Excerpt from Asiatic Art, VII Century B. C.-XVIII Century A. D: Including Sculptures in Bronze and Stone, Ceramics, Miniatures and Textiles

This latter characteristic of the art of India, whatever its medium, is in fact, its main purpose. Whatever the tangible subject it is a piece Of artistic algebra that is capable Of calling up deep import in the mind and heart of those who can yield themselves to its vocative power. The art of India, in all times and places, has been a Yoga - a way to the reconcilia tion of the individual with the universe through the expression of qualities and power common to both. That is why this exhibition, like every exhibi tion of the art Of India, seems to have, moving in and out through it, something above and beyond the mere matter of execution. It is realistic in its forms, but these become mystical in the sense that they enable the beholder to see the significance of the apparently insignificant, and to glimpse through temporal images some quality that is Of the eternal.

A further achievement Of experience may here be gathered by those who are responsive to the modifications that the passing of time produces in the modes and moods of art. Two thousand years of art-history are here Visible. The outward signs of the Buddhist peace up to the seventh cen tury are here side by side with the succeeding Vigor of renascent Hinduism, with its fundamentally simple, though vastly elaborated code Of cosmicverity. The fineness Of the pictorial genius of Persia, transplanted in the sixteenth century to India, and there naturalized and deepened, can be studied in the Moghul miniatures in its relation to the indigenous Hindu pictorial art that, in the Rajput pictures, continued the great tradition of the ancient frescoes of Ajanta and elsewhere.

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