Indian Concept of The Beautiful

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

The Book is based on a series of lectures, which were originally delivered by Sri Ramaswami Sastri under the auspices of the Travancore University. Starts with an overall evaluation of Architecture from all over the world, and how Indian Architecture and Sculpture, both Hindu and Buddhist, have been an influential factor on those and Special attention is paid to the indigenous architecture of India in total and also as exemplified respectively in Suchindrum and Trivandrum as well as in Vaikom, Ettumanoor and Ambalapuzha, and elsewhere in India as a whole.

The chapters on Indian iconography are specially noteworthy for the analysis of the rules and canons underlying image-making through the ages. Through his lecture on Indian Painting, he brings the originality of the Ajanta frescoes and the later Hindu and Muslim paintings, its influence to the fore.

Throughout these lectures, Indian IconographySastri has been to insisting on the natural characteristic of Indian art and on the importance of adherence to that nature, whatever contributions may be levied from the doctrines and practice. The Lectures devoted to Indian Music, Indian dancing, poetry and music, which donot eschew a reference to the recent controversies in the musical sphere, are very illuminating.

Mr. Sastri concludes with a retrospect and a prospect of Indian poetry and Indian drama. In short compass, this volume exhibits varied erudition and manifests the literary and artistic tastes.

The book portrays that original evaluation of every thing Indian be it Art, Music, Painting, Architecture, Iconography, Drama, Indian Poetry, and symbolism, was a forerunner and influencer for the world in all these areas of Art. The book will afford much instruction and enlightenment to all lovers of artistic achievement in our country.

James Fergusson says about India: "Its history is a mythic dream; its arts a quaint perplexity." Such an opinion, coming as it does from so distinguished and acute a student and critic of Indian Art, shows the need of a book like the present work which seeks to interpret and reveal the true inwardness and the real values of Indian Art. The subject is vast and the limitations of the author and of the work are many. But the aim is to essay a task which has been as yet imperfectly done and which is meant to be the precursor of bigger works by others. This book consists of the lectures delivered by the author under the auspices of the University of Travancore. I am sincerely grateful to Sachivottama Sir C. P. Ramaswami Iyer, who is as eminent in the realm of the ideal as in the realm of the real, for his illuminating foreword to this work. I hope that my work will make the public realise that India is not only a shrine of spirituality but is also a home of beauty and romance.

Under the appropriate title of" The Indian Concept of the Beautiful," Dewan Bahadur K. S. Ramaswami Sastri has brought together a series of reasoned discussions on the nature and embodiment of that concept; and proceeding on the basis that "every work of art", in his own words "has individual and national as well as universal elements", he hasoutlined the evolution of the idea of beauty in art and followed adequately in the footsteps of Burke who was the author of "The Sublime and the Beautiful" as well as a great orator and statesman.

Asserting that art is the realiser and the revealer of beauty in its relative and absolute aspects, Mr. Ramaswami Sastri has dealt specially with those elements that characterise Indian art. Basing himself upon Ananda as the prime element of aesthetics as well as of spirituality and dealing with the profound interrelations between the Hindu religious doctrine and Indian art, he has described the outer expression of that art in life, in dress, decoration and various forms of plastic and pictorial representation.

The book before us starts with Indian Architecture and Sculpture, both Hindu and Buddhist, and combats the doctrine that the "race of master builders is an extinct species". Special attention is paid to the indigenous architecture of Travancore exemplified respectively in Suchindrum and Trivandrum as well as in Vaikom, Ettumanoor and Ambalapuzha. He follows Havell in dealing with Sarcenic architecture and sustains the thesis that it is not an importation but a synthesis and development of Indian building tradition.

The chapters on Indian iconography are specially note- worthy for the analysis of the rules and canons underlying image-making through the ages. He canvasses the view that images were unknown at the time of the Vedas and his description of the place that Dhyanaslokas occupy in iconography is provocative of thought.

**Contents and Sample Pages**