When a subject perceives an object, the experience of it not only depends on the qualities of the object but on the state of the mind of the subject too. The ancient Indian sages elucidated this point beautifully using the metaphor of a mountain lake.
The clear still water of a mountain lake reflects the mountain and the sky with pristine clarity. You can do the same. If you are calm and still enough, you can reflect the mountain, the blue sky, and the moon exactly as they are. You reflect whatever you see just as it is, without distorting anything.
With that in mind, let’s proceed in our attempts to understand the visual aesthetics of India, especially the Indian paintings.
Just like almost every chapter of Indian history, you find layers upon layers of influences when it comes to Indian paintings. B. N. Goswamy, a renowned art historian, writes in his book The Spirit of Indian Painting.
Indian paintings have been variously described: as layered objects in which one thing, or thought, is gently laid upon another; like schist rocks, foliated and iridescent; like a couplet in Persian or a doha in Hindi, terse but meaningful; like a great floral carpet that lies rolled up but can be spread out endlessly, revealing new things with each mellow unfurling.
The question, then, one gets tempted to ask, is: are all these divergent streams flowing independently or are they like the branches of a tree with multiple intricate connections that go deep into their roots?
For that, we’ll have to explore the tree. In fact, we have a tree with us, created by the Indian artists, circa fourteenth century.
Let’s pay a close attention to this work and explore it slowly, one element at a time.
There is allure in the form: a tree with a slender, straight trunk from which curving branches issue forth with symmetry and evenness, first dipping low as if borne down by their weight and then rising slightly at the bud-like tips. Each branch is connected to the one above or below it by carefully spaced single, flame-like leaves, creating a latticework effect. In the centre of the tree’s crown sits a curled naga with many hoods. Just below the naga, but also set against the trunk is a layered, ribbed disc, looking like the solid wheel of a chariot.
Lower down stand two crowned monkey figures, clinging to the trunk but each with one hand raised, a wondering finger to the lips. And at the base two small cows, one on either side, flank the trunk. Higher up, almost merging with the swelling bud-tips, sit small hamsa figures at the very edge of the branches, as if weightless, their upraised tails brushing against the buds.
It takes a while to take in the form in its entirety, and its grace and sophistication. Then one begins to wonder what the figures on the tree stand for. What did the maker of this bronze have in mind? Is the mythical many-hooded naga in the tree one of those serpents celebrated in the Puranic texts: Vasuki, Shesha, Muchalinda? Is the disc the Sudarshana chakra of Vishnu? Where do the crowned monkey figures come from—the Ramayana? Are the cows at the base of the tree waiting for Krishna?
The hamsa figures eventually intrude upon these questions. By including the birds in the bronze, is the sculptor drawing our attention to the old myth where the hamsa is the ultimate symbol of discernment? In traditional belief, the bird has the neera — ksheera viveka — the ability to separate milk from water, drinking only the milk, and leaving the water behind. Or do the hamsas allude to some yogic practice, the syllables ham and sa standing for incoming and outgoing breaths?
There are more questions than answers when you observe such an art, but isn’t that the whole point of philosophy? And since it’s closely tied with every aspect of life in India, it only makes sense that the art leads your attention to the most important matters of your life.
Indian philosophy and aesthetics
In the Indian philosophical thought, the idea of an aesthetic experience is of great importance. The feeling of ecstasy on seeing a beautiful sunrise or truly fine work of art is considered to be akin to the ultimate bliss of enlightenment. In that joyous moment we are transcended to the level beyond human comprehension. That’s sublime — and it is this feeling of sublime which the Indian paintings aspired to bring to us.
The early Indian artists, much like in most other places, were inspired because of their religious beliefs. They saw the entire world as a reflection of the beauty of God. Thus, the aesthetics was permeated by visions of ideal beauty, which remains veiled in the ordinary human experience. The Indian art constantly seeks to lift that veil and to bring to us the life of the spirit, the life of the soul of man, that which is far more important than the transitory world around us. The artist does depict the pains and sorrows of the world but these are seen as only ephemeral.
Ananda Coomaraswamy, 20th-century art historian, was alluding to this when he said: ‘Where European art naturally depicts a moment of time, an arrested action or an effect of light, Oriental art represents a continuous condition.’
The art of Indian paintings
The six essential elements described in the Shastra of Indian paintings can be considered to be something that is common in painting everywhere. What is unique in this case is, it gives us the evidence of self-consciousness of the Indian painting that was presented since early times. The six limbs of Indian art refer, first, to the distinction of forms, rupa-bheda; secondly, to proportion, arrangement of line and mass, design, harmony, perspective, pramana; thirdly, to the emotion or aesthetic feeling expressed by the form, bhava; fourthly, for seeking for beauty and charm for the satisfaction of the aesthetic spirit, lavanya; fifthly, to the truth of the form and its suggestion, sadrishya; sixthly, to the turn, combination, harmony of colours, varnikabhanga. The distinctive character of Indian art, however, emerges from the turn given to each of the constituents of shadanga.
Lavanya in Indian paintings is again a charm and beauty of that which is subtle, of that which is psychic and spiritual. Physical beauty is not the only beauty in the world; this truth is vividly illustrated in the Indian painting. The deeper we travel in the heart and thought, in the soul and in the spirit, the deeper we travel from the form to the formless, and from the individual to the universal, the greater is the aesthetics, the greater is the charm, the greater is the harmony, the greater is the beauty and the underlying rasa of the experience of art.
Sri Aurobindo has given us an analysis of the adoration group of the mother and the child before the Buddha, which according to him is one of the most profound, tender and noble of the Ajanta paintings. Let’s take a look at it and then read Aurobindo’s commentary.
That which it deepens to is the turning of the soul of humanity in love to the benignant and calm Ineffable which has made itself sensible and human to us in the universal compassion of the Buddha, and the motive of the soul moment the painting interprets is the dedication of the awakening mind of the child, the coming of younger humanity, to that in which already the soul of the mother had learned to find and fix its spiritual joy. The eyes, brows, lips, face, poise of the head of the woman are filled with this spiritual emotion which is a continued memory and possession of the psychical release, the steady settled calm of the heart’s experience filled with an ineffable tenderness, the familiar depths which are yet moved with the wonder and always farther appeal of something that is infinite, the body and other limbs are grave masses of this emotion and in their poise a basic embodiment of it, while the hands prolong it in the dedicative putting forward of her child to meet the Eternal. This contact of the human and eternal is repeated in the smaller figure with a subtly and strongly indicated variation, the glad and childlike smile of awakening which promises but not yet possesses the depths that are to come, the hands disposed to receive and keep, the body in its looser curves and waves harmonising with that significance. The two have forgotten themselves and seem almost to forget and confound each other in that which they adore and contemplate, and yet the dedicating hands unite mother and child in the common act and feeling by their simultaneous gesture of maternal possession and spiritual giving. The two figures have at each point the same rhythm, but with a significant difference. The simplicity in the greatness and power, the fullness of expression gained by reserve and suppression and concentration which we find here is the perfect method of the classical art of India. And by this perfection Buddhist art became not merely an illustration of the religion and an expression of its thought and its religious feeling, history and legend, but a revealing interpretation of the spiritual sense of Buddhism and its profounder meaning to the soul of India.
Kalampedia 
