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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(DECEMBER, 1911.
The pictures illustrate events in the life of Prince Gautama Baddha and the more popular of the Jätaks stories, namely, the stories of the Buddha's previous incarnations, perhaps also some scenes of semi-mythological history. Incidentally they illustrate the court life and popular life of the time as told in the romances and plays.
The pictures certainly spread over 200 years from 450 to 650." Some of the earliest, in caves IX and X, now, I believe, Tanished, may have been executed before the Christian era. The figures of Buddhas on the pillars of Cave X, which still exist, exhibit various forms of the nimbus and a style of drapery which suggest recollections of the Gandhára school of sculpture, Those figares may date from the fourth, or possibly the fifth century. But most of the paintings may be confidently assigned to the sixth century or the first half of the seventh. All the works copied under Mrs. Herringham's direction from Caves I, II, and XVII may be dated, I think, between A. D. 500 and 650.
In the Burlington Magazine for June, 1910, Mrs. Herringham published novel and valuable criticisms on the technique and æsthetic merits of the Ajantâ frescoer, of wbicb the principal passages are quoted in my History of Fine Arts in India and Ceylon. In the Guide and Catalogue of the Indian Court she has added further observations of much interest, some of which may now be cited. It is greatly to be desired that Mrs. Herringham should record her description and estimates of the frescoes in a convenient, systematic, and permanent form. The publications on the subject are all painfully fragmentary and incomplete.
The older accounts by Griffiths and other writers make little attempt to distinguish different. styles in the frescoes. According to Mrs. Herringham's expert judgment, "there are at least twenty different kinds of painting. Some pictures recall Greek and Roman composition and proportions, a few lato ones resemble the Chinese manner to a certain extent, but the majority belong to a phase of art which one can call nothing except Indian, for it is found nowhere else. In one respect the composition is unlike most Chinese painting, for there is not much landscape. The figures occupy the field, often grouped in a manner which recalls the alto-rilievo of sculpture ... ... .. . ..
Nearly all the painting has for its foundation definite outlines, generally first on the plaster a vivid red, corrected and emphasized as the painting proceeded with black or brown. The outline is in its final state firm but modulated and realistic, and not often like the calligraphic sweeping curves of the Chinese and Japanese. The drawing is, on the whole, like medieval Italian drawing .... .....
The quality of the painting varies from sublime to grotesque, from tender and graceful to other quite rough and coarse. But most of it has a kind of emphatic, passionate force, a taarked technical skill very difficult to suggest in copies done in a slighter medium.
To me the art is of a primitive, not decadent nature, struggling hard for fresh expression, The artists had a complete command of posture. Their seated and floating poses, especially are of great interest. Their knowledge of the types and positions, gestore and beauties of hands is simply amazing. Very many racial types are rendered; the features are often elaborately städied and of very high breeding, and one might call it stylistic breeding. The drawing of foliage and flowers is very beautiful. In some pictarea very considerable impetus of movement of different kinds is well suggested. Some of the schemes of colour are very remarkable and interesting and there is great variety. There is no other fine portrayal of a dark-coloured race by themselves.”
