady Mant, Sir Henry and Lady McMahon, Lady (John) Marshall, the Hon. Mrs. M. Meade, Sir Francis and Lady Oppenheim, Lady Pearson, Sir Abdul and Lady Qadir, Mr. Ranganatha Rao (Mysore Trade Commissioner), Sir Frederick and Lady Sykes, Sir Malcolm and Lady Seton, Sir Findlater Stewart, Sir Ronald and Lady Storrs, Lady Solomon, Sir Charles and Lady Tegart, Sir Brum well Thomas, Mr F. H. Andrews, Mr. and Mrs. S K. Brown, Mr. F H. Brown and Miss Brown, Mr. and Mrs Frank Beresford, Mr and Mrs K. de B. Codrington, Mr. and Mrs Arthur Davis, Mr. J. H. Drummond, Mr. R. B Ewbank, Miss Christina Foyle, Miss Margaret Farquharson, Mr. and Mrs Basil Gray, Mr. and Mrs. O M. Green, Sheikh Abdul Hamid, Mr. and Mrs. Lionel Heath, Mr. Leonard Jennings, Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Jerrold, Miss de Laredo, Mr. and Mrs Philip de Laszlo, Mr. and Mrs H. V. Lanchester, Mr. Hugh Molson, M.P., Mr. and Mrs. R. E. Montgomery, Colonel and Mrs. W. G. Neale, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Polak, Mr George Pilcher, Mr P. J Patrick, Mr. Gladstone Solomon, Mr. R. R. Tatlock, Mrs Patrick Villiers Stuart, Mr. Barada Ukil. The following speeches were made upon this occasion Lord Zetland (President): Your Royal Highness, Ladies and Gentlemen, - Not only the organizers of this Exhibition, for whom I am particularly authorized to speak, but the artists whose works are displayed around these walls, and many of their fellow-countrymen who appreciate the significance of the flowering of art which has been one of the features of the intellectual life of India during recent years, will be more than grateful to your Royal Highness for the sympathetic interest which you are showing in the movement by your presence here to-day. What, it may be asked, is the significance of the recent art movements in India? The first question to which one naturally seeks a reply, when trying to assess the value of any particular movement, is this : Is it creative, or is it merely imitative? Is it the outcome of a genuine and instinctive impulse towards self-expression, or is the motive force behind it merely a desire on the part of the artist to taste the enjoyment which is always to be derived from the conscious mastery of a particular technique ? I have no hesitation in placing the modern art movement in India in the first of these two categories. The art of India has certainly been affected by contact with the art of Europe, more particularly perhaps in the west of India than in the east, and 91

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India Society's Exhibition of Modern Indian Art there have perhaps been occasions on which it has been in danger of becoming merely imitative. But whenever such a tendency has displayed itself, the movement has always languished. Speaking from my own experience, which I admit is confined almost entirely to developments in Bengal, I have no hesitation in saying that the art of India of to-day is true to what may be described as having been throughout the centuries the distinguishing characteristic of Hindu as compared with European art-namely this, that it has been the aim of the artist to give expression to mental concepts rather than to reproduce the objects of the external world which he sees around him. But there is much more behind the movement than a very natural inclination on the part of the Indian artist to base himself upon the art canons of his own people. The driving force behind the movement which was set or foot at the beginning of the present century by two members of a very remarkable family, Mr. Goganendranath Tagore and Dr. Abanindranath Tagore, was undoubtedly a spiritual impulse which was the outcome of a growing realization upon their part that not politically only, but in the sphere of culture also, their country had fallen under the domination of an alien ideal. It was the same spirit of revolt against the undue Westernization of India that played so large a part in the Nationalist movement that inspired the little circle of men who brought into being the modern School of Art in Bengal. "The National movement," to quote the words of the late Mr. C. R. Das, "has no justification if it does not carry with it some hope of a new manifestation of the Indian genius in relation to the real needs of life," and it is interesting to recall the fact as an indication of the subconscious nature of the impulse which drove the brothers Tagore upon their way that they were at that time ignorant, as they themselves have told me, of both the tradition and the formulae of the Silpasastras, the ancient Indian classic of fine art. I have recalled these few facts for the purpose of showing that there is good reason for the view that I have expressed, that the work which you will see exhibited round these walls is a thing of the spirit and that it is consequently of high significance. It would, of course, be easy to talk at great length upon that aspect of the case, but I must not trench further upon your Royal Highness' time. There are one or two gentlemen whom I desire to invite to say a few words before I ask your Royal Highness to declare the Exhibition open. There is Sir William Llewellyn, President of the Royal Academy, who is here to extend the hand of friendship from the artists of this country to their colleagues in India; Mr. R. A. Butler, who, in the unavoidable absence of Sir 92

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India Society's Exhibition of Modern Indian Art Samuel Hoare, is here to accord to them a hearty welcome from the Govern. ment; and the Maharaja of Burdwan, a generous patron of Indian art, who will welcome in England the opportunity which this Exhibition is affording to his fellow-countrymen of exhibiting their work at the very heart of the Empire to which they belong. Let me only add these words--that a very special measure of gratitude is due to Mr. de La Valette, the honorary organizer of this Exhibition, without whose powerful aid we should scarcely have found it possible to bring our enterprise to a satisfactory issue (Applause.) Also to Mr. Richter and Mr. F. H. Brown, the honorary secretary and the honorary treasurer of this Exhibition respectively, for the time and ability which they have devoted to the work of organization (applause); and to Mr. Lionel Heath and F. H. Andrews, who shouldered much of the burden of arranging and cataloguing the exhibits. Sir Francis YOUNGHUSBAND read a telegram from Lady Willingdon, expressing all good wishes for the Exhibition, and grateful and respectful thanks to the Duchess of York for her presence. SIR WILLIAM LLEWELLYN: I would wish to add my voice to the welcome which is given to this Exhibition which you see here to-day. You have heard that it is the first complete survey of modern Indian art that is presented in this or any other country. It is right that London should be the first place in which such an Exhibition should take place outside India, that is to say. Great praise is due to those who have promoted it--to the India Society, to the Regional Committees which have gathered together the work, and especially, as Lord Zetland has said, to Mr. John de La Valette, the org I am sure that English artists will be very interested in this Exhibition, and that should be to Indian artists, I think, a matter of concern. English artists have an opportunity on every side of acquainting themselves with art trends in Europe, but they have had very little opportunity of knowing what was taking place in India, and this Exhibition will from that point of view alone be of great interest to them. In to-day's Times you probably all read the notice, which was, I thought, a very nice notice. It says that it proves that," practically all over India, the native talent familiar to us in works of the past survives and is well worth cultivating."* That, of course, is a very, very important point. The tendency to-day is to communize everything, to universalize everything in all matters of life, and art does not escape. Means of communication, in fact all the modern inventions of which we are well aware, tend to make countries come so close * The notice referred to appears on a later page. 93

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India Society's Exhibition of Modern Indian Art together that they are becoming all alike. We all more or less dress alike all over the world, and we have the same kind of vehicles to travel about in, and in every way possible life in all countries is becoming the same as in all others. This tendency to-day to universalize art will have a very great influence upon the art of the future, but I hope it will prove to be an absolute impossibility : for when countries give up their characteristic arts there is an end to their individuality. Art is really the revelation of the life of the country in which it is produced, and so we hope that in India we shall find work characteristic of that country. It is impossible that much good can come to Indian art from the mere copying of Western methods. Nothing I have seen in the Exhibition gives cause for this fear. Students may come here-a few do--to train themselves, to get technical knowledge with which to go back to their own country, but it is the spirit that is in them and that belongs to their country which will enable them to produce characteristic work. There is bound to be some Western influence, but I hope that it will not be carried too far, and that it will be used as a means to improve technique and not as a substitute for native inspiration. We are glad to see all around us work that indicates that India is developing on her own lines. I am sure that there will be other Exhibitions of this kind over here, and English artists will cordially welcome them. Mr. R. A. BUTLER, M.P., Under-Secretary of State for India. I am very grateful for the opportunity of saying a few words on the occasion of the opening of this representative Exhibition of Indian Art. Its importance has been shown by the presence of your Royal Highness and your kind consent to open the Exhibition. The India Society, since its foundation in 1910, has done great good work and rendered invaluable assistance in promoting interest in the culture of India and in her art, not only in this country but in Europe. It is no mean feat to have organized in London out of India so comprehensive an Exhibition s this, and if I may say so the India Society has surpassed itself. (Applause.) I am very glad of this opportunity for voicing on behalf of the Government of Inclia, on behalf of the various Provincial Governments, and on behalf of my Right Honourable friend the Secretary of State, who is unavoidably prevented from being here to-day owing to his impending activities this afternoon in Parliament on the occasion of the historic debates that are to take place there I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak on behalf of those Governments and my Right Honourable friend, and to express their gratification to the Society for what it has achieved to-day, and their congratulations to India on this magnificent Exhibition which we see around us. 94

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India Society's Exhibition of Modern Indian Art I do not think it would have been possible to collect from every corner in India so many typical examples of the work of Indian artists, had it not been for the kindness of collectors, headed by Her Majesty the Queen, who has lent two of her works on this occasion, the Provincial Governments, and several of the Princes, themselves patrons of the arts, who have so generously lent examples of their own treasures. It is refreshing to some of us, who think of India very often in terms of politics, to realize her achievements in other fields, and to realize that some of the treasures which we see to-day are in fact the legitimate successors of those which were there before the time of British rule. In this connection I think it right to refer to the great work which the British Government has itself tried to do. I need only mention two names, those of Lord Curzon and Sir John Marshall, and the work that they have done in aiding India to conserve these treasures and to develop the treasures which she already had. It is very valuable for us, too, to realize the importance of art and its place in the daily life of India, its effect on Indian character and on the Indian manner of living. This understanding is essential at a time when this country is taking so deep an interest in all that India does and means. It is a fact in history that a political awakening is often accompanied by a resurgence of the arts; and if the extent of this political awakening can be gauged or measured by the extent and range of the artistic treasures which we see around us, I think it will be a great encouragement to those of us who are interesting ourselves in this era of India's development that it should be inspired by such a luxuriant and artistic growth as we see around us in this Exhibition. I hope it will be the forerunner of many other Exhibitions of the same sort. (Applause.) THE MAHARAJA OF BURDWAN : It is a matter of very great gratification to me to-day to find that the President of the India Society is the Marquess of and, who as Earl Ronaldshay took such an active and live interest in the art of Bengal. It is true that less than half the room here has been labelled as of the Bengal School, but it is equally true that the majority of the pictures which hail from Northern India and Lucknow are by Bengali artists, which shows that the influence of Bengal is not limited to its province. When your Royal Highness entered this Exhibition, you came through the Hall of Bombay. Bombay being the gateway of India, the Western influence would be seen there more perceptibly than in this room. Bombay is fortunate in having a prophet in Mr. Solomon, and one who is wide awake to the fact that Indian artists can learn many useful things from their Western colleagues, so long as they keep their own spirit alive. 95

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India Society's Exhibition of Modern Indian Art These Exhibitions have not only a great educative value, but they have this additional value that those of us who wish to see the relationship between Britain and India closer consider it a great honour to India that her first Exhibition of this kind should have been held in the metropolis of the Empire. There is one thing more to be said about these Exhibitions, and that is that in spite of the influences both from the Far East and the West, the modern school of painting in India is trying to build up on its own traditions. I only regret one fact, and that is there are not enough Mohammedan competitors here. When I was in Bengal I often used to encourage young Mohammedans from Lucknow and elsewhere to carry on their ancient art, and I hope that in a future Exhibition we shall see the spirit of Moghul and Indo-Persian painting more fittingly depicted than we find it to-day. In conclusion, may I say to your Royal Highness that the Royal Family have always taken an interest in India, and it is a great compliment to India that your Royal Highness should have come here to-day to open this Exhibition. (Applause.) H.R.H. The Duchess of York then declared the Exhibition open, saying: I am sure that many people will be most grateful to the India Society for assembling in London such an interesting collection of modern Indian art, and in declaring the Exhibition open, I hope that it will meet with the encouragement and the admiration that it so fully deserves. For the convenience of readers the notice in The Times of December 10, 1934, referred to by Sir William Llewellyn, is here reproduced by permission: MODERN INDIAN ART EFFECTS OF WESTERN INFLUENCE EXHIBITION IN LONDON To be opened to-day by the Duchess of York, at the New Burlington Galleries, the Exhibition of Modern Indian Art which has been organized by the India Society was well worth the effort It 18 a much better exhibition than the somewhat scrappy representations of contemporary Indian art that we have had hitherto in London would have led anyone to expect, which is to say that it has completely fulfilled its purpose To prevent misunderstanding, the exhibition does not contain many works that can be called masterpieces, but it does prove that, practically all over India, the native talent familiar to us in works of the past survives and is well worth cultivating. So far as can be judged the representation of the different parts of India is fairly well balanced, and it is unlikely that anything of special significance has been ignored. The exhibition consists of nearly 500 works in oil and water-colour painting, drawing, engraving, sculpture, and architecture-represented by drawings and photographs. A good many of the works are loans. Thus, the Queen bas lent two paintings, one by Mr. Fyzee Rahamin 96

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India Society's Exhibition of Modern Indian Art and one by Mr. Ranada Ukil, and other works are from local art schools and museums and the private collections of native Princes, the Maharajah of Patiala in particular, and British officials. The works are grouped according to States and Provinces. This makes for convenience, though it would be extremely rash for anybody but a person thoroughly well acquainted with the whole history of Indian art to attempt a definition of local styles. The broad division is that between the work of the Bombay school and that from other parts of India. It is at Bombay that the application of Western methods of teaching has gone farthest. Speaking generally, it can be said that the results in the first gallery-seem to show that such teaching can be digested without serious disturbance to the native tradition. A fair statement of the case would be to say that, having regard to contemporary conditions, the work from Bombay strikes one as being more businesslike, but that many of the things of the highest artistic interest are to be found elsewhere. Examples which may be quoted are "Goddess Durga," by Ranada Ukil, "Saptasur (The Seven Tunes)," by Sarada Ukil, "The Midnight Offering," by Sudhir Khastgir; "Mythic Dance," by Roop Krishna, "The Zita Player," by Asit K. Haldar, "The Lost Tune," by Kiranmoy Dhar; "Illustrations to the Arabian Nights," by Abanindranath Tagore, "The Storm " (anonymous); "The Morning Flower," by S. Ch. Sen ; "The First Lesson," by Jamini Roy; the etchings by Mukul Dey and the compositions in black and white by G. N Tagore. He and Roop Krishna are the two artists who excite the greatest interest. On account of its authorship, the drawing "Devatatma Himalaya," by the poet Rabindranath Tagore, should not be overlooked. LINE AND COLOUR The prevailing impression of the exhibition is that of line and colour. In speaking of " line" it may be well to remark that, whereas in Western drawing line bears first reference to the forms enclosed, in the hands of Indian artists--of Oriental artists generally-it is pursued as a means of expression in itself The colour, again, is what we should call "decorative," though it is probable that it has also a symbolical meaning. This, however, 18 not a point to be touched upon by anybody unversed in Indian philosophy and religion. But, taking line and colour as the tradition, it is in its effects upon them that Western teaching is to be judged "Cartoon for Mural Decoration," by V. S. Adurkar, Bombay, seems to show that relief can be attempted without injury to the native conduct of line, though it is questionable if this drawing is more truly "plastic" in effect than "Trimurti," by M G. Solegaonkar, also Bombay, which is in pure line. Perhaps the most successful reconciliation of Eastern and Western ideals is seen in the pastel study of "Marwar Beauty," by V. H. Rajwadkar, though "Sir Jamsetji Jeejebhoy, First Bart.," by M. F. Pithawalla, is a good portrait, pleasantly reserved in colour, on academic lines, and there is a singular charm in" Moharram Offerings," by N. S. Bendre. But one cannot help feeling that "Divine Love," by G. H. Nagarkar, which, though in oil, is practically a painted drawing, represents the most effective kind of compromise for Indian artists. In water-colour one wishes that Indian artists could be weaned from the trick of misty gradations, which seems to have crept in from Japan, and obscures the linear merits of their work. In sculpture, the most impressive works are the groups by R. C. Roy and R. P. Kamat, traditional and Westernized respectively. The Bombay Architectural Section is of general interest, but it does not present anything remarkable. The India Society and Mr. John de La Valette, the honorary organizer, are to be congratulated heartily on this exhibition. BROADCAST On December 18, at 4.30, Mr. John de La Valette broadcast a short account of the Exhibition to India from the London studios of the British Broadcasting Corporation, of which the following is the text : 07

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India Society's Exhibition of Modern Indian Art The New Burlington Galleries are only a stone's throw off Bond Street, and therefore in the heart of the West End. On the well-lit top floor have been brought together in adjoining rooms some of the best work of present-day Indian artists. From Western India, where the Bombay School of Art has exercised such a marked influence, outstanding works have come, and from Bengal, where Calcutta has been the centre of the modern artistic revival. From Madras in the south, from Delhi, Lucknow, and Lahore in the north, beautiful pictures have been sent, whilst interesting pieces have been lent by the Maharajas of Patiala, Indore, and Jaipur, and the State Schools of Art in Baroda, Kashmir, and Indore. In the first gallery the effect of Mr. Gladstone Solomon's teaching at the Bombay School of Art is clearly visible in the excellence of the drawing and the frequent use of European technique. Nevertheless, the graceful treatment of individual figures, the ease with which large groups are composed, and the general tendency of aims and ideals remain essentially Indian. Of historical interest is a big portrait in oils of Sir Jamsetji Jeejebhoy, who was not only the first Indian to be created a baronet, but also the founder of the Bombay School of Art. The second gallery has on its north wall a very representative collection of water colours from Northern India, prominent among which are the works of the three bothers Ukil. In some cases we notice a tendency to exaggerate the wash-process of water-colour painting, which modern Indian artists have derived from Japanese rather than from Indian sources. Further on are three exquisite water-colour figures by that brilliant artist Chugtai, which cannot fail to appeal. The Lucknow collection is rich in small paintings, some of them on silk, in which the line work is as delicate as the blending of the colours. The south and part of the east walls are taken up by the Bengal school. The works here shown of the Tagore brothers explain why they exercised so great an influence on their contemporaries as to account for the modern renaissance of art in Bengal. Dr. Abanindranath Tagore's set of illustrations for the Arabian Nights tales deserves to be used for its intended purpose, while Goganendranath Tagore's sepia drawings have many of the qualities which European modernists strive after. The younger exponents of this school show that they are versed in their native traditions, and yet not insensitive to modern artistic conceptions. Madras sent only a few pictures, but every one of them perfect in quality. Perhaps the dismal crow on a dripping branch, entitled "After the Storm," by Mr. Roy Chowdhuri, Principal of the Madras School of Art, deserves to 08

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India Society's Exhibition of Modern Indian Art be singled out for praise. The black-and-white room includes a masterly large-size cartoon for " Asoka's Last Gift," by Mr. A. K. Haldar, the head of the Lucknow School of Art, excellent etchings by Mr. Mukul Dey, Principal of the Calcutta School of Oriental Art, and a vigorous mezzotint by Mr. Gupta, who leads the art movement in Lahore. The progress of architecture in Western India is demonstrated in the long corridor, and there are interesting sculptures from Bombay and Lucknow. For the British visitor the most irresistible, and perhaps the most surprising, impression is that of the underlying unity of aims and ideals which this all-India Exhibition demonstrates. This seems a most valuable lesson to learn at this particular moment, when it is more than ever important that the peoples of India and of this country should understand one another. We have so often been told to think of the peoples of India as cut up into numberless races, creeds, and castes with mutually exclusive aims and ideals, that it can only be helpful to be made to realize beyond the need for words how great is the fundamental similarity of thought and aspiration which links the King's subjects in all parts of his great Indian Empire. Through modern Indian art we become aware of a spiritual unity among Indians which transcends whatever political differences may ruffle the surface of Indian thought. For nowhere are Indian thought and the Indian outlook upon life more faithfully reflected than in the art of that great country. 99

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MODERN ART IN WESTERN INDIA By W. E. GLADSTONE SOLOMON, K.-i-H., R.B.C., I.E.S. (Director Government School of Art, Bombay; Curator, Art Section, Prince of Wales Museum OW of Western India) CHAIRMAN (MR. JOHN DE LA VALETTE) : LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, To those who are present to-day as members of the India Society Captain W. E. Gladstone Solomon will need no introduction, but for any of you who are here as guests to-night I ought, perhaps, to say that Captain Gladstone Solomon is the Principal of the School of Art in Bombay, and that we in this Society owe him a special debt of gratitude for the work he has been doing recently in organizing a Regional Committee in Bombay to help us in getting together a good selection of modern Western Indian pictures for the Exhibition which we shall be seeing next month at the New Burlington Galleries. I believe I am right in saying that Captain Gladstone Solomon had his first training in art at the Royal Academy School, and that his first contact with the East came not through the arts of peace, but through those of war. It was during his five years of service that he first got in touch with the Near East, starting at Gallipoli, eventually proceeding to India, where after the war he became Principal of the School of Art in Bombay. In that capacity he did a great deal of work about which he will be too modest to tell you much himself, but I hope that in what he is going to tell us to-night he will show us the justification of his work by its results. There is one thing I ought to tell you about him before I sit down, and that is that in my opinion he has done the most astounding thing any Englishman has ever done. He has persuaded a British Government that Art is a respectable thing in its own right. (Applause.) I do not want you to think lightly of that, because it is a remarkable achievement. As a rule, in this country we look upon beauty and art as dangerous things with which people should be allowed to play only under proper guidance. We therefore invariably put the management of our artistic affairs in the hands of the Educational Authorities. I wonder whether that is quite right, because education, as I see it, attempts to make as large a number of people as possible superficially competent enough to pass certain standardized examinations, whereas the mastering * Lecture delivered before the India Society in the Lecture Hall of the Royal Society, Burlington House, on November 21, 1934; Mr. John de La Valette presided. 100

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Modern Art in Western India of art makes a few exceptional people so terribly competent that they can do things which nobody else can do. Captain Gladstone Solomon, as I say, has actually achieved the feat of getting the Government of Bombay to see that it was worth while to delegate the whole of the art side of the activities in their Presidency to a separate Government Department. In Bombay the School of Art is no longer under Education, but is a separate Government Department, and the Principal of the School of Art as such is Director of the Department. I think that is such an unusual achievement that I am sure you will be eager to hear the man who brought it about, especially as he is going to follow up his lecture by showing us some most interesting slides. Captain Gladstone Solomon then gave his paper : MR. DE LA VALETTE, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, The subject of Modern Art in India may seem rather more novel than natural to those who have been accustomed to survey the art of India from a standpoint that is essentially retrospective; and others, perhaps, while admitting that there is such a thing as modern art in India, will consider that the New Bengal School is the only school of painting representative of India to-day. The Bombay School, which in recent years has once more emerged into prominence, is a distinct and open departure from the Bengal School of exclusive Indian archaisms, and as such should not be judged by the same standards. It is my agreeable task to tell you something to-night about the methods and ideals of art in Western India to-day, for I have had the privilege of spending seventeen years on that side of the country, and have been for the past fifteen years in charge of a very large Indian art school. The Bombay School of Art was founded in 1857 by the Government in response to a generous donation which the Parsee philanthropist, Sir Jamsetji Jeejebhoy, and his family presented for that purpose, and has borne the name of the donor ever since. We are aware, of course, that there are people who object to art schools on principle, just as there are people who object to academies of art or to all attempts to organize the profession of the fine arts-people who look upon anything resembling organized art as a wolf masquerading in sheep's clothing. And we know that some others, not so prejudiced, yet think it is a pity that we should give art schools to India when her own art is so much more interesting than that of Europe. The latter objection would only be understandable if the objectors were in a position to provide an alternative which would really make schools of art, which have become more and more numerous in Europe in modern times, superfluous in the Eastern hemisphere. NEW SERIES. VOL. VIII., NO. 2. IOI

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Modern Art in Western India But, unfortunately for these idealists, India, although the most artistic and romantic of lands, is not immune from those pressing economic problems of supply and demand which beset the artist elsewhere. The Indian art student also must produce credentials and guarantees of his training, knowledge, and skill before he can obtain commissions or employment; and when he cannot obtain his testimonials in India, he has to go to Europe for these guarantees of artistic capacity, so it is mere common sense to make it possible for Indian students to obtain a training in art in their own country. Once this question is conceded, the only question for those interested in art in India is whether the Bombay Presidency, which has twenty millions of inhabitants, and holds different views on the subject of art training to those which have been promulgated from Bengal, gives the sort of training in architecture, sculpture, painting, and the applied arts which is most helpful to the large number of students who pass through the curriculum. For, of course, it would be impossible to develop and maintain so comprehensive an institution without the strong support of the people of Western India. The root principle which is the foundation of the Bombay School of Art is that all art is one, and that, however distinctive its Indian aspects may appear, these interesting distinctions are not necessarily destroyed, but may be appreciably strengthened by contact with the West. We do not ignore the fact that the picturesque theme of India's Oriental exclusiveness is a fascinating one for discussion. Nothing is easier than to expatiate upon some of those qualities of colour and decoration which really do differentiate East from West, and which really are to be met with in the marvellous pageant of external beauty which constitutes-India ; and nothing is easier than to dilate upon the elusive and compelling note of mysticism which vibrates in that land of mystery and ancient wisdom. I also could tell you, as others have told, that India does in art by occult means what the West cannot do by the materialistic study of nature, form, and pictorial composition, and by perseverance. I could talk, though of course I cannot practise it, of Yoga as the only inspiration of the Indian artist, whether Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, or Parsee, and I could quote translations of ancient temple rituals, spells, and incantations, or Sanskrit manuals many centuries old, to show how utterly different the methods of Indian art once were, and therefore must ever continue to be, to those of art in Europe. But Bombay does not regard Indian art as consisting of a repetition of the old Buddhist or Persian conventions ; nor as magical, unless indeed the finer ebullitions of human genius may be so described. The Indian artists of the Ajanta Caves produced some of the best mural decorations in existence by human methods, and I am unable to agree with Mr. Laurence Binyon that those decorations are due to some "occult 102

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Modern Art in Western India means." In speaking to-night I shall deny myself the tempting opportunity which the occasion offers for calling spirits from the vasty deep: unless indeed they be those aerial forms which are said to typify consciousness-the lovely nymphs of Hindu allegory, who can endow the artist with powers of perception, and may best be invoked by energetic and whole-hearted application to his work. The practice of painting, architecture, and sculpture is an art as well as an inspiration in India as elsewhere, and the Indian was a craftsman before he became an artist. These conclusions, which you will probably think obvious enough, have had to be stressed again in recent times, although they were always admitted in the old days by foreigners who worked for the furtherance of art in Western India, where the modern revival began. Among the early British pioneers who guided the destinies of the Bombay School of Art in its infancy were Mr. Terry, who revived an attractive type of essentially Indian pottery; Mr. Lockwood Kipling, who later started the Lahore School and taught sculpture in Bombay, where it has flourished chiefly ever since; and Mr. John Griffiths, who revealed the Ajanta Caves to the world by means of his book illustrated by his Indian students during eleven years of study. Then there were eminent writers, like Fergusson, Burgess, and Birdwood, who also maintained a view of essential unity in all art; they were keen admirers of the past, but did not attempt to hamper progress in India by reactionary theories of harking back to ancient times for the mandates and forms of her modern artistic expression. And, when all is said and done, this does seem a sensible line for European friends of India to follow. In Bombay we have maintained the liberal and untrammelled view of art training, and since I took charge of the school in 1919 I have been privileged to participate in larger and more extensive developments. In his book on the Ajanta Caves, to which I have referred, Griffiths included a plea that the rediscovery of the aptitude of young Indians for a form of art-mural painting-"which is still congenial to the Oriental temperament and hand" should entitle Indian students to be given work of the same kind on an original basis. This conclusion was only given practical effect in recent times when the class of Mural Painting was founded in the Bombay School of Art through the keen interest of Lord Lloyd, when that well-known admirer of art was Governor of the Province. This class was based upon scholarships and supported by other improvements, including more advanced training from nature in painting and sculpture, as well as closer study of Indian design in all sections of the school. The object of the class of Mural Painting has been to guide rather than to instruct art students of special capacity towards applying the remarkable Indian talent for space 103

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Modern Art in Western India filling and design to the decoration of buildings; and the class is based both on the study of the past triumphs in Indian art in this direction, and the urge of modern requirements. All methods of instruction in art in Western India are greatly facilitated by the fact that the greatest monuments of Indian sculpture and painting are to be found in the Bombay Presidency or the adjoining Indian State of Hyderabad. Unrivalled shrines of Indian art-the Ajanta, the Ellora and the Elephanta Caves--are all within easy distance of Bombay and frequently visited, of course, by our students. For a practical rather than a literary note has always characterized art in Western India. These local advantages bring us to a point which should not be lost sight of while we are considering the subject which is often too summarily described as "Indian" art-namely, the vast size of India, the great distances, and the divergence of manners, customs, languages and methods of artistic expression between far-separated districts. You cannot correctly speak of Indian art as split into the two camps of Calcutta and Bombay, as Mr. Havell does; for art is split into a thousand camps in India, and this fact is at once the artistic strength and fascination of the country at the present time. I have seen no country which can compare with India for the diversity of its peoples and the protean aspects of their art, in the widest sense of the term ; and any attempt to make Indian artists as a whole conform to the style of any artist or school, however interesting, is fantastic and out-of-place. India, in fact, should be visualized as an inexhaustible mine of art and Western India as but one of its richest veins. In that part of the country the craftsmen, though extremely poor and dis organized, are still producing their beautiful things, such as cotton-weaving, carpets, calico-printing, pottery and tiles, embroidery of many kinds, inlaid work, ivory, and wood-carving, cabinet-making, lacquer, metal, jewellery, stone. cutting, etc. The people's talent for craftsmanship is the foundation on which the Bombay School of Art has been erected, and in that school the sons of the craftsmen take their training, being taught to work not only from a model, but also from drawings, which is an advantage they do not secure outside the School of Art. I have indicated that the present system of training in the Bombay School dates from the reawakening of public interest some fifteen years ago, since when the idea of absolute freedom for Indian art students in India, so far as art education is concerned, has been strongly advocated through this movement. The reproach that everything done to bring India into closer touch with world opportunities is de-Orientalizing Indian art; that, however good our students' work is, it must not be classed as Indian because certain protagonists of the New Bengal School choose to interpret the word in a very 104

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Modern Art in Western India restricted sense ; and the combating by critics who live far outside the area of our work, and who never see it, of the constructive ideas put forward from Bombay in recent times, have compelled the workers for art in this very senior province to reply in some degree, though with considerably less asperity. A factor that needs emphasis is that while in recent years the Bombay Presidency has published comparatively few books on art, it has produced practical evidence of the strength of public opinion on the subject, such as no other province in India has approached. The reality of this enthusiasm, as contrasted with literary fashions which have too often passed for the current coin of Indian opinion where art is concerned, has been demonstrated by the agreement of both nationalist and official organs of public opinion on this subject- which is, I think, the only subject on which they do agree--and by the enthusiastic public demonstrations which have occurred whenever the Bombay School's existence has been seriously threatened. It should also b bered that the Bombay Movement in its strongly progressive form is comparatively young ; and that the new Bengal School never had to meet the determined hostility with which we were confronted from the very outset. The School has fortunately survived the onslaught, and is to-day engaged in blazing a trail for the discovery of new modes of expression in art, whereas the new Bengal School reached the end of its development on the extremely narrow lines its supporters have advocated some fifteen years ago. Bombay has begun the vital movement towards restoration in Indian art, not in a negative process of exclusion, but by an inclusive synthesis. It was this Province which bore the burden of the attempt to secure opportunities for the Indian art schools and for Indian artists in the decoration of New Delhi. Members of this Society would recall the occasion when, under its benign aegis, a conference was held on the subject at Wembley, and how Lord Lloyd, who had lately finished his term of office as Governor of Bombay, voiced Bombay opinion on the subject of utilizing New Delhi to a moderate extent for the benefit of Indian painters. A lot of work was needed to secure this encouragement, in which eloquent leaders from Western India, like Sir Phiroze Sethna and Mr. M. R. Jayaker, and that most constructive of art critics, Mr. Kanaiyilal Vakil, among many others, played a strenuous part. It is one of the interesting features of this movement, and a great compensation, that the Bombay School has enjoyed support, not only from public leaders in Bombay, but from Governors of that Province. Lord Lloyd, whose wonderful flair for genuine art patronage and work for the Bombay School has caused him sometimes to be compared with Marshal Lyautey, the gifted reviver of the arts and crafts in Morocco, was succeeded by Governors who have been invariably most sympathetic and helpful: Sir Leslie Wilson, Sir 105

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Modern Art in Western India Frederick Sykes, and the present Governor, Lord Brabourne. All these efforts were long overdue and greater ones are needed. For we are aware of the indigence of the Indian craftsman; we believe that there is a market-an Indian and a world market for the Indian arts and crafts, and that no opportunity should be lost in that country for encouraging the decorative arts, or those more realistic forms of art which modern conditions have produced in portraiture, landscape painting and commercial art. For that reason Bombay has welcomed the suggestion of the India Society for holding an exhibition of modern Indian art in London, because this enterprise will strike a new note by revealing in London not only one or two schools of Indian painting, but a glimpse, confined of course within the limited scope and capacity of this exhibition, of what many different districts in India are doing. This is sure to provide fresh impetus for many thoughtful commentators in England, and will, I hope, interest a great many people in this many-sided subject. But, naturally, the claims of modern art in Western India do not rest upon any collection of pictures, sculptures and architectural drawings, however careful and conscientious the regional committee which selected the works has been. That committee for Bombay includes representatives of the several art groups --the Bombay Art Society, the Art Society of India, the Architectural Association, and others; and these societies, of course, include professional artists, some of whom have links with an older regime. For instance, the veteran Parsee artist, Mr. Pestonje Bomanji, who was a student under Mr. Lockwood Kipling, is still with us, and remembers his famous son, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, who was born in a house in the school garden, and who occasionally made his youthful presence felt in various lively ways. The Bombay Committee of Selection also comprises the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Prince of Wales Museum, which has undoubted influence upon art in Bombay through the fine collections bequeathed to the Museum by the late Sir Ratan Tata and his brother the late Sir Doran Tata, and considerably augmented by Lady Ratan Tata's munificence. The Tata Collections play their part in art education, for they contain many fine examples from Europe, as well as from Asia, and are very popular with the public. With reference to this subject of the realistic as well as the decorative aspects of painting and sculpture, it is interesting to record that only last year one of the past students of our School, Mr. R. P. Kamat, who is, I hope, here to-night, won the biennial Gold Medal and a travelling studentship for sculpture at the Royal Academy Schools, after only two years in that institution ; while two other holders of the Bombay School's diplomas, Mr. Acharekar and Mr. d'Cruz, had the honour of being commissioned to paint a portrait of the Viceroy, Lord Willingdon, and the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Philip Chetwode; so that you 106

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Modern Art in Western India see the life classes of the Bombay School are neither negligible nor supererogatory in India at the present time; and we gratefully acknowledge that patronage is kept alight by such timely examples from such exalted quarters. I have mentioned very few names, because however many supporters of the. Bombay Movement I were to tell you about, there would be bound to be far more omissions, and you must try to visualize the natural variety of support which this Movement has fortunately obtained and which has made it live, not as a mere literary fashion, but as a vital expression of national feeling for art. Art in Western India rests finally upon that permanent basis of circumambient beauty which surrounds one in that country like a sea of light. In my remarks to-night to which you have been so good as to accord your kind n I have had to deal with practical difficulties surrounding a subject which, in its inmost essence, is not only a practical issue. The country of which I am chiefly speaking is itself the basis of our artistic faith ; and I only wish that I were able to transport you with me to the scene which is the fertile soil for budding art, revival and progress, because I do feel that a sight of Western India would give you far more confidence in the vital fact that Indian art is an existing power than any words of mine. I would like you to see some of the great festivals in Bombay-for instance, the day of Nagapanchami or Festival of Serpents, when the people paint the cobra on the walls and furniture of their houses, and when, surrounding the temples in Bombay, you see moving thousands who come to do reverence to the symbol of the Naga deity. On that busy occasion the snake charmers parade the Indian quarters of the city in hundreds, and the women present flowers and milk to the sacred serpents. You would see the charmers sitting in long rows down the streets, and the people in their brilliant costumes showering coins or flowers into the basket wherein sits the cobra di capello with hood expanded while his custodian recites aloud the praises of the charitable. A scene like that is the artist's inspiration and despair, for it is impossible to do any pictorial justice to such a wealth of colour. Or you might see the goddess Gauri, enthroned in the homes of the people, clothed in glittering ornaments and brilliant robes, and surrounded by the fruits of the earth and the burning lamps as a sign that she has been installed as the presiding deity of the house; and you would notice the golden footprints of the goddess on the floors and up the staircase, and the marks of her hands upon the walls where she has blessed the dwelling and its inmates. You would see the jolly elephant-headed god being carried in procession by thousands of people towards the sea at Chowpatty; or the women and girls drawing wonderful pictures in vivid colours upon the thresholds of their 107

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Modern Art in Western India houses; for drawing is still a natural form of national expression which permeates the festivals of the people. And then I would like to take you to see those "far-off things," the ancient shrines of the country's art, such as the Elephanta caves, with their strange vistas of gods and goddesses carved in the rock, whose base is washed by the waters of one of the most beautiful harbours in the world; or to the Ajanta Caves, where one can almost feel-such is the spell of the stillliving frescoes-the presence of the long-robed Buddhist monks, and hear their sacred hymns above the tinkle of the cascade which falls into that sequestered valley. Or to Ellora-for these places are only 300 miles from Bombaywhere the temple of Kailasa, with all its vast embellishments of carved elephants, flying Apsaras, gods, and monsters, carved out of the heart of the hills, is one of the wonders of the world. If you could only see these things you would realize that the well-springs of art in India have by no means run dry; that the dexterity which enables the Indian girl to draw upwards instead of downwards, as is the method in the West, is but one of the many emanations of the ancient endowment of art which still permeates the people, whether Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, or Parsee, to a greater or lesser degree, which, in its modern forms of expression, is seeking for fresh woods and pastures new wherein to re-establish the old authority. I should like to bear my tribute most cordially to the India Society's resourcefulness in organizing this exhibition, in which the Chairman at this meeting, Mr. de La Valette, who is also the accomplished organizer for the Royal Academy at its forthcoming exhibition of industrial art at Burlington House, has taken a leading part, and to Mr. Richter, the talented and no less tactful honorary secretary of the India Society, for all that he is doing to make this matter a success. In the past Bombay has sometimes agreed with the India Society and sometimes differed from it; but so far as differences between us are concerned, I think Mr. de La Valette will admit that they have not been on the fundamental question so much as on burning topical ones. The object of the India Society is to help art in India; and as I envisage this Society's future, I can see in it an increasingly valuable intermediary and interpreter of Indian ideals to Europe, an active advocate of patronage and technique as the only best gifts which the West can offer India to-day, and a disseminator of the gospel that art is at least as important in India as politics, and that the world, and India itself, stand to gain by the fuller recognition of this wonderful cultural asset of our Empire. With your permission, ladies and gentlemen, I shall now, if somewhat tardily, acknowledge the principle that deeds speak louder than words by showing on the screen a few slides of some recent work executed by the 108

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Modern Art in Western India students of the School of Art, which I happen to have with me, and which the India Society have kindly allowed me to display to-night. CHAIRMAN : I think you will all agree that we have listened not only to an extremely eloquent but a very interesting statement on a number of facts, which, I fear, are far too little known to most of us. We are therefore extremely grateful to Captain Gladstone Solomon for going to the trouble of coming here to tell us of these matters, and I now hope that some of you will say something about the work done in Western India. There is one member here in particular on whom I would like to call, because I was referring to him in the early part of my remarks when I pointed out that the Government of Bombay had detached art from the administration of education and established it as a respectable and decent thing in its own right. The Governor responsible for that step, Lord Lloyd, is here to-night, and will perhaps do us the favour of saying something about the work of the Bombay School, of which he knows so much, as he was responsible for much of the support that has been given to it. The Right Hon. Lord LLOYD : I must apologize for having come in very late. I was the loser, because I did not hear the beginning phrases of Mr. Gladstone Solomon's very interesting lecture. I think, if you would allow me to, I might tell you one or two home truths and secrets about Mr. Gladstone Solomon which he did not tell you during his lecture. I can illustrate them from his lecture. I think Mr. Solomon's tact has had a great deal to do with building up the school. We saw a very good example of it this evening. We who are the guests of this Society in this hall must not criticize it, but I do sometimes wish it had better projecting facilities. I noticed that Mr. Gladstone Soloinon, with great tact, said he was sorry his photographs did not fit the screen. He is also a very skilful person, because I know that on many occasions he put into my mind and the minds of my successors ideas for the development of the School of Art, and then went about praising us for having done the things he suggested to us. That is the height of skill. So when he tells you that I or any other Governor helped the School of Art, it means that he with great genius and skill put into our minds good desires and himself carried them out. But I do want to say a word about the work of the School of Art, if I may. Before Mr. Gladstone Solomon went there, it is perfectly true that the School of Art in Bombay had done good work. But there was not in it-I think everybody who knows will admit it-the real enthusiasm that he was able to infuse into it afterwards. Before he came, it was just a Government Department with all that that means no more and no less. Mr. Gladstone 109

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Modern Art in Western India Solomon made it into an institution that was really alive! He knew how to strike the sparks of genius and to inflame desire for artistic disco spirit of youth, and to awaken all the real spirit of art that we know exists so much in India and its peoples. Mr. Solomon has shown us in his slides the really beautiful work that is being done by his students. I need not say that the result of his work has been to double the numbers, or more than double the numbers of the school, while he was there. He has triumphed over departmentalism. He has carried on many a fight for his school, and I am glad to say that he has won a great many of them, and I believe the School of Art is now on a solid and enduring foundation. He has welded together every school of politics in Bombay, and combined all those schools in support of art. That is what it should be, for there are no political divisions in art. But, gentlemen, we want to see both in India and outside of it patronage for Indian artists. In any part of the world, from the days of Velasquez onwards, art has never been able to develop unless wealth has patronized the artist. I must say I think there is a great deal to be done in England in this respect, and I hope that this institution will help a great deal. But also-I was never tired of saying it when I was in India, and may I say it again ?-- we look to people in India also to patronize Indian art. There are still a number of people with wealth in India who could do more to help the Indian artist than they do to-day. I would appeal to them to encourage and help their own artists and show a real Swadeshi spirit in its support Another thing is, we want all the various Schools of Art in India to have an equal share of the opportunities for showing true talent as the various opportunities present themselves. At one moment it may be New Delhi where opportunities for the artist may occur. Then we want to see the Government summon for the decoration of New Delhi with equal hand all those who are doing the best work in India. Similarly in India House here we want to see all the Schools of Art who have talent and genius and enthusiasm ; we want to see equal opportunity for them all. But my desire was not to talk about Indian art, of which I know only too little, but of the one thing I do know, which is that the School of Art and successive Governments of Bombay all owe to Mr. Gladstone Solomon an enormous debt of gratitude for the work he has done for Indian art. The affection and loyalty which he has inspired amongst his students is the best work: but I do want to take this opportunity of saying "Thank you" to him for the great work he has done, and to add what a pleasure it is for me to watch the school progressing from strength to strength. 110

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Modern Art in Western India MR. S. FYZEE RAHAMIN: I only want to say one thing. One thing that might cause a little misunderstanding was the reference to the Bengal School. The Bengal School never reached its zenith. They tried, just as Mr. Solomon tried, under the Western method. The Bengal School tried in the same way their own method. They have not failed; they have not given it up. But when you see the good works produced in Mr. Solomon's school, they do resemble the same work which Bengal has done, and Bengal has done no crime. Mr. Solomon has done very fine work in his own way. He is doing it. It is appreciated by the people of that section. But I do not believe that Bengal, in taking up the attitude of trying to work on the basis of the Eastern mind, has failed. I certainly thank Mr Solomon for the good he has done to the Bombay Presidency. MR. YUSUF ALI I did not intend to speak to-day because I am afraid my contact with Bombay in recent times has been very slight. But as I saw these slides, and as I heard the comments on them of Mr. Solomon, and afterwards the splendid stirring speech of Lord Lloyd, who did so much for Bombay art, I could not help thinking that some things are being done in Bombay which might well be emulated elsewhere. There are different art movements in various parts of India which are not sufficiently brought to focus. I think it would be a great service if some central authority, stimulated by the India Society, were to take up seriously the question of art as apparently the Bombay Government has done. I have seen the decorations in Delhi and admired them, but I did not realize that so many of them came from Bombay. I am very glad indeed to see this feather in the cap of Bombay, because I myself spent my youth in Bombay, and I have the happiest memories of that great city of commerce, and also, it appears, of art. There is only one further remark I should like to make. Lord Lloyd has very kindly made an appeal for the encouragement of Indian art both in this country and in India. Would it be possible, when this Exhibition closes, for the India Society to embody the results of that Exhibition in a wellillustrated report or pamphlet and send it out broadcast all over India? I visit India every year, and as far as lies in my power I shall help that movement if the India Society wishes me to do so. DR. K. N. SITARAM: After so many eloquent speakers have spoken about the subject I will not take up much of your time, but fortunately it so happens that I have been in charge of art exhibitions not at Bombay, but at Lahore. There we find there is no quarrel between the schools from Bengal or Bombay. III

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Modern Art in Western India I also happen to know not only Mr. Gladstone Solomon's work, but also several of his disciples and pupils. The Indian School of Art is masculine and not emasculated, and never feminine. It is 100 per cent. virile and full of flesh and blood. The Bombay School proves that the people are still as virile as in the old days. The Bombay School of Art can do as admirable work, as beautiful, if not better, than the Bengal School itself; but still their venue lies in another way. So far as the Bombay School is concerned, I give them prizes every year. I have no partiality, because I happen to be the friend of all the artists, and for the last six or seven years I have been giving prizes. This much I might say, that to Captain Gladstone Solomon and other people we Indians owe a debt of gratitude. We all love him not as an Englishman, but as an Indian who appreciates India at its best, who takes the perfume from the lotus and spreads it outside. CHAIRMAN: I think you will all have been interested in the enthusiastic statement made by Dr. Sitaram of the Museum in Lahore. Prior to that we heard Lord Lloyd, Mr. Yusuf Ali, and Mr. Fyzee Rahamin. From what I can gather, their view seems to be that there is a separate art movement in Bengal, another in Bombay, and a third in Lahore, and that, in fact, the art movement is very much alive all over India. That is the thing that matters. What particular methods of expression are chosen depends on the artists What training they get is more or less a matter of predilection, and I do not see why anyone should wish to lay down that they are only to be trained according to one system and no other. There are some important points that arise out of Mr. Solomon's address. Mr. Solomon has shown us to-night very convincing examples that life schools need not spoil a good artist when you have got one. The technical methods of training a budding artist to become a qualified artist are very much bound up with tradition, and it is on that account that people who do not understand exactly what the methods of the Bombay School of Art are have been declaiming against it. The real difficulty about the teaching at the Bombay School of Art, it would seem to me, is not so much that they follow certain European methods, but how they are going to keep in touch with the European art movements which underlie their methods. This difficulty is bound to be experienced wherever one country works on ideas derived from another. At Bombay, if I may judge from the few things I have seen of the work of the Bombay School of Art, they appear to have struck a happy medium. I 12

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Modern Art in Western India They have chosen certain European methods of training artists, but they have not tried by force to Europeanize the work of those who think along different lines. In this way Captain Gladstone Solomon has given great strength and a feeling of certainty to his students, without spoiling their desire to achieve that which it is traditional for them to wish to express. I think, for instance, that the sense of space in their decorative design, and the sense of rhythm in their pictures generally, are distinctly Indian. If one bears in mind that this is the work of students, of unfinished artists, one will doubly appreciate in it those things which are greatest in Indian art -namely, the gift of dealing effectively with spaces and line The sense of decorative spaces and the flowing rhythm with which they treat subjects, whether static or dynamic, is extremely effective. It seems to me that a great deal is being done by the Bombay School of Art that is helpful and useful. What interests me most about this forthcoming Exhibition of Modern Indian Art is that we shall there see, not so much the work of students, as that of the men who are considered in their respective parts of India, by those who take an interest in art, to be at the head of their profession. I was discussing with Captain Gladstone Solomon this evening the rules which had guided the selection so far as the exhibits are concerned that have been sent from Western India, and he pointed out that they were very anxious to show only mature work and the best work. If that is done by all the Rrgional Committees, and if we hang the exhibits in a telling manner, I think you will get for the first time in this country an opportunity of seeing what good work is being done in the different parts of India. Captain Gladstone Solomon has referred to the practical side of art. I have been engaged on that for the last two years in connection with a thing called by the very awkward name of "Art in Industry." It is an unpleasant name, but a good thing. It is the answer to the question whether, given the right artist and the right opportunity, we cannot bring beauty into all the objects which we see about us or which we handle and use. I think that is a very important matter in India too, and one in the furtherance of which the Bombay School of Art has taken a prominent part by fostering the artistic crafts. Lord Lloyd was speaking about the patronage of art. It should be possible to secure a certain amount of patronage in this country for Indian painting and sculpture if it follows the vigorous lines which we have seen. But, inevitably, it is in India among Indians that it must in the main be found. 113

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Modern Art in Western India Another matter which interested me was the discussion about mural paintings. I seem to have heard about mural paintings at Viceregal Lodge and at India House. I wonder if one bears sufficiently in mind that all those mural paintings have been carried out by students, by young men who, if they live a bit longer and go on working, will do better, and if much longer might conceivably do very much better, and whether we ought not to follow the method of the Italian authorities in providing fresh opportunities. When I visited the Milan Exhibition last year, I saw gigantic wall surfaces smothered with wall paintings. One of the Italian authorities asked me whether I liked them. Having looked at his face, I felt I could safely say I did not. He said, "Well; they are by our best budding artists." I asked, "What will you do with them?" He replied, "I do not know what we shall do with the artists, but we have given them a marvellous opportunity, and before the next Exhibition comes on we shall probably whitewash these walls and give them another chance!" It seems a very good plan to give the same men or better men a chance of using the same wall surfaces, until something so good is produced that everybody raises his hands in horror at the thought of wiping it out. I believe that an occasional coat of whitewash over the work of young men would be extremely helpful to spur them to greater achievement. Without wishing to make this a recommendation to the Government of India, I would ask those interested in wall surfaces to place them at the disposal of young artists, subject to their right to whitewash them after a few years if they feel so disposed. Captain Gladstone Solomon referred to the India Society and its policy. I do not want to say anything about that excepting on one matter. The India Society is twenty-five years old. That represents almost a generation; so whatever the Society is to-day, it is not what it was when it started. The justification is no longer the same. Whether we have carried out our task with more or less success is for you to say, but that the task we are aiming to fulfil to-day is a different one from that with which we were concerned at the start is a fact. The foundation of the India Society was due to the remarks of an eminent gentleman who referred to Indian art as a contradiction in terms: it was either Indian or art, but it could not be both. That was a good justific for starting the Society, but it no longer applies. What we have to do in the future is to be of use to India, as well as to the large number of English people in this country who are interested in that great part of the British Empire, by doing the kind of work of which this 114

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Modern Art in Western India Exhibition is one example--that is, to give an unbiassed opportunity of seeing what is being done in India at present and what has been done in the past. The two things are both important, and in referring to India's past I need hardly remind this audience of the work already done, and that still lies before the India Society, not only in studying the ancient sculpture, painting, crafts, literature, and music within her borders, but also in tracing the powerful influence she exerted through the centuries on the art of the other countries of Asia. It is quite right that to keep the living alive should be held an important thing ; but it is not worth keeping the living alive unless they live up to the highest traditions of the past and aim at greater achievement in the future. I do not mean that in the slightest as an indication that one ought to go on imitating the past. On the contrary, I look upon tradition in contemporary art, not as an imitating of the past, but as a stepping on the shoulders of the past to reach to something higher. There are two methods by which people may differ from their predecessors. One is by standing on their shoulders, the other by treading on their toes, the former being clearly the most effective. I feel that in the future the India Society's task will be to give a fair survey of what is best in Indian art, both in the past and in the present, and to leave India herself to hammer out what her artistic destiny is to be. I do not believe that anybody can say whether the Bombay School, or the Bengal School, or any other School of Indian Art, has got hold of the right lines until you know what developments the future of India will bring to the whole outlook of its people. For art must be linked with the life of the people if it is to have any meaning at all. If art is anything at all, it is either the telling of stories or the making of statements and suggestions. Abstract art, the conception that one should go to a great deal of trouble to say nothing, is a thoroughly Western notion which has not yet polluted India. That, ladies and gentlemen, is about as much as I can add to this discussion beyond saying how extremely grateful we are to Captain Gladstone Solomon not only for having come here to-night to give us this eloquent and lucid account of what he has tried to do for Indian art, but also for the work he has done out there. I feel sure you will wish to pass a hearty vote of thanks to Captain Gladstone Solomon. (Applause.) 115

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ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS IN INDIA, 1932-33 By Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sauni (Director-General of Archaeology) A sum of about Rs 20,000 was spent during the year 1932-33 on excavations. Apart from important architectural remains and other historical evidences brought to light by this year's excavations, they have yielded a wealth of portable antiquities sufficient for a small museum. The following paragraphs contain a resume of the principal results obtained. Owing to the retirement of Dr. E. J. H. Mackay and lack of funds no excavations were carried out at Mohenjodaro. His volume on Further Excavations at Mohenjodaro is, however, in the press. At Harappa Mr. Vats brought to light more houses, comprising workmen's quarters, similar in some respects to the potters' quarters of the sixth century B.C. at Athens. The Indus Valley script has not yet been deciphered, but it may be of interest here to refer to an interesting article entitled "Seals of Ancient Indian Style found at Ur," published by Mr. C. J. Gadd of the British Museum in the Proceedings of Academy, Vol. XVIII., London. Special interest attaches to one of the eighteen seals described in this article, as Mr. Gadd believes it to be a local imitation of the Indus Valley type made at Ur, with a legend in the archaic cuneiform writing instead of in the usual Indus Valley script. From this it seems reasonable to assume that the latter script must have been understood in Mesopotamia, and we may hope for the discovery sooner or later of a bilingual inscription in Mesopotamia or in the Indus Valley itself. Mention may also here be made of Mr. M. G. de Hevesy's discovery that the script of the Indus Valley was identical with that of the legends on a number of wooden tablets discovered in the Easter Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Professor Hevesy finds close similarities between three hundred signs of each of the two scripts. In his Mohenjodaro and the Indus Civilization Sir John Marshall referred to the widespread diffusion of the chalcolithic culture and to Mr. Hargreaves' and Sir Aurel Stein's explorations of numerous sites of the early period in Baluchistan and Southern Waziristan. Since then Sir Aurel Stein has, with the support of the Harvard University and the British Museum, carried out extensive researches in Southern Persia and in Fars, the ancient Persia, resulting in the discovery of abundant remains of the chalcolithic period, which show close relation to the culture of the Indus Valley. 116

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To face p. 116 FIG. 1.---BUDDHIST MONASTERY AT KALAWAX, TAXILA: GENERAL VIEW OF EXCAVATIONS LOOKING NORTH. Copyright reserved.

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N FIG. 2.- BRONZE IMAGE OF DHYANI BUDDHA VAJRASATTVA, FOUND IN MONASTERY 9 AT NALANDA. Copyright resered FIG. 3.- NALAXDA: BRONZE IMAGE OF BODHISATTVA MANJL'ARI, FOUND IN MONASTERY 9 AT NALANDA. Copyright reserved.

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FIG. 4 35 NALANDA: BRONZE IMAGE OF TRAILOKYARIJAVA TRAMPLING UPON MAHESVARA AND GAURI, FOUND IN MONASTERY 9. Copyright reserved (i) (i) (ii) FIG. 5. NALANDA: BRONZE IMAGES OF (1) VISHNU, (ii) SURYA, AND (iii) CHARDI FOUND IN MONASTERY 9. Copyright reserved.

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FIG. 6. MINIATURE CLAY CHAITYA FOUND IN A STUPA AT NALANDA. Copyright reserved.

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FIG. 7.-A HEAP OF UNBURNT CLAY IMPRESSIONS OF BUDDHIST SEALS, FOUND IN A STUPA AT NALANDA. Copyright reserved.

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FIG. 8.-BIJAI MAXDALAT OLD DELHI, WHOSE IDENTITY AS PALACE OF MUHAMMAD-BIN-TC'GHLAQ IS NOW ESTABLISHED BY EXCAVATION. Copyright reserved.

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FIG. 9.-OXE OF THE THREE PIECES OF THE IRON PILLAR AT DHAR WITH THE KANI L A MOSQUE IN THE BACKGROUND. Copyright reserved.

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FIG. 10-KOSAM TERRACOTTA TOY-CART, CIRCA THIRD CENTURY A.1. (Allahabad Municipal Museum.) Copyright reserved. FIG. 11.-DOOR LINTEL CARVED WITH TWO OF THE FOUR NOBLE ANIMALS OF THE BUDDHISTS, "ROM KOSAM (ANCIENT KAUSAMBI). (Allahabad Municipal Muscum.) Copyright reserved.

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Archaeological Explorations in India, 1932-33 At Taxila, where excavations have been in progress since 1913, Sir John Marshall was engaged on the clearance and conservation of the Buddhist monastery at Kalawan (Fig. 1), which turns out to be the largest monastery so far brought to light in the north-west of India It comprises three separate blocks of buildings, ranged one above the other on the hillside terraces. The middle block, which covers an area of about 150 yards east and west by 100 yards north and south, comprises three large courts of cells, a group of dining and assembly halls, and spacious courts of stupas and chapels. The inscription engraved on a copper plate, which was discovered in the previous year in one of these stupa shrines, has been published by Professor Sten Konow of Oslo, and reveals the fact that the old name of this monastery was Chadasila, and that the shrine in which it was found was erected by a female lay-worshipper in the year 134 (of an unspecified era), corresponding approximately with the year A.D. 76. This record is of importance, not only as confirming Sir John Marshall's views as to the chronology of Saka and Pallava rulers of Taxila, but also for the instructive light that it throws on the history of the Gandhara school of sculpture, since it enables us to date with comparative confidence the Gandhara reliefs with which the stupa shrine referred to was decorated. An interesting feature of this monastery is the presence of three strong-rooms, which may have been intended for the storage of the property of the monastery-e.g., copper bells, etc. Sixty coins, ranging in date from Hermaeus to Hormazd II., were found in this monastery; and in a niche in front of one of these strong-rooms was a group of unusually wellmodelled terra-cotta figures. At Nalanda, District Patna, eight monasteries, a large stupa, and other structures had been brought to light in previous years. Another monastery (No. 9) has now been exposed by Mr. G. C. Chandra. The portable antiquities recovered from this building include an interesting collection of some seventy-five bronze or copper and stone images representing the Buddha . Dhyani Buddha Vajrasattva (Fig. 2), Manjuari (Fig. 3) and other Bodhisattvas, Tara, Trailokyavijaya (Fig 4) and other Buddhist and Brahmanical gods and goddesses (Fig. 5). Most of the bronze or copper images were gilded, and on one of them the gilt is remarkably well preserved (Fig. 2). The pedestals of some of these images are moreover ornamented with semiprecious stones, while the eyes, urna marks on the forehead and the edges of the drapery are picked out in silver or platinum. As the bulk of the bronze images hitherto found at Nalanda had been recovered from the monastery of Balaputra of the Sailendra dynasty of Suvarnnadvipa (Sumatra), which stood on the site of monastery No. 1, Dr. Bosch, a Dutch scholar, had expressed the opinion that these statues were purely Hindu- Javanese bronze work, and that NEW SERIES. VOL. VIII., NO. 2. 117

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Archaeological Explorations in India, 1932-33 they had either been made on the spot by Javanese artists, or been brought over from Srivijaya or Java. Another Dutch scholar (Dr. A. J. Bernet Kempers) has already, on grounds of style, etc., shown this view of Dr. Bosch to be untenable, and the recent find in a monastery at Nalanda other than the one built at the request of the Sumatran king supplies further valuable proof of their having been manufactured by local metal-casters of Nalanda during the reign of the Pala kings of Bengal (A.D. 800-1000). Other minor antiquities included some three thousand terra-cotta or un burnt clay objects, including miniature Chartya models (Fig. 6), seals, and seal impressions (Fig. 7). Among the latter two types are the commonest-viz., those seal impressions that were attached to letters and parcels and retain on their backs marks of string or tape with which they were secured, and those that were used as tokens or offerings to priests or temples. Of the former class those belonging to "community of the noble monks residing at the great monastery of Nalanda " are the most interesting. Personal seals include those of certain kings of the Gupta and other dynasties and one of the Pala king Devapaladeva, who flourished in the ninth century A.D. Another noteworthy object found was a large-sized die of iron, making the words "Sri Buddha." which was probably used for branding animals in the same way as bulls are branded in modern times with Siva's trident and other sacred symbols. The great temple with its enclosing monastery at Paharpur in the Rajahahi district is the largest single monument brought to light by excavation anywhere in Eastern India; it is only a little smaller than the rectangular court around the great Step Pyramid at Saggara in Egypt. An interesting stone inscription of the late Buddhist period in Bengal which was found at Nalanda and published by Mr. N. G. Majumdar reveals the fact that a monk from Paharpur had made extensive donations for the construction and repair of religious edifices at that site and at Nalanda. One of the structures built by this monk at Paharpur was a temple of the Buddhist goddess Tara, and this temple has been brought back to view and conclusively identified with the help of a large number of terra-cotta plaques all impressed with eight-armed figures of that goddess. Since Sir John Marshall's excavations of 1905-06, no systematic excavations had been carried out at Rajgir. Some small digging recently carried out has helped to ascertain the true character of an interesting structure, situated in the middle of this hill-girt city of Kasagarapura, as it was called in antiquity. When first exposed, this structure was believed to be a colossal linga constructed in imitation of a Buddhist stupa. The recent excavation has disclosed the existence on this site of two structures of different periods built one upon the other. The lower structure is a circular Saiva shrine of the Gupta 118

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Archaeological Explorations in India, 1932-33 period, which was originally adorned with fine stucco figures, and the upper a Buddhist stupa of the eighth or ninth century A.D. The only other temples with circular garbhagrihas of ancient times known to us are the Chedi temples at Chandrehe and Gurgi in the Rewa State and the Srirangam temple near Trichinopoly, though these are several centuries later in date. It may be noted that the well-known temple of Sibyl at Tivoli in Italy has the same circular plan. A fragment of a stone sculpture of the Kushan period, which was found in the course of excavation at Rajgir, is engraved with the name of the mountain Vipula, one of the five hills that surround the city of Rajagriha and are mentioned in the Mahabharata. Excavations at Bijai Mandal in the ancient city of Jahanpanah at old Delhi now leave no doubt as to this building having been the palace (Fig. 8) of Muhammad-bin-Tughlaq, the second king of the Tughlaq dynasty (1325-51). Sir Sayyid Ahmad's suggestion that this was a bastion of the surrounding walls of this city is no longer tenable. The building as now exposed shows the Diwan-i-Khas or Hall of Special Audience on the summit of a lofty terrace approached by broad concrete ramps, and what must have been a large pillared hall on a lower level on the north side. A feature of the former are two stone-lined wells sunk into the floor, which were covered with closefitting lids of the same material. These wells were undoubtedly meant for the storage of jewellery and other valuables, but the only objects of any value found in them were two or three gold coins of South India and a few pieces of gold thread. The structure on the lower level was about 210 feet in width and more than 300 feet in length (north and south), and bounded by solid walls on all sides The southern portion, showing the positions of ten rows of seventeen pillars each, has been exposed The rest of the structure is buried under a modern cemetery. The pillars were all of wood and have perished, but the base stones of several of them have survived in situ This hall, which may be called the Hall of Public Audience, must have been two storeys high, and therefore contained something like 600 pillars. This, in all probability, is the Thousand-pillared Hall of Muhammad-bin-Tughlaq, mentioned by Ibn-Batuta, the African Qazi, who spent several years in that king's court at Jahanpanah. Farishta, the well-known Muhammadan historian, mentions another thousand-pillared hall, which was built by Alauddin Khalji (1295-1316) at his city of Siri, but no excavations have as yet been carried out, and it is not possible to say in what part of the city it lies buried. These many-pillared halls of the Sultans of Delhi may have been copied from the real thousand-pillared halls like those in the Minakshi temple at 119

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Archaeological Explorations in India, 1932-33 Madura and in the Srirangam temple near Trichinopoly, after Malik Kafur's invasion of South India in A.D. 1310. The precise date of the two Dravidian examples mentioned here is not known. Many years ago Dr. Burgess drew attention to numerous similariues between the Dravidian and Egyptian styles of architecture, and suggested that the thousand-pillared halls of South Indian temples may have been derived from the hypostyle halls of the temples of the ancient Pharaohs. It is noteworthy that the Vedic gods Mitra and Varuna are described in the Rigveda as occupying palaces of similar design. The Iron Pillar at Dhar, Central India, is one of the largest ancient forgings of wrought iron which have come down anywhere, and which have excited unstinted admiration of eminent scientists and metallurgists of mo lern times. Other works of this nature are the well-known iron pillar at Delhi (circa fifth century A.D); the iron pillars or girders, measuring up to 42 feet in length, employed in the construction of the temple of the sun at Konarak District Puri (thirteenth century A.D); a large-sized trident (tricula) at Mount Abu; similar tridents in the temples at Gopesvara and Barahat, Garhwal. The Iron Pillar at Dhar (Fig. 9) is broken in three pieces, measuring together more than 43 feet in length, and some writers have opined that a fourth piece of some 7 feet in length has been lost sight of. The date and purpose of this interesting monument have remained uncertain. It was Mr. Henry Cousens who suggested in the year 1902-03 that it must have been set up before a temple either as a special gift to the temple or as a column of victory. It is gratifying to note that this latter view of Mr. Cousens appears to receive considerable support from an inscription, parts of which I was able to put together at my visit to Dhar last summer. These fragments are lying in Kamal Maula's mosque by the side of the two large basalt slabs bearing two odes of the celebrated Paramara king Bhoja (A D. 1018-60) and a panegyric of one of his successors, Arjunavarman. This new inscription had hitherto escaped notice. The slab on which it was engraved must have been more than 5 feet in height, but though the width cannot be determined with equal certainty, it could not have been less than 7 or 8 feet. The inscription consisted of 79 lines containing 585 verses, all in the Prakrit language and in the Arya metre. In the colophon the poem is designated as a kodanda composed by the king Bhoja himself, but may, like the two odes referred to above, have been composed by one of his court poets. The stanza which I believe refers to the Iron Pillar is that numbered 306. It records the setting up of a column to serve as a post to which could be tied the "elephant of victory," which had already been fettered with ropes in the form of the rays of Bhoja's sword. The only pillar at Dhar answering this description is the Iron Pillar, and 120

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Archaeological Explorations in India, 1932-33 there are good reasons to believe that it must have been erected to commemorate his military exploits against the neighbouring powers, including perhaps a victory over the Chedi ruler Gangeyadeva of Tilangana or Trikalinga. No epigraphical evidence of this latter conquest is yet known, but the well-known Hindustani proverb "Kahan Raja Bhoj Kahan Ganga Tali" would appear to point to its correctness. Other antiquities of Dhar have hitherto received scant attention A lection of Brahmanical and Jaina images dating from the eighth to to the twelfth century A.D. remains unpublished. In connection with the preMuhammadan antiquities of Mandu, the capital of the Muhammadan rulers of Malwa and the scene of the loves of Baz Bahadur and Rupamati, it is note. worthy that recent excavations carried out by the Public Works Department of the Dhar State have revealed, besides sulptural remains, a large rock-cut monastery, which must have belonged to the Vaishnava priesis Among the numerous inscriptions of different periods that were dealt with during the year, the most important is the fragmentary inscription from Mahasthangarh, District Bogra, Bengal This inscriprion has been published in the Epigraphia Indica by Professor Dr. D. R. Bhandarkar. It purports to record the occurrence of a severe famine and the measures of relief adopted to combat it, including the distribution of paddy from the royal granary and the advance of loans through district officers. This epigraph dates from the third century B.C., and is the most ancient epigraph yet found anywhere in Bengal. It conclusively identifies the ancient remains at Mahasthangarh as the site of Pundranagara or Pundravardhana, the ancient capital of North Bengal. A Kushan inscription from Mathura turns out to be the first Brahmi inscription which mentions a Macedonian month (Gurppiya). It is dated in the Kushan year 28, and reduces the gap that existed reigns of Vasishka and Havishka to some two months. With the aid of similar epigraphs I was able, some years ago, to bridge the interval of thirteen years that remained unaccounted for between Kanishha and Vasishka. Dr. Hirananda Shastri was engaged during the year on a careful examination of the numerous inscriptions on stone, terra-cotta tablets, etc., d in the excavations at Nalanda. According to a Nagari inscription of the Samvat year 1109 engraved on the iron pillar at Delhi, the name of this city at that time was Dhilli. This form of the name is also found on an image recently discovered at Hastinapur in the District of Meerut. Some 500 stone inscriptions, besides six copper-plate inscriptions, were copied and examined in Southern India. These belong to the Pallava, Chola, Chalukya, and Pandya dynasties. Certain scribblings in a cave at Vikramkhal in the Sambalpur District, Orissa, which were recently brought to my notice by Mr. I21

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Archaeological Explorations in India, 1932-33 L. P. Pandya, have been examined by Mr. K. P. Jayaswal, who assigns them to circa 2000 B.C. It is interesting to note that Sir John Marshall has discovered similar engravings on a number of boulders on the River Indus near the town of Attock. One of these boulders, however, also bears a few Kharoshthi characters, and the presumption is that these scribblings are of a date later than the Kharoshthi characters in question. In the Indian Museum at Calcutta the gallery of the Gandhara sculptures has been rearranged and the sculptures reclassified according to subjects represented by them. Five silver punch-marked coins from the Rajshahi District, which were added to the coin cabinet of this museum, are the earliest coins so far found in Bengal. The new acquisitions also include a rare stone image of Harihara attended by Surya and Buddha. An interesting Gandhara stone relief in the collections in the Peshawar Museum had hitherto remained unnoticed. It represents the reception of Gautama Buddha at the deer park (Sarnath) by his five comrades soon after his enlightenment at Bodh Gaya near Gaya. In conformity with the account given in the Vinaya Pitaka one of the monks in the sculpture prepares a seat for the Master, another brings water for washing his feet, while a third holds a fan. The Allahabad Municipal Museum, which was started only a few years ago, already contains a considerable number of valuable antiquities brought together by Mr. B. M. Vyas, executive officer of that municipality. Two of the acquisitions made during the years under review are terra-cotta toy carts, which date from the third century A.D. and were collected at Kosam (ancient Kausambi in the District of Allahabad). In the cart (Fig. 10) are seated two rows of three passengers each, the middle one in each case being a woman. The hair of the woman in the left-hand row is being pulled by the man seated behind her. The other row consists of musicians. At first sight it seemed as if these carts were representations of the well-known Sanskrit play the Mrichchhakatika of Sudraka, the woman in the left-hand row being Radanika, the maid-servant of the hero Charudatta. Other noteworthy sculptures in this museum are: a fragment of a door lintel, which must have been carved with figures of the four noble animals (Fig. 1) of the Buddhists, like those found on the abacus of the Asokan capital at Sarnath ; Krishna lifting the Govardhana hill; images of Jaina Tirthankaras and a beautiful head of Siva from Kosam ; an image of the goddess Sitala riding on a donkey and a Bodhisattva or a Yaksha of about the second century A D., both from Pratapgarh ; and terra-cotta figurines depicting styles of costume, coiffure, etc. I 22

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ANGKOR IN THE NINTH CENTURY: BY VICTOR GOLOUBEFF (Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient) BEFORE setting forth the results of the two archeological expeditions, the conduct of which was entrusted to me by M. Georges Caedes, Director of the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient, during the years 1932-34, I shall ask you to pay a rapid visit with me to the site of my researches. To help you to visualize the position in your mind, I am going to show upon this screen some views taken from an aeroplane flying over Angkor. We start from the Western Baray, an immense reservoir of water situated to the west of the ancient Khmer capital. The morning is misty, as often happens in summer during the rainy season; but as soon as the aeroplane attains some height the atmosphere becomes limpid and clear. Here we are, almost over Angkor Vat. Angkor Vat, I may remind you, is a magnificent religious foundation of the twelfth century, the twelve towers of which, covered with sculpture, the numerous events, the avenues bordered with serpents in stone, the pools and galleries, recall Vaikuntha, Vishnu's paradise. Our plane rises higher and higher. Here we are at 1,000, perhaps 1,200, metres above the plain--the forests, the rice-fields, the ruins recede, lose their height, and seem spread upon an immense carpet rolled out at our feet No doubt the geometrical arrangement of Angkor Vat strikes you. All is rectilinear, rectangular. The whole is set in a square frame of wide moats, the glittering surfaces of which are covered at this season with rose-coloured lotus and water hyacinth. To the north of Angkor Vat another square, still larger, seems to incline towards the horizon. This is Angkor Thom: Angkor Thom, the royal city, built by Jayavarman VII. at the end of the twelfth century, the area of which is not less than 9 square kilometres. The centre is marked by a temple as magnificent as it is strange-the Bayon. As seen from our plane it makes us think of a confused assemblage of pointed rocks, the tops of which had been carved into human faces. Now let us tack about. To the south of Angkor Thom a hillock crowned by a temple is surrounded by dense forest. This is the Phnom Bakheng, with * Lecture delivered to the India Society on July 27, 1934. Sir Francis Younghusband presided, and H.E. the French Ambassador was also present. 123

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Angkor in the Ninth Century which we shall have much to do later-a Saiva temple of the ninth century erected by King Yasovarman I., the founder of Angkor. Its sanctuaries rise from a high-staged basement. At its base are stone stairs leading down to the plain. Hidden by luxuriant foliage these are not visible in the photograph. After flying over Angkor let us cast a rapid glance-still from our aerial car over the Roluos region. Roluos lies 20 kilometres south-east of Angkor. The temples that we notice 1,000 metres below us, surrounded by scrub and by marshy ground, date from the ninth century, and are therefore earlier than Angkor Thom and Angkor Vat. As M. Georges Coedes has proved, they mark the site of another puri, or royal city, Hariharalaya, the history of which pertains to the reigns of two famous sovereigns, Jayavarman II. and Indravarman. The temple nearest to us is the Bakong, which in days of yore sheltered the devaraja, the "God-King," the symbol of deified royalty worshipped in the guise of a linga. Note the resemblance which its central pyramid presents to that of the Phnom Bakheng, of which I have just shown you a view. One would say that the architects had been inspired by the same conceptions and formulas. But the Bakong, the monument we are now looking at, occupies the middle of a regular square formed by moats and embankments, while the Bakheng, its counterpart in Angkor, rises in the midst of dense vegetation like the dwelling of some sylvan god. Naturally we ask ourselves this question Has not the Bakheng, with its stepped pyramid erected on the summit of a little hill, also been the centre of several successive enclosures, strictly geometrical in shape and enclosed like those of the Bakong at Roluos, within a huge square frame? We shall see at the close of my address whether we are in a position as yet to answer this question. Now let us see what ideas inspired me in the course of my investigations. As my Director and friend, M. Coedes, explained to you in his lecture last year, it had long been supposed that the town known at present under the name of Angkor Thom, with its circuit of 12 kilometres, its five monumental gateways and its magnificent central temple, was no other than the town Yasodarapura, the foundation of which is assigned in numerous inscriptions to the end of the ninth century, during the reign of King Yasovarman I., a zealous worshipper of the god Siva. It was admitted at the same time that the great temple of the Bayon, with its many towers in the form of faces, situated in the geometrical centre of the city, represented the "Central Hill" of the Khmer texts, the temple in which was carried on the cult of the GodKing-that is, of deified kingship under the form of a linga. The discovery at the Bayon in 1923 of various sculptures of Buddhist character, and especially of a pediment representing the Bodhisattva Lokes 124 .

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Angkor in the Ninth Century vara, raised serious doubts as to the ritualistic purpose of this monument, doubts which led M. Louis Finot to recognize in the central temple of Angkor Thom an old Mahayanist sanctuary that had been transformed into a Saiva temple, an hypothesis that was fully established by the discovery quite recently of a gigantic Buddha buried deep in the foundations of the edifice. In 1927 M. Philippe Stern published his most lucid and discerning thesis on the Bayon. Thereafter the town which bore the name of Angkor Thom was no longer the capital founded in the ninth century by Yasovarman I., but a town of the eleventh century built by a great Buddhist sovereign, Suryavarman I. The reading of the Sanskrit inscriptions on the steles placed at the four corners of this city has since enabled M. Georges Cades to prove that the walls of Angkor Thom and the Bayon itselt are of even a later date than M. Stern had supposed, and that they date in fact from the last years of the twelfth century. Instead of representing the blossoming and expansion of the art of Angkor, the Bayon and many other monuments of the same style, such as Prah Khan, Ta Prohm, Banteay Kdei, Banteay Chmar and the Neak Pean, appertain to a phase of decadence, and we should see in them not the dawn but the twilight of the "Miracle Khmer." After the striking evidence provided by M. Caedes, it no doubt seems possible at this time that the present Angkor Thom is the city built by a fervent votary of Buddhism, Jayavarman VII., after the year 1177, the year when the old capital had been taken by assault and pillaged by the Chams, the implacable enemies of the Khmer people This point being settled, it was necessary to find out the position of the first town of Angkor, the Yasodarapuri of the ninth century. M. Stern had proposed to locate it around the Phinneanakas, the stepped pyramid of which, ornamented with lions and elephants carved in stone and crowned by a small sanctuary, occupies the middle of an extensive rectangular enclosure in the north-west quarter of Angkor Thom. But this hypothesis, though attractive in many respects, presented serious difficulties. It was while examining closely the arguments marshalled by M. Stern in support of his conjecture that the idea occurred to me of looking for the centre of the first Angkor, not within but outside of the area comprising the town of Jayavarman VII. At the same time I wondered whether perchance this centre had not corresponded with the Phnom Bakheng, the Saiva temple situated upon a small wooded hill not far from the southern gate of Angkor Thom, and which you have seen on one of my slides; in other words, this temple might have represented the "Central Hill,' the sanctuary that had been devoted formerly to the cult of the God-King. 125

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Angkor in the Ninth Century At the moment when this hypothesis of mine took shape it was based mainly upon the following consideration. On the archaeological map of Angkor, drawn up in 1909 by Lieutenants Buat and Ducret, the Phnom Bakheng marks the exact geometrical centre of a rectangular space measuring about 16 square kilometres, the western and southern sides of which are still represented by broad moats now transformed into rice-fields, while the eastern side is represented by a line running parallel to the Siemreap river diverted from its original course to form a kind of channel with banks as straight as if they had been drawn with a ruler. A short stay in Cambodia in October-November, 1931, enabled me to verify on the spot the principal elements of my thesis, and to draw up, in collaboration with M. Henri Marchal, the Conservator of Angkor, a theoretical plan of the old capital. In July, 1932, the Director of the Ecole Francaise entrusted me with the charge of methodical researches, which it was estimated would occupy three months. As a matter of fact, this work kept me at Angkor till the middle of November. At the commencement of my mission the Government gave us the assistance of two marine aviation officers, Naval-Lieutenants Menes and Aussenac, who took a certain number of photographs from the air over the locality to be explored. When flying with Lieutenant Menes over the little hill of Bakheng I noted that it was surrounded by a great number of artificial water ponds half hidden in the forest. This was an important indication in support of my hypothesis, as the symmetrical arrangement of these ponds attested the existence of axial avenues starting from the foot of the hillock in all four directions-towards east, south, north, and west. Together with my colleague, M. Henri Marchal, I then took in hand the clearing of these avenues. At the same time careful trial borings were made around the Phnom Bakheng, as well as in the southern portion of Angkor Thom, where one might perhaps expect to find hitherto undiscovered remains dating from the time of Yasovarman. These soon yielded a large number of valuable indications bearing upon our researches, which encouraged us to persevere in the task we had undertaken. By the close of the first stage of our explorations, in November, 1932, we had discovered not only the great axial avenues of the first town of Angkor, but also its inner enclosure comprising moats and a rectangular embankment surrounding the Bakheng hill at plain level. We had found, besides, the remains of several buildings and works in stone deeply buried in the bush, the existence of which had not hitherto been in the least suspected. I was able then to leave Angkor with a very clear impression that our investigations had not ended in failure. (Cp. Plates I-V.) A year later, in December, 1933, I returned to Angkor charged with a I 26

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l N G Forst Scale al SALES | | | | Rizieres 500m .......................... A DAUN MA BEN THOM 40 lvd P TUTRUY ui u MAS O R " PLATE I 486 Rizieres PHIMAHAKAS AQUAMANILA VEN H. 1Km BAYON Angkor in the Ninth Century 487 ===0 S r HANTOLO Rizieres E HRISTELIOME = I NKOR VAT For t Foret THOMMANON L CHAUSAY Riziers D TAKEO VERS LOLE Cours detourne de la Riviere PLAN OF THE FIRST CITY OF ANGKOR ACCORDING TO THE RESEARCHES OF VICTOR GOLOUBEFF AND HENRI MARCHAL (AUGUST-NOVEMBER, 1932). The complete plan showing the discoveries of 1933-34 will appear later Copyright reserved. 127

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Angkor in the Ninth Century fresh mission. M. Henri Marchal and I resumed our borings and excavations around the Bakheng, and this time we had the joy of seeing the western and southern gateways of the vanished town appear at the bottom of the trenches dug by our coolies at the foot of the sacred hill As regards the eastern gate, which faced the side of honour of the temple, the problem had already been solved, for in the course of my previous mission, in September, 1932, we had brought to light, in front of the monumental stairs leading to the summit of the Phnom Bakheng, a kind of bastion or terrace of laterite which must have served as a foundation for an entrance tower or gopuram of light material. The nucleus of the old town thus seeming to have been redeemed, it remained to devote our whole attention to finding the northern outer moat. which must have passed right through Angkor Thom from east to west. Numerous indications met with in the course of our excavations enable me at the moment to locate it between the remains of two important embankments, one of which is situated slightly to the south of the Baphuon, while the other followed the line of the avenues that lead from the Bayon to the eastern and western gates of Angkor Thom. When having borings made along these avenues, we had discovered, as early as 1932, stone steps which seemed to point to the presence of a channel or moat. The systematic excavations carried out during the winter of 1933-34 disclosed that we had to deal with a succession of dit hes between which were roadways and watercourses, one of which passed beneath a bridge of laterite still in a very good state of preservation. The exceptional breadth (22 metres) of this work would lead one to conjecture that there had been here not an ordinary roadway, but an important embanked way. In the course of my second archaeological expedition I used a photographic plan of the Angkor group prepared in January, 1933, by Pilot-Captain Gouet. In addition to this valuable document, which furnished so many suggestions and such u-eful information, I had at the end of my deputation a map on the 1 : 10,000 scale of the Bakheng region drawn by M. Michel Perinelli of the Geographical Service. The clearing of thickets under the supervision of this excellent topographer have led to the discovery of from 700 to 800 artificial water ponds either square or rectangular in shape. The arrangement of these ponds is characteristic: they are either disposed according to a geometric formula around the Phnom Bah heng, or else they follow the lines of the axial avenues of the old town in the manner of the ponds already noticed by me from the aeroplane in July-August, 1932. Their great number might, at first sight, appear surprising or strange, but the matter is easily explained when we think of the hundreds, the thousands, of houses and buildings made of perishable material 128

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PLATE II STATUE OF A GODDESS (NINTIT CENTURY FOUND IN THE TEMPLE SITOWX BELOW. Copyright reserted. PLATE INI RUINS OF A TEMPLE OF THE NINTH CENTURY DISCOVERED ON THE RIGHT BANK OF THE SIEMREAP RIVER. Copyright reserved. To face p. 128

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PLATE IV PLATE V To face p. 159 STAIRS UNEARTHED AT THE FOOT OF THE BAKHENG HILLOCK. STATUE OF A BRAHMANICAL GOD FOUND NEAR THE BAKHENG. Copyright reserved, Copyright reserved

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Angkor in the Ninth Century that must once have surrounded the "Central Hill" of Yasovarman, and when one calls to mind the important role played, even in our own days, by the trapeang, or ponds, in the economy of a Khmer village. M. Perinelli had also been able to record on his plane-table an embankment that marked the eastern limit of the capital of the ninth century, the exact position of which I had myself sought in vain to trace. In short, the problem appears to be now solved. The first town of Angkor has been rescued from oblivion, and its temples, enclosures, avenues and bridges, recovered from the bush, have been harmoniously grouped once more around their geometrical centre, the Mount Bakheng, the mystic abode of Devaraja, the God-King ! 129

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A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF P'RA VIHAN AS IT APPEARED ORIGINALLY. Copyright reserved. P'RA VIHAN (VIHARA) (A KHMER HILL-TEMPLE) BY REGINALD LE May, M.R.A.S. People in Europe are now generally becoming acquainted, if only by name, with the Temple of Angkor, that last masterpiece of Khmer architecture so long buried in the jungles of Indo-China. But few will ever have heard of P'ra Vihan (Vihara), an earlier and in some respects, perhaps, an even more wonderful expression of Khmer art than the famous Temple of Angkor, when we consider the area it covers, and its high, isolated situation. I had on occasion heard the name mentioned, but it made little impression on my mind until towards the close of a long tour in January and February, 1929, round the north-eastern provinces of Siam, partly by lorry along jungletracks and partly by boat down the Mekong, I happened to meet in Ubon the French Consul, M. Rougni, who gave me a graphic description of a recent visit which he had paid to this mysterious temple. I at once made up my mind to accomplish the trip if it was possible, and set out the next day. Let me explain briefly how to reach P'ra Vihan, which is situated on the map, roughly, 147deg N. by 104deg E. The north-eastern railway of Siam has now reached its goal, Ubon, a distance of 575 kilometres, or 360 miles, from Bangkok. About 60 kilometres from Ubon is the station of Srisaket, and from this town one has to travel just 100 kilometres almost due south, until one comes to the foot of the Dangrek range of hills, the eastern end of which 130

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P'ra Vihan (Vihara) forms the boundary between Siam and the French territory of (what is called on the Siamese side) Lower Cambodia. These 100 kilometres have hitherto been the stumbling-block in the way of travellers, for the region is very sparsely populated by jungle tribes of Sui and ancient Khmer stock, and the way leads in many parts through thick jungle, the home of tiger, elephant, and panther. Yet the jungle holds, it is said, a far more dangerous foe than any of these, and the whole district has a bad reputation for malaria. One or two Siamese officials, hardier spirits than their fellows, have in the past made the trip, but have returned home only to die of fever, and the people say that it is the wrath of the gods descended upon them for disturbing their sleep. But the Governor of Srisaket was an energetic man and with great determination had cut a track, wide enough to take a lorry, through the jungle right to the foot of the hills. By leaving Srisaket at half-past six in the morning, we managed to arrive at the foot-hills at three in the afternoon, having covered the distance inside nine hours. Not much of a pace, 12 kilometres an hour, but, bearing in mind the sand and the lorry, it was a wonder that we ever reached our destination at all. The radiator leaked badly and, both going and returning, we had to refill it with water every quarter of an hour and what water, too very often from stagnant pools covered with thick green slime! Also, on one stretch, before we dived into the jungle proper, the sand was so thick that it took us three hours to travel 25 kilometres. From the foot of the hills we had a good two hours' climb, in many places over extensive outcrops of sandstone, to which I will refer again later, and finally reached our camp on a ridge of the hill at the foot of the temple at half-past five in the evening. After a short halt, although the light was already fading, I went on with a young Siamese friend, and together we climbed to the topmost temple hall and, going beyond it, found ourselves suddenly on the edge of a precipice, gazing out upon the whole wide world. We also had defied the gods! We returned by the light of the stars to our camp, and slept soundly under our mosquito-nets in shelters formed of a leafy roof with walls on three sides, but open at the front. Our only refuge against the wrath of the gods was quinine, and plenty of it. Now, how to describe this temple accurately, and in such a way as to excite your curiosity but allay your suspicions ? Imagine yourself on a jungle hillside about 1,500 feet above sea level, with thick forest on one side and open outcrops of rock on the other. No sign of habitation or life within miles. You suddenly dive down a path, cross the rocky bed of a tiny stream and clamber up the other side, to see in front 131

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Pra Vihan (Vihara) of you, going up the hillside, an imposing staircase consisting of 160 broad stone steps, each a foot in height and at least 30 feet wide (Pl. I.). You can just see the ruins of some kind of building on the top, but it is too far away to discern with any certainty what is before you. In some places the natural rock has been cut to take the place of a step, but by far the greater part of this staircase is composed of great slabs of sandstone cut out of the hills near by. When you have arrived at the end of your toilsome climb, you see before you another short stairway with a balustrade on either side, down which come two magnificent guardian "Nagas " rearing their heads 10 feet into the air (Pl. II.). On the top of the stairway is a "gopura," or gateway, in reality a small temple in itself, but now almost a complete ruin, formed of solid sandstone blocks and monoliths (Pls. III. and IV.). Passing through, you continue your pilgrimage up a long, paved causeway until you reach another short Aight of steps, and, crowning them, another "gopura," or gateway, rather larger than the first one, but constructed in much the same form (Pl. V.) On your left, as you climb up, you pass the bathing pool, now a delightfully shady spot, with overhanging trees and tiers of sandstone steps, cut out of the rock all round, leading down to the empty bath On the right-hand side, at a short distance from the causeway, there is a raised road which seems to have been specially built for hauling up the blocks of stone, and one can see clearly many places at hand where the stone was quarried. We actually found marks of the instruments used on the face of the hewn rock. Looking back at the second gateway you see a beautifully carved lintel over the door (Pl. VI.). Passing through the second gateway you continue to climb, as in the fairy-tale, up another long causeway, now an avenue of trees, lined on either side with stone ornaments somewhat in the shape of a "lingam," but probably with no such significance, until you reach a third short fight of steps, and on the top, not this time a gateway, but a large rectangular temple with two subsidiary buildings containing long galleries, one on either side of the main (Pls. VII. and VIII.). At the left of the steps there is a "tat," or "stupa," in fairly good preservation, evidently a memorial to some long dead warrior or king Passing through the central building you come to another short fight of steps with broken Nagas on either side, and near by the bases (all that is now left) of two smallish buildings, also one on either side. Then on you go again up the third causeway, and finally you climb a short stairway and reach the gateway, in "gopura" form, of the last and greatest temple on the summit of the hill (Pl. IX.). Keeping outside to the right of this temple, you pass behind it and, crossing the intervening space of about 40 yards, you come to a rocky prominence, from the edge of which you see the whole panorama of the country stretched out before you, and at your 132

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PLATE I STONE STAIRWAY LEADING UP TO FIRST TEMPLE. Copyright reserved. PLATE II ONE OF TWO SEVEN-HEADED NAGAS ON BALUSTRADE AT TOP OF MAIN STAIRWAY. Copyright reserved.

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PLATE 111 REMAINS OF FIRST TEMPLE. Copyright reserved. PLATE IV REMAINS OF FIRST TEMPLE - FROM BEHIND. Copyright reservea.

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PLATE V PLATE VI ENTRANCE DOORWAY TO SECOND TEMPLE. Copyright reserved. ENTRANCE DOORWAY TO SECOND TEMPLE-FROM THE OTHER SIDE (SHOWING LINTEL). Copyright reserved.

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PLATE VII INTRANCE DOORWAY TO THIRD TEMPIE. Copyright reserved. PLATE VIIT PORTION OF THIRD TEMPLE - SHOWING DETAIL. Copyright reserved.

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PLATE IX PLATE X ENTRANCE, WITH STAIRWAY, TO FOURTH TEMPLE. Copyright reserved. SANCTUARY-IN INTERIOR OF FOURTH TEMPLE. Copyright reserved.

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PLATE XI SIDE-WALL OF FOURTH TEMPLE--ON EDGE OF CLIFF. Copyright reserved.

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Pra Vihan (Vihara) feet a sheer drop of 2,300 feet (Pl. XI.). This photograph was taken from the other (left) side, where the temple comes right up to the edge of the precipice. The main building on the summit is in the shape of a double temple with a wall (pierced, of course, with a gateway) between the two halves. The inner courtyards contain galleries and a number of buildings, some still in good condition (Pl. X.), some in utter ruin, but it would take too much space to describe them in detail here. Outside the main building there is a subsidiary building both to right and left, that on the left containing four baths sunk into the floor. From the first step of the grand staircase to the brink of the precipice is exactly half a mile. It is not possible for me to describe to you the magnitude or the simple grandeur of this work, or to attempt to inspire you with the glorious feeling of mastery that the creator of it must have experienced in the achievement of his conception. One can almost see the Priest-King stretching out his arms to the four winds as he stands on the cliff's edge. How great, how transcendent the spiritual feeling in a man to wish to build such a temple to his Most High Well might one cry, "In excelsis gloria"! atter stillness now-even the birds seem to have forsaken the spot. The thick jungle but a few yards away on either side. The haunting air of mystery, as if one were indeed prying into another's secrets, and hidden eyes were watching you. There this monument has stood, bravely defying the elements for a thousand years and more, and, even if it has been compelled to succumb in part, there is still enough and more than enough left today to fire the imagination of the sensitive soul. The temple, which is now in French territory, is said to have been built in the reign of the Khmer Emperor, Indravarman, towards the close of the ninth century, and to mark the break between primitive Khmer architecture and that of the classic period. It is obviously a Brahmin temple, as there is no sign of Buddhist influence to be seen anywhere. Only one statue was found, a broken, headless, kneeling figure, possibly in the form of the famous so-called Leper King at Angkor. I am not attempting to analyze the architecture of the temple in detail, as that must be left to more competent hands than mine, but one cannot help noticing in some of the gable-ends, as in Pl. VII., a certain possible Chinese influence, which does not appear at all in the later classic style. It is clear that a thousand years ago the surrounding district must have been a very populous one to have provided labour for such a stupendous work. NEW SERIES. VOL. VIII., NO. 2. 133

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P'ra Vihan (Vihara) But if once one begins to think of the task of building such a temple, the imagination boggles at it. I asked a Siamese railway engineer who was with me, "How would you like to give up building your railways and take in hand the construction of such a temple as this?" Everything is built of sandstone, and much of the carving, which still remains intact, on the doorways and lintels is beautiful to a degree. It is a true saying that "the lintel is the glory of Khmer art." One little story in conclusion. I have referred to the rocky fields we crossed in climbing the hillside In the middle of one of these I suddenly came across the single imprint of a man's foot, sunk, in parts at least, an inch deep in the rock and clearly outlined, as if in mud. I put my own foot inside it and it fitted very well, except that the big toe of the imprint was much splayed out. nk this a fitting end to what may already seem to some a " Louis de Rougemont" story, but, unless I and the people with me suddenly became subject to illusions, it was, and still is, there. What is the meaning of that footprint? It would be interesting to know if any similar imprints have been found in other parts of the world, and, if so, what explanation is given of them. The illustrations accompanying this article are from photographs taken by Mr. Groote of the Narasingh Photo Studio in Bangkok, to whom I am much indebted for permission to use them 134

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[Copyright reserved. THE MUSIC OF JAVA By J. KUNST (Keeper of the Musicological Collection of the Royal Batavian Society in Java) ANYONE wishing to come to a clear comprehension of a kind of music that is entirely foreign to him is faced with a great many difficulties, however anxious he may be to appreciate its qualities, and however susceptible he may be to beauty in general. He must try to divest himself of all prejudice before approaching this world of strange sounds. If he has theories or preconceived ideas or axioms about aesthetics, he must try to forget them, as well as all the conventional conceptions with which he has grown up. To put down a specified rule for the state of mind and soul in which to enter into this new realm, or to prescribe what to forget and what to appreciate, would lead us into the domain of psychological analysis and of musico-technique. I do not propose to do this here for fear of our losing ourselves in this sphere of almost unlimited possibilities. I only wish to utter a warning against the familiar danger of following one's inclination to condemn in foreign music that which seems inferior to our own, whereas those elements which, as a rule, have been more or less neglected in our own music, with the consequence that our ears are not attuned to them, are generally not appreciated at their true value when they occur in this exotic music. For example, a common objection expressed by Europeans with regard to Javanese music is that it shows a certain primitiveness in the melody; a lack of development and growth in the form. They seem at the same time to be insensible to the delicacies of the rhythm and the wonderful shades and the variety in the drumming. On the other hand, the Javanese is sure to disapprove in European music of the, to his ears, wilful use of the tonalities, the lack of expression in our drum-play, the poverty of our percussion instruments; and, at first, he will be unable to take in the imposing tension of the melody, the touching climax-in a word, the essential psychic contents of our great orchestral compositions and of our chamber-music. The preceding remarks bear partly on an essential difference, which we may define in the following way : Indonesian music is static ; modern European music dynamic. Western music is full of action and tension ; the great * Lecture delivered at the Netherlands Legation in London on October 12, 1934. Sir Francis Younghusband presided 135

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The Music of Java orchestral compositions express a crisis, a conflict; they strive and attain. On the other hand, we may characterize Javanese music perhaps best by calling it "time transferred into music." It is in the best sense of the word without aim"; it does not evolve, it is. This will explain why, at the end of a European concert, we are conscious of being fatigued, whilst a whole night spent in listening to the gamelan leaves us practically without any feeling of being tired. 44 It goes without saying that this contrast only bears on the general character of both arts. Western music also knows compositions without growth and development; it also can be meditative, can give the impression of being "time transformed into music." The Indonesian music, on the other hand, sometimes has its dramatic moments, and can undoubtedly express strong passions. But these features, when they occur, in no wise mark the general character of the two kinds of music. You are undoubtedly aware of the fact that music in the Indonesian archipelago is still entirely a popular art; a music made by and for the people of all classes in the Indonesian world. As for the origin of the greater part of the compositions, it is as with us in our folk-songs and our medieval art: the author is only seldom known by name, and even then he is only the voice of the people. Prince and labourer alike listen with equal rapture to the same gendings, although their individual appreciation may be different. To appreciate this fully one must have attended a wayang performance in one of the cratons (palaces), and have seen how completely the nobles as well as the common people are absorbed in the music and the play: the nobles with their guests on the marble dais of the pendopo, a brilliant nucleus of the audience, and round it the people, a dense mass of delicate, brown, and silent figures When we consider the composing elements in our own music, and then ask ourselves to what extent they are also present in Javanese music, we arrive in the first place at the conclusion that, although the European ear can distinguish a tonal centre in many of the vocal compositions (tembang) and of the instrumental pieces (gending), there is no question here of such a pronounced and fixed tonality as we find in our own music. Instead of this we find semi-modal, semi-tonal systems of a highly intricate kind. We enter here in the sphere of the patet and of the laras bem and barang of the principalities, the scales selisir, sunares, etc., of Bali, the modes melog, njorog, madenda, degung, etc., of the Sundanese: in my eyes the most fascinating province of the whole Indonesian world of music. 136

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ine Music of Java The scales in use may be arranged in two systems, called in Javanese Ilog and slendro. The absolute lack of historical and musicological dates left until lately Il scope for all sorts of suppositions as to the origin of these musical scales. According to Professor Land, the pelog-scales must be comparatively ew; he supposed them to be of Perso-Arab origin; at least, he has advanced is as a more or less tenable hypothesis. Raden Mas Surjaputra seems have accepted, for pelog at any rate, a more or less close connection with le scales of Hindostan, but at other times again he seems to have thought lat, after all, they might be of pure Javanese origin. According to popular belief, slendro is the gift of a Hindu god and pelog transformation of slendro by the hands of irreverent and bold man. Since the last few years we know, with fairly great certainty, thanks specially to Professor von Hornbostel and his masterly theory of the "blown ths" ("Blask winten "), that the Javanese scales--and a great many others -have come from China, and have their origin, perhaps, in a still more stant land, with a still older culture-namely, in Central Asia, in Turkestan. There cannot be any doubt about the fact that slendro came to Java and ali a good many centuries after pelog. Pelog was perhaps already imported Malay-Polynesian peoples, who came to Java many centuries before our hristian era. Slendro seems to have entered Java simultaneously with a ter culture in the middle of the eighth century A.D., when the dynasty of the ailendras ruled the central parts of the island, and to have derived its name om that same royal family : gamelan slendro = gamelan Cailendra. At first seems to have remained restricted to the centre of the island, where it supanted for the greater part the old pelog. Later on, probably in consequence political changes, slendro made its entry into the west and the east of Java, id subsequently into Bali. According to recent discoveries, we may take it for anted that very soon after Java began to play a part in history the two nal systems existed side by side Slendro was intended for the accompanient of the wayang purwa-viz., the shadow plays when they represent lindu myths; while pelog was intimately connected with the characteristicly Indonesian pre-Hindu art, or, better still, non-Hindu art, with certain remonies, several forms of the dance, and with the wayang gedog, repreinting the Pandji cyclus, which is purely Java-Polynesian. In its complete form pelog has seven tones to the octave--that is to say, seems to have seven tones to the octave, but in reality that heptatonic scale only a conglomerate, only the least common multiple of a group of pentanic scales with unequal intervals, in which from time to time there appears 137

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The Music of Java a sixth, or even a seventh, tone as a weak or accessory tone. always pentatonic and has generally almost equal intervals. From top to bottom these intervals are called in Central Java: In pelog The intervals expressed in European semi-tones (approximately) In slendro (penunggul or bem alit) barang nem lima or gangsal pelog dada or tengah gulu or djongga I 5 27 1.2 15 2.4 1.5 (barang alit) 1.2 ncm lima or gangsal Slendro is The intervals expressed in European semi-tones (approximately) 2.4 2.4 dada or tengah gulu or djongga penunggul or bem barang So neither of these systems agree entirely with our own system of intervals, but I know by experience that the European ear accommodates itself quickly and hears these intervals as perfectly pure and beautiful. But then, these scales, like our own, are built up on absolutely natural principles. As regards the Javanese melody, in my opinion it has not yet reached the same degree of development as the European-at any rate, as far as the orchestral compositions are concerned. The fundamental melody is rather simple, more or less archaic. Only when produced vocally or on the rebab (the native violin) or the suling (bamboo flute) does it become richer and more graceful. However, notwithstanding its relative simplicity, it sometimes sounds very impressive and full of sentiment, and the vocal melodies are often splendid. One of those songs belonging to the Jogjanese wayang-purwa music, I will now let you hear. Here follows the reproduction of the lagon patet manjura wetah.) 2.4 2.4 2.4 And now for the harmony. One notices that the different voices are not, as with us, subject to certain fixed rules. One might almost call it voluntary or accidental. Ordinarily this is not a properly regulated polyphony; it is a freer form, more primitive perhaps-viz., heterophony, as Professor Stumpf has baptized it. However, in some of the gendings, we find the beginnings of canonic imitation: perhaps a polophony in statu nascendi; and also the human voices and the rebab come sometimes to a melodic independence which creates a real kind of polyphony. 138

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The Music of Java There remains the rhythm. If, perhaps with some justice, we may say that European music has attained a higher degree of perfection from the point of view of melody and harmony, as regards rhythm it is, in my eyes, we who have remained behind. In Indonesian music in many cases the rhythm is much more elaborate and varied; sometimes I have heard polyrhythmic, better heterorhythmic, constructions of extraordinary beauty. Now let us pass on to a more concrete subject. the composition and the use of the Javanese orchestras. The plural is used here intentionally : Java is familiar with several kinds of orchestras and also with a number of instruments, that can be used simultaneously as well as for solo-parts. The gamelan proper is nothing short of the most perfect orchestral form and the most complete; other simpler ensembles are at the same time more primitive. The complete gamelan of the Principalities seems, when seen and heard for the first time, to be only a confusion of sounds and instruments. Apparently the musicians are placed and play at their own sweet will. But little by little one perceives that there is "method in their madness," and that each instrument has its own task to fulfil in the orchestral plan In the first place attention has to be drawn to the fact that the great gamelan of the princes and regents have a double set of instruments-viz., they are composed of a slendro-part and of a pelog-part. The only instruments these parts have in common are the big gongs and the drums ; occasionally also some kenongs and some kempuls. Needless to say, the slendro and the pelog parts are never played simultaneously. It is also quite exceptional to pass from the one into the other in one gending. I only know one single case : in the gending Bedaja ketawang, where there is a change from pelog into slendro, and then back again into pelog. The pelog-part of the gamelan is again divided into two parts with regard to the multi-octave genders. The sequence of tones for those genders, according to the pelog-bem-system, must be bem, gulu, dada, lima, nem in every octave; but in the pelog-barang-system the sequence is lima, nem, barang, gulu, da da. As the keys are suspended above sounding-tubes by means of cords, it is difficult to change them, when, in the course of the evening, pelogbem is abandoned in favour of pelog-barang, and therefore there are in pelog those two groups of multi-octave genders. Each of those couples of gender pelog forms, with a gender slendro, an open square, in the middle of which the musician is seated. This difficulty does not arise with the other melodic instruments. When their compass is not more than one octave, they produce all the seven tones 139

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The Music of Java of the complete pelog-scale, or they have loose keys or gongs, which can easily be changed. The gamelan pelog and the gamelan slendro comprise more or less the same instruments. But when they are not combined in a double orchestra, the instruments of a pelog orchestra are generally larger than those of a slendro orchestra. Moreover, there are some kinds of small gongs, either suspended or in a horizontal position, which belong exclusively to one or the other of these two ensembles respectively. For instance, the kempyang only occurs in the gamelan pelog; the engkuk and the kemong belong exclusively to the gamelan slendro. Then there are some differences in the composition of the Solonese orchestras on the one hand and the Jogjanese orchestras on the other. Jogja, for instance, has a kind of bonang more, the "bass" bonang, called bonang panembung. The other differences are chiefly found in the construction and the structure of some instruments-viz., the rebab, the suling, the bonang, and the gambang kaju. Now we come to some details of the functions of the different instruments in the orchestral ensemble. We may distinguish (a) the instruments producing the essential melody ; (6) those that play the melody in its full development ; (c) the punctuating (colotomic) instruments; (d) the paraphrasing instruments; and (e) the agogic instruments. The group of sarons, demung, and saron barung--all of which are metallophones with loose keys lying flat-play chiefly the essential melody, a kind of cantus firmus. This latter, called balunganing gending, played in two or three octaves, has a compass of about two octaves. And as the sarons have each a compass of one octave only, the essential melody is necessarily kept within the limits of this one octave: it is forced inside the limits of one octave. By the highest saron, the saron panerus, peking or selukat, it is syncopated or rhythmically doubled. in the strong compositions a slightly more elaborated melody is executed on some bonangs, which, sometimes, also have a paraphrasing function; in the softer pieces the melody, in a much more enriched form, is played on the suling and the rebab or executed by the voice (sinden), supported and alternated from time to time by a choir singing in unison (gerongan). The essen140

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The Music of Java tial melody is strengthened at equal distances-for instance, each time after four ketek (rhythmic unit, the original meaning of the word is heartbeat), by beats on the slentem or gender panembung and-but this is only in Jogja, as we have mentioned-on the bonang panembung. Sometimes the bonang barung is found to herald those strengthened tones in quite a remarkable manner. Every melody is subdivided into periods or phrases by colotomic beats, rather like a poem by commas, semicolons, and full stops; only much more regularly. The longest periods end with a beat on the biggest gong, the gong ageng or gong gede. These beats may be compared to the full stops. Each of these phrases (gongan) is subdivided into a number of shorter phrases, which end in a beat of the kenong: these beats take the place, more or less, of the semicolons. At the end of the last phrase of a gongan we hear not only the gong, but also the kenong. Each period ending by a kenong-beat (kenongan) is again subdivided by beats of the ketuk. In the smaller forms of composition, called ladrang and ketawang, the ketuk is alternately played with the kempul. The orchestral compositions are arranged in different categories, according to the differences in the colotomic structure mentioned above. If the gamelan were composed only of the instruments I have mentioned, the musical effect produced would undoubtedly be too rigid, not to say unwieldy, however much it might be flavoured with agogic and dynamic spices. Fortunately this melodic framework is filled in with beautiful paraphrases and ornamented with delicate musical arabesques. These ornaments, which become especially elaborate in the soft lyrical passages, are executed by the so-called panerusan, the paraphrasing instruments. The principal instruments of this kind are: the gender barung and the gender panerus, the gambang kaju and, occasionally, the tjelempung, a kind of cither. While the essential melody and the punctuation of a gending are unvariable quantities, the players of the panerusan are free to play their paraphrases according to their inspiration. But, as in all manifestations of Oriental art, this liberty has been strongly bridled by tradition. Nevertheless the panerusan form one of the most fascinating parts of the orchestral whole. From the European as well as from the Indonesian side opposition has arisen again fixing those panerusan-parts by putting them down in the scores for the sake of assisting the Javanese musicians. It is to be feared, however, that it might result in killing the natural aptitude for the spontaneous creation 141

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The Music of Java of ornaments and pretty paraphrases. The same thing has happened to our Western pianists, who, on the whole, have stopped cultivating their talent for improvising, since the figured bass has been replaced by piano-parts written out in detail. Still, if the Javanese music, which is at present passing through a period of stagnation, is to go on developing, and if the Javanese artist of the future wishes to use it as a medium for the free expression of his genius, it will be necessary to note down the panerusan-parts as well as the rest. Finally, for the agogic function, there is the kendang, which, together with the rebab, is the most important instrument of the gamelan. It is played by the leader of the orchestra, the lurah gending-at least, when he does not prefer to play the rebab-who, by means of the most delicate shades in the movement, hardly perceptible to the uninitiated ear, marks and varies the time of the composition and heralds the transition to its following parts. The kendang gending is most frequently used. However, for the accompaniment of dances and for certain kinds of compositions (ladrang and ketawang) the kendang tiblon is substituted, which is smaller. Then we know the kendangan kalih or kendangan loro, the double kendangan, where the orchestraleader plays besides the kendang gending, also a very small drum-viz., the penuntung or ketipung. name. There are several ways of playing the drum; each of these has a special For each of the two tonal systems there are about twenty-five. Most of them are essentially reducible to five principal ways of playing, which in the staff-notation of the Jogja kraton are represented by special signs. Here I may conclude the description of the grand gamelan of the Principalities. I shall omit that of the smaller ensembles. I only wish to point out that many of these have a special function to fulfil-e.g., the gamelans Munggang, Kodok ngorek and Sekati. Every gamelan-composition, whether gending or ladrang or ketawang, opens with an introduction, bebuka or bukaning gending, which enables the performers to enter into the spirit of the piece and to get into touch with each other and arrive at a mutual understanding. We may distinguish the bebuka swara or bawa-the vocal introduction-and the B. bonang, B. gender, B. kendang, according to the instrument that plays the principal part in the prelude. The instrumental bebuka never lasts more than a few "bars," and is always concluded by a beat of the gong. The vocal introduction can be much longer, as it is a complete song. After that the gending proper begins attacca. In the compositions consisting of two parts-that is to say, in all the 142

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The Music of Java. gendings ageng and tengahan, and in some of the gending alit-the first part is generally repeated two, three, or more times. When we wish to pass on to the second part, the munggah, the orchestra-leader announces this transition on the kendang or on the rebab) before the penultimate beat of the kenong. The time is accelerated lightly, becomes more lively, and after a beat on the gong ageng the munggah commences. Before the end of the piece-and this also happens in case of the one part-compositions-the time is accelerated, starting from the penultimate beat of the kenong (sesekan-i.e., stringendo), whereas the last few bars are played more slowly (suwuk, ritardando). The last beat on the gong seems to die away into the depths of eternity. Apart from these groups of compositions, there are some melodies, partly vocal, partly orchestral, used with the wayang, of which I will mention the group of the ada-ada, a species of introductory melodies, which symbolizes certain sentiments of the wayang-figures; and the pure instrumental pieces, called srepegan, ajak-ajakan, sampak, etc., mostly fighting-music, with a special colotomy, which contains a great many beats of the ketuk and of the kempul. The following Columbia record gives an idea of an ada-ada. Being a Solonese one, it is partly recited, partly sung. Javanese music also distinguish several movements (wirama), as, for instance, lomba (andante), rangkep (adagio), and toyamili (allegro, lit. running water). These are, in very broad outlines, the principal details concerning the gamelan of the Principalities and its compositions. The Javanese loves his music passionately. Although to the untrained Western ear it sometimes sounds just a little monotonous, it means everything to him. Nor is it to be wondered at that we should now and then come across admirable verses on music in Javanese poetry. The encyclopaedic poem Tjentini, for instance, which dates from the beginning of the nineteenth century, has in a masterly way interpreted the music of the principal instruments. I cannot deny myself the joy of letting you hear-in a translation, of coursewhat Tjentini says, for instance, about the music of the "rebab," which is, as said above, the native violin, played like a 'cello. It 'Djajengraga with an elegant gesture took the rebab in his hands. was well-shaped. Its neck was pontang,' the bow decorated with carvings, and gilded; the resonance-chamber was provided with an embroidered 1I.e., partly made of bone, partly of ivory. " 143

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The Music of Java covering (djamangan). The nem-string was touched; when struck, its tone proved to be entirely in unison with the nem of gender and gambang. The nem of the soeling was likewise completely in tune. Djajengraga drew himself up; his attitude was modest, in accordance with his nature. He took a few strokes up and down, in order to try the instrument. The bridge was cut out of djati-wood; the tension of the skin was firm ; in short, all details were equally excellent. Then he struck patet sanga. His fingers quivered, while now and then touching the strings, like the tail of a scorpion ready with its sting. The strings were pressed down correctly; the finger-tips pressed down the Alexible string, finding a melody with swift tone figures. The up and down movements of the hand made the strings bend. There were repeated slight swervings from the right pitch, with a view to enhancing the effect. The middle-finger was conspicuous in its movements; the forefinger resembled the fresh shoot of a fern; little finger and ring-finger looked very much like spiders' legs. Deftly the fingers were put in turn on the strings. The bow was artlessly used in its full length. Whenever the tempo accelerated, his stroke adapted itself without the slightest hesitation, in accordance with gender, gambang and suling. The fascination was perfect. The tone garlands twined themselves about the heart. The music of the strings was in tune with the notes of the principal melody : clear, regular, correct. In studying Djajengraga's music carefully, one has to admit that it was full of devotion and scrupulous care, and that it was clever. He sometimes just moved his thighs. That was his custom, and it did not trouble anyone. This time was not like other times: the music of that day surpassed everything else. The other players were wrapt in ecstasy (literally, had lost their hearts); not one niyaga made a single remark; they all sat speechless, watching Djajengraga. They gazed at him in mute admiration. The sendon had come to an end ; sarajoeda followed attacca, and was wound up with a drum-beat bem, and the soul-pleasing sound of the gong. After the patetan Djajengraga critically examined the rebab. The host, Kidang Wiratjapa, laughed heartily and said : Good heavens, how wonderful! That would make a sick man well again!"" So much for the Tjentini. After this bird's-eye view of Javanese music, I shall give you some more gamelan-records of a different character. (Here follow four records of pelog. and slendro-compositions.) With that I will end my lecture. Lastly, I wish to thank the Council of the India Society for having invited me to deliver it. I hope that I may have succeeded in arousing your interest in this particular form of Oriental music, which for so long and so unjustly-has been neglected by us Westerners.

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BOOK REVIEW Memoirs of the Archaological Survey of India, No. 48. [Explorations in Sind.] By N. G. MAJUMDAR, M.A. (Delhi. Manager of Publications). The brilliantly successful excavations at Mohenjo-daro which take the history of the Indus civilization back to the fourth millennium B.C. have now been followed by complementary work. From 1927 to 1931 Mr. N. G. Majumdar, Assistant Superintendent of the Archaeological Survey of India, was engaged from time to time in exploring and excavating a large number of likely sites in the Indus Valley, south of Mohenjo-daro. The valuable results of this work have now been published in the Memoirs of the Archaological Survey of India, No. 48, a volume with a hundred and seventy-two pages of text and forty-six plates. Most of the sites showed more or less abundant remains of the chalcolithic age, chiefly pottery with painted or incised designs. In some cases, as in the mounds at Jhukar, three definite strata were discovered, the two lowest belonging to the chalcolithic period and the topmost to the Indo-Sassanian period round about the fifth century A.D. It is interesting to observe that painted pottery is still found in this stratum. Indeed, Mr. Majumdar states that it has never ceased to be made in the Indus Valley to this day. At Amri was found not only pottery of the Mohenjo-daro type, but a lower and earlier stratum containing painted pottery of a different kind with "thin walls, having a plain reddish brown band at the neck, a chocolate band on the inner side of the lip, and geometric patterns on the body, in black or chocolate on pink, and in some cases on cream wash. . . This pottery was associated with chert flakes and cores." This ware, which Mr. Majumdar has christened Amri pottery, is closely related to wares found by Sir Aurel Stein in Baluchistan, and is an interesting link between the Indus Valley and the countries west of it which Sir Aurel Stein has recently explored. Further important finds were made at Chanhu-daro and Lohumjo-daro, round the Manchhar Lake, on the hill tract of Johi and in numerous other places, and the descriptions of the journeying and excavation make a fascinating story very well told. No. 48 is a thoroughly scientific volume, with full descriptions of all the objects found, copious illustrations, complete lists of the items illustrated, and an index. No essential detail has been overlooked, and the Survey of India is to be congratulated not only on the splendid field work done by Mr. Majumdar, but also on the admirable manner in which he has recorded it. R. L. H. 145

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THE INDIA SOCIETY << THE ancient history and the art of India are of unique interest in the history of human endeavour." These words are taken from the reply of His Majesty King George V. to the address presented to him on the opening of the School of Oriental Studies on February 23, 1917. The India Society is anxious to give, within the limits of its opportunities and resources, practical application to this noteworthy utterance, and invites the adhesion of all who sympathize and agree with it. OBJECTS The India Society was founded in the year 1910 by a small body of scholars, artists, and men of letters (both English and Indian) with the object of promoting in the West and in India itself a better appreciation and understanding of the historic culture of India, especially as represented in the Arts. During the years which followed the Society has won for its work the sympathy and active support of a distinguished body of members, including several of the ruling Princes of India, together with leaders in art, literature, and the public services in many quarters of the world. It holds itself entirely aloof from the political controversies of the day, and seeks to unite its members, and all whom its influence can reach, in the study and admiration of those aspects of Indian culture whose beauty and nobility can be recognized and appreciated by all. LECTURES AND CONFERENCES Lectures at which papers are read by leading British, Indian, and Continental specialists, have become a regular and important feature of the Society's activities. In order that members resident abroad may be able to share in the benefit of these Lectures, papers and proceedings are published from time to time in INDIAN ART AND LETTERS, together with additional articles from the Society's correspondents abroad, and book reviews. Visits to private collections of Oriental Art are also arranged. Exhibitions are organised from time to time. TERMS OF MEMBERSHIP The Annual Subscription for members who join after December 31, 1928, is One and a half Guineas (PS1 IIS. 6d.), payable on election, and on January 1 of each succeeding year. Life Subscription, Twelve Guineas. Cheques should be made payable to " The India Society" and crossed " Lloyds Bank." Forms of application for membership can be obtained from the Hon. Secretary, 3 Victoria Street, London, S.W. 1. Members receive free in return for their subscription (i) the annual volume of the Society on Indian Art and Literature, (ii) the Journal of the Society, entitled INDIAN ART AND LETTERS, and, when in Great Britain, invitations to the Society's lectures and meetings, or to those of the Association Francaise des Amis de l'Orient, whilst staying in Paris or Strasbourg. Similar facilities on the Continent are offered to members by Les Amis de l'Orient in Brussels and Der Vereeniging Van Vrienden der Aziatische Kunst in Amsterdam. Members should, however, in each case first write to the Hon. Secretary of the India Society for a letter of introduction to these forcign societies.

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APPLICATION FOR MEMBERSHIP To The Hon. SECRETARY, THE INDIA SOCIETY, 3 VICTORIA STREBT, LONDON, S.W. 1. SIR, an Ordinary Member I desire to become a Life Member er of THE INDIA SOCIETY, and shall be glad if you will 1 bring my name before the Committee at their next Meeting Name and full designatson, as it should appear in the List of Members Full permanent address Date My temporary address until Members are invited to pay their subscriptions by means of the Society's Banker's Form Cheques should be made payable to "The India Society" and crossed "Lloyds Bank I enclose my subscription for Life Membership, PS 12 128. od. "Ordinary E1 iis. 6d. BANKER'S FORM .......193 Messrs............................... Address Please pay to the India Society's Account at Lloyds Bank, 382, VICTORIA Street, London, S.W. 1, my Annual Subscription of One and a half Guineas now, and on the 1st of January every succeeding year unless otherwise ordered. (Signed) ..... PS1 IIs. 6d. This Order to be filled in by the Member, signed, and returned to the Hon. Treasurer, INDIA SOCIETY, 3 Victoria Street, London, S.W. 1. * Fill in Name and Address of you Banker.