Karmayogi

SR No.: 011075
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Total Pages: 751
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 139 MB

Page 685

maintain that most of the unnecessary difficulties which we have created for our selves in India have been those of the practical man ignorantly trampling on Indian ideals. It certainly has been the practical men who are responsible for all the injury which we have done to Indian art and craft in the last fifty years. It is the practical men who have vainly tried in India to detach the fine arts from the industrial arts, believing that we can impose upon India European idoals in the former without destroying all
Indian tradition in ditions in the latter. It is the practical men who, in the name of scientific progress, have helped to ruin Indian handicrafts, and still continue to be so, in spite of the lessons they might learn from the industrial history of modern Europe.
INDIAN HANDICRAFTS.
CALBO
Indian handicraft means, economically, for India by far the most important fac tor in the sum total of her present existing industry, after agriculture. It is impossible to give exact figures, because offrial statistics of Indian industry hitherto ignored this vital fact, and have given very few precise particulars of industry in India except of that created by European commercialism. But it is neverver theless a fact that the, sum total of the outturn of all all European industry in India represents a smaller economic naket than that of the greatest of Indian handicrafts-hand-loom weaving.
→000 Oriental influence on the arts of the west, especially well-established in the of architectural monumenta, long ago became an archeological axiom. But all who have referred to it have thought chiefly of the Byzantine influence.
We do not need to consider this question (here), and putting aside all the oriental influences which have reached us through Byzantine art and that indirect route, we shall limit our discussion the forms of definitely Musalman character net with in our art, and by this line of study alone, we shall find it possible to define the influences directly felt. Seen from from this point of view, the is rather novel. Suspected question vaguely by Viollet le Duc, apprehended to
paper,
Handicraft is still the backbone of the Indian industrial organisation, and, as Sir the discussion George Birdwood said which followed Mr. Cecil Burn's read before this Society last May," the limited extent by Emeric David, Indian craftsmen to this day are intrinsiMerimee and by De Coumond, almost cally, in every respect, capable of sustainestablished, by Longperier, outlined by ing their reputation of the past in its greatest periods, to its highest pitch." Courajob, it has only been recently statement of the Frincipal of the Bom-made the subject of precise statements The state hay School of Art that the ancient handi- and general conclusions, thanks to the as that of the craft of India is as dead Greeks, or as that of the Renaissance in Europe, may seem to be an emphatic contradiction to this assertion. Yet it may be accepted as almost literal truth, so far
witch"
the British administration of India is as the Briti ......ned. concerned. Except for the work of a few Schools of Art, where, as Sir George Birdwood truly observe, "they have been from time to time degraded from their higher objects, and debased to the status of commercial factories; for the purpose of providing an income out of the peuurious pocket of the globe-trotter in
MANMAYOGIN.
part payment of the cost of their mantenance by the State," and except for occasional spasmodic and unorganised of forts to display Indian handicraft in local and international exhibitions, the British administration has always regarded Indian handicraft as dead and buried. The work done inside the Indian Schools of Art has not yet touched the edge of Indian industry, and can never do so, under their present organisation. The best craftwork ever produced in an Indian art school has only rarely equalled, and never excelled, the best which can be and in still being produced by the handicrafts men who remain entirely outside the influence of our modern educational schemes.
(To be Continued.)
have
BEGISTERED
THE INFLUENCE OF MUSALMAN ART ON THE ARTS OF WESTERN EUROPE..
TRADE MAR
LARGEST IN INDIA Awarded Medal at the Indian industrial Exhibition of 1906-07. MACHINE-MADE
HE ARYA FACTORY
excellent excellent work M. Emile Bertaux on the monuments of Central Italy, and to the two chaptors so full of facts and ideas which Jean Marquet de Vaneelot has devoted to it in the General History of Art edited by Andre Michel.
The artistic influence of Islam made itself felt in Europe from the commencement of fite supremacy in the East Mediterranean area. From Carolingian times. Arab barquens had ventured west as far ne the Atlantic, and the most remote countries in the Western world seem to have henceforward made their contribu
CASH BOXES, LOCKS, &c. Extract from Mr. J. G. Cutuming, I. C.'sS Special Report Industrial Survey of Ben. A (Vida Calcutta Gette, August 26th, 1908). "THE ARYA FACTORY or 107, MACHUA BAZAR ROAD, CALCUTTA, turns out good articles
01 41ACHUA BASAR ROAD, Calcutta Tel Add:-"TRUNKS," CALUUTTA.
STOVE PAITED STEEL TRUNKS
11
tion to Musalman trade. Coins of the Ommiade (a of the second half of the seventh century) have been found not only in Russia and Poland, but even an far as Denmark and Sweden. It seems evident, though the rarity of examples rather diminished the strength of the argument, that many objects of sumptuary art used in Europe had an Oriental origin.
One of the first decorative motifs which
the West borrowed from the East of the hows or scared tree, an object of worship, symbol of immortality and future life, which we find amongst the Assyrians and Sasanian Persiane rarely represented by itself, more often flanked by animals 'affronted' or 'back to to back', as in the mosaics of Germigny des Prea, Lothair's Gospel and Charles the Bald's Bible in the National Library, and the capital in the crypt of Saint-Laurent of Grenoble. Very often, the Western artist, not understand ing it, has perceptibly altered the original motif, either by making a sin simple palmetto of it, or by placing it between a hare and a pursuing archer, showing thus his ignorance of the former law of symmetry. The struggle of two animals,-almost always one above the other,--appear already on rare examples such as the ivory plaque of Tutilo, in the treasure of St. Gall or the reliquary of Gellone; as well as the conventional flower transmitted by the Assyrians to the Persians, and by them to the Byzantines mosaic of Germigny des Pres.
the
SHAWLS
Very nicely worked Rs. 14 to 35 per pair (ordinary) Rs. 45 to 75 Do. (Kashmiri) Rs. 75 to 250 and upwards also all sorts of Dhussas, Alwans, Wrappers, and other poshimina goods can be had
Amount refunded if unap ovded.
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LAHORE
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Just out!
THE MASTER AS I SAW HIM
BEING PAGES FROM THE LIFE OF THE SWAMI VIVEKANANDA BY, HIS DISCIPLE, NIVEDITA
OF RAMARISHNA-VIVEKANANDA authoress of the WER OF INDIAN LIFE, CRADLE TALES OF HINDUISM KALI THE MOTHER etc. Paper boards Rs. 2-8 Cloth boards R. 2-12 Postage extra. To be had at
UDBODHON OFFICE. 1-13, Gopal Neogi's Lane,
CALCUTTA
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