274

INDIA

bangles with images drawn from the Hindu pantheon.”
So at least says Sir George Birdwood, who commences a
most fascinating book on this subject with a full exposition
of the outward signs and symbols of the faith of the
Vedas. They are so intimately and unalterably associated
 with Indian art design that a comprehension of
one is a necessary preliminary to an understanding
of the other. Many of the outward and visible symbols
of these principles which govern Indian design are
exceedingly old. They may be found in Assyrian monuments,’
 in Biblical text, in a thousand other sources
which were old when Greek architecture and sculpture
were yet young.
We can hardly understand the reality of that life of
intimate association with the supernatural which is to be
found everywhere through the length and breadth of
India. It is not only the suggestion of art design which
is furnished by the quaint eccentricities of Hindu pantheology.
 « Everything that is made is for direct religious
 use, or has some religious significance,” says Sir G.
Birdwood. The materials of which different articles are
fashioned, their weight, and the colours in which they are
painted are fixed by religious rule,” and inasmuch as
everything in daily use in an Indian household is (or was
until European manufactures were introduced) made by
hand, every Indian workman is a religious artist. Designs
for purely decorative art are derived from many different
sources, and amongst them the representation of Dravidian
deities (Swami) are chiefly prevalent in Madras and the
southern districts of India, and the primitive Aryan forms
of decoration, such as the “ Knop and flower,” the ‘ tree
of life,” &amp;c., reduced to conventional forms, is the prevailing
 characteristic of the art industries of the north,
where they have been introduced through Persia and
Turkestan. Muhammadan art is not less indicative of
religious symbolism than that of the Hindus. Every one
knows the “prayer carpet,” although every one does not
recognise the meaning of the debased conventional form
! So much so that it is often maintained that India possesses no original art.