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A.D. The stories are:-

(I) There was a Parasara or machine manufacturer, who requested a Bhikshu to live with him during the rainy season when the Bhikshus cannot go out begging. The Bhikshu remained on the first floor of a house well looked after by the Parasara. At the end of the period of Vassa, when the Bhikshu went to bid him adieu, the Parasara wanted to give him a large sum of money as his wages. The Bhikshu said: "Hallo! I have done nothing to justify accepting wages." The man said, you were on the first floor, the ground-floor contained machinery which was worked by the pressure exerted by your body in whichever position you kept it either sitting, reclining, standing or walking. The working of the machinery has within the time you were there produced an immense number of phalas, and you are justified in accepting wages for exerting pressure.

The second story runs thus :

A Bhikshu went to Kamboja and lived under the protection of a Parasara. In the morning the Bhikshu wanted to go a-begging. The Parasara said the beggars are considered as very low in Kamboja, so you go in the usual way without uttering a word. He went through the principal thoroughfare of the city without saying anything. The Parasara had many rivals, and they thought that he had sent a new machinery to outrival them. So they immediately prepared another machine in the shape of a man. It could walk,

stretch out hands and even wink and move the eyelids. They sent this new machine-man towards the same Parasara's office. He at once knew what they meant and came out and praised them for their skill; but he said, "my machine can speak, yours cannot," and he bid the Bhikshu speak and he uttered the usual Ashish of a Bhikshu and then he nonplused his rivals.

These stories will show what improvements they made in science in ancient India.

C. FINE ARTS.

The Fine Arts are said to be sixty-four. But sixty-four is a traditional number. I have seen several lists of sixty-four Fine Arts. One list is called the list of Pancaliki, but we are not concerned with it here. The other is called the Mulakala divided into Vastukala, Dyutakala, Sayanakala, etc. There is another list of sixtyfour Kalas called the Aupayikikala; but the commentator says that the real number of Kalas is five hundred and eighteen. Unfortunately, Lowever, he does not enumerate them. I presume that all the sixty-four Aupayikikalas had their

literature, as a large number of them have many works devoted to them-and these are well known. For instance, music has an extensive literature. Bhubanananda Kavikanthabharana of Bengal, a contemporary of Sher Shah, in his encyclopedic work of all the eighteen sciences of the Hindus, devotes a book on Music and enumerates all the authors from the remotest antiquity to his own times; and these count by scores. Dancing is treated of by Kohala in his comprehensive work on the Natyasastra in several chapters. He explains Karanas, Angaharas and Nrtya, i.e., simple motions, complex motions, and dancing. Dasarupaka, too, distinguishes Nrtya and Nrittya. According to the notions of Kohala, acting preceded dance, and his work on Natyasastra, which, I believe, was compiled in the 2nd century B.C., treats of the whole of the histrionic art in all its details. He says that before him there were schools of Dramatic Art, each school having their Suttras, Bhasyas, Varttikas, Niruktas, Samgrahas and Karikas. Our idea was that Bharata was the only writer on the subject, but Kohala introduces him only as an interlocutor and puts the whole Sastra in his mouth. In this work Kohala and his collaborators give us an elaborate treatise on dancing, erection of the three forms of the stage, the divine, the imperial and the private the paraboloid, rectangular and the triangular-me uring 108, 64, and 32 cubits in length, the history of the Dramatic Art, the feelings displayed in dramas, the construction of the plot, its division into different parts, selection of actors, the effect of success, music, the metres to be used in drama, the languages employed by the actors representing different strata of society and so on. There are two dicta in this work to which I wish to draw special attention-one is that the feelings displayed in dramas have an infinite variety, and that whatever is useful in life is useful in drama.

No work on Painting is yet known, but paintings as old as the 2nd century B.C. have come down to us. This is of course under an exceptional circumstance-in a cave in an inaccessible part of the country. But we have excellent paintings of the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th centuries-some in cave temples, some on walls, and some on palm leaf MSS. Indian sculpture is an admiration of the whole world, some of them go back to the time of Buddha himself. Though in the western part of India, Indian sculpture was in a great measure influenced by the Hellenic art, competent critics have pronounced that India developed its own schools. In architecture too

There

though developing their own schools, the Indians were not slow in adopting foreign models. were minor arts, such as painting of the teeth and the limbs, shampooing, temple-decorations with rice and flours, flower-beds, dyeing of cloths, sewing, toy-making, ornamental work on gold, silver and jewellery.

D. HISTORY AND KINDRED SUBJECTS.

The reproach that Sanskrit literature has no history is not so well deserved as it is generally supposed to be. Many of the Mahapuranas have chapters on the successive dynasties of the Kings reigning in India. But they are written almost in the same words in all of them, the only differ. ence being that, at the end, some go a little longer than others. From this it has been supposed that originally there was one Purana, and that like the Saxon chronicle of England, it underwent modifications in different royal and monastic libraries at different times, the chronology portion of a Purana stopping at the period when the Purana was copied. If it is so, it gives a clue not only to the dynastic history of India, but also to the time when the Puranas were composed. How the epigraphic records are helping in the construction of ancient Indian history is well known. But we are not to depend on these meagre sources for the history of India during the entire period. From the beginning of the 7th century, we often have regular histories written by contemporary authors. The earliest of these is the history of Harsavardhan, the last known Emperor of the whole of Northern India. Since then, other works have been written in various forms, sometimes in the form of poems as the Navasahasankacharita and Navavikramankacharita, sometimes in the form of works in double entendre verses such as the Dvyasrayakosa and Ramacharita, sometimes in the form of panegyrics as the Gaudavaha, sometimes in the form of regular history as Prithvirajacharita and the Rajatarangini. It is hoped and expected that a more vigorous search may bring to light many more works of this nature.

It may not be out of place to mention here of a regular gazetteer of India, prepared three hundred years ago, at Patna, under the patronage of a Chowhan jagirdar of the Emperors of Delhi, by Pandit Jagamohan. What is curious is that the author quotes a number of his predecessors in the same line of work. One of these has come down to us, namely, the Brahmakhanda of the Bhavisyapurana. A good deal of historical and geographical information may be gleaned from these works. So the

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and the whole thing has been set at by Madhvacharya in the 14th century counting the number as sixteen, though a southerner he omits the two Saiva school Kashmir and puts the schools of Budd philosophy into one. With the Indians systems of Philosophy were not merely intellectual feat, an effort to penetrate into mysteries of the world and its creation-bu living, supernatural or rather a divine influe guiding the whole course of life and action in world and the next. That is the reason they cultivated it with such fervent enthusi and tried to realize it in their life. It was them a psychological experiment, and they wanted to have an exact science of life. T systems are not all metaphysical though aimed at some metaphysical end, for insta the Vaisesika is mainly composed of theorie Physical Science, the Nyaya of Logic, the Mins of the interpretation of sacred texts, and the Y of the Occult Science. The highest metaphys speculations are reached in the monism of San and the Nihilism of the Mahayanists. Mahayanists may also be credited with highest ideas of ethical philosophy.

POETRY AND DRAMA.

No race of men living in society can be v out poetry of some sort to enliven the toils miseries to which human nature is cursed. different races in the world cultivated poeti different ways. The Mahomedan world, fo stance, is averse to dramas. Some are intel ually so poor or otherwise so deeply eng that they cannot enjoy the exquisite deligh epics, some are poor in music, some are avers metre and would rather read large volum novels than twenty pages of poetry. But and India was gifted with the faculty of enjo poetry in the comprehensive sense of the te poetry in verse, poetry in prose, poetry in

and poetry in everything. Thus they have given the world an exquisite popular epic like the Ramayana, an exquisite traditional epic like Mahabharata, an exquisite artistic epic like Raghuvamsa, some of the most exquisite dramas in the world, some of the finest lyrics, some fine epigrams and an immense amount of one-verse poems, bundled into groups of eight, ten, hundred, seven hundred and so on. While leaving the subject of Poetry I cannot help giving a tribute to the genius which conceived an epic like the Raghuvamsa. It is unique in the world. Epic always means one or two or, say, a few leading figures from the start to finish. But in this poem, the leading figures are always vanishing and yet there is a unity of purpose, a unity of action, and moral unity, the like of which is not to be found anywhere else. The action rises gradually step by step to pyramidic height and again descends by slow gradation. Kalidasa was perfectly aware that he was bring. ing down the highest of the high personality of Vishnu to the world, and for him and to him he assigns the central cantos of the poem. The vanishing personalities in the beginning and at the end represent the perfection of one or two of the highest moral qualities, while the central personality represents the climax of perfection of infinite goodness, i.e., the combination of all moral excellences put together. No one approached his subject with greater trembling and greater awe, and no one achieved greater success, than our immortal Kalidasa.

MISCELLANEOUS.

A literature, to be effective and complete, must reflect the entire life and action of a race. If there is any truth in this maxim, that truth has been completely realized in Sanskrit literature. Never in ancient world and even in mediæval world before the manufacture of paper, and the invention of printing, was a literature so thoroughly representative of the race as the Sanskrit literature in India. Even the art of thieving has a literature. It has two different traditions or successions of teachers, one given by Bhasa in his Avimaraka and another, though different but more lengthy, by Sudraka in his Mrchhakatika. When we read them, we thought that it was a mere fancy. Would anyone

We

care to put the art of stealing into writing? were, however, agreeably surprised when an actual work on Chaurasastra was discovered. It was a thief's pocket-book on palm leaf, six inches long and about an inch and a half broad-giving many secret chemical preparations, many incantations and many hints to avoid difficulties. Another curiosity is a work on the art of hawking, which gives the life-history of the various kinds of hawks, the method of taming them and using them in sport. There are works on the Game of Chess and many other Indoor and Outdoor Games, but I will not take up the time of the audience by an enumeration of these curiosities in literature— they are not fit for occasions like this.

Now comes the question of the educative effect of this varied literature. Anything that strikes the imagination, and keeps it spell-bound, imperceptibly softens the mind and moulds it to a better purpose. If so, then this literature with its wonderful continuity, immense volume, and its infinite variety, has a strong claim to mould the characters of its admirers. The literature is accessible through Sanskrit which is acquired with some difficulty. Therefore, it is quite possible to keep aside the works which are likely to affect the mind unfavourably-a thing impossible in the literatures of living languages. In fact, what remains of this ancient literature is pure gold, the dross and alloy having disappeared during the revolutions of long centuries. As a means of intellectual training its value is very great; if less, less only than the scientific training of modern times. As an instrument of moral training it has a unique importance-as we see only the highest precepts in all their purity. and away from the imperfect teachers of these precepts. In the department of æsthetics, its position is unrivalled, for the models to study are as perfect as is possible with the imperfection of humanity. We have up till now greatly underrated the beneficial influence of Sanskrit literature owing to our ignorance of its extent, variety and worth-but with our advancing knowledge, our admiration for it has not only increased but is gradually becoming unqualified, and it is admiration which trains, which moulds, which purifies life and imparts a grace and a charm to it, the value of which cannot be over-rated.

BY MR. K. V. RAMASAWMI, B.A.

OUTH INDIA has never had any indigenous school of painting except perhaps a very feeble one that flourished at Tanjore in the 18th and 19th centuries. Many a splendid craft, combining use and beauty, have flourished within the walls of its cities. It has attained unapproachable heights of excellence and grandeur in sculpture. Innumerable cathedrals and shrines testify to its supreme genius for architecture. But the art of painting has had little or no development. The reasons for this, we believe, are to be found in the peculiar character and circumstances of the Tamil race. The Tamil race, with its dire religious earnestness and piety, with its prodigious instincts for labour, has found its expression in high-built cathedral and wellwrought image. Its monuments have been temples reared with the labour of years, and bronzes and statues wrought and moulded with incessant labour and industry.

Devoid though we are of any great traditions of painting, we have been watching with great interest and admiration the rise of the new school of painters in the sister province of Bengal, some of whose works were recently exhibited in Madras. The rise and achievements of this school are now matter of history. It was in the closing years of the last century when Mr. E. B. Havell was making a collection of old Indian paintings for the Calcutta Art Gallery, that Sj. Abanindra Nath Tagore, then fresh from the study of Sanskrit and Persian literature and moved by strange artistic impulses, set himself to study those paintings of the old masters. Encouraged by Mr. Havell, he began to revive in paintings of his own the old traditions and methods. He soon became the head and inspiration of a great school of young and enthusiastic artists. More than twenty years have elapsed and great and striking work has been done by this school. Exhibitions of their work have been held in Paris and in London, and have evoked considerable appreciation from the art-critics of the West. This is the first time, however, that Madras has had the good fortune of seeing the paintings of this new school.

The great value of this new school lies in its perfectly national character, in its adoption of national methods and subjects. These artists have one and all of them set themselves to interpreting Indian life and Indian ideals. Their technique and methods too are mainly based on the older schools of our country. Though one may see

here and there some traces of European and Japanese influence, the small band of Bengali artists have succeeded remarkably in getting back not only the technique but also the spirit of our ancient painters. In the present Exhibition were brought together a large number of the paintings of these artists; and a close study of some of the more prominent among them will throw considerable light on the school and its work.

A most important group of paintings in the collection are those of Sj. Nanda Lal Bose. The fame of Sj. Nanda Lal Bose is already wellestablished as one of the greatest painters of the new school alike for depth and artistic skill and for quantity of production. His Sati, with its passionate burden of devotion, his Dance of Siva, with its strange rhythm and mystic force, his Yudhishtira's Ascent to Heaven, with its solitary and awful grandeur, have long been recognised as supreme works of genius. In the present Exhibition are to be found a number of other paintings of this artist which are on a level with his past productions.

The episode

The first is The Brother of Rama. itself is a remarkable one in the story of the ancient epic. Bharatha, hearing of Rama's exile, follows him into the forest and there, falling at his feet, implores him long and passionately to come and rule in his just and holy right. At last finding Rama firm and unshakable in his resolve, Bharatha begs of him his sandals and takes them proposing to rule in their name. "Henceforth," says the Ramayana, "wearing bark and matted locks and dressed in the guise of an ascetic, the heroic Bharatha dwelt in Nandigrama with his forces; and having consigned all rule unto the sandals, Bharatha himself held the umbrella and the chowri over them." The figure of Bharatha is drawn in large and majestic proportions. He sits in an attitude of reverent worship, holding the umbrella over the sandals, which are placed up above on the throne. His whole frame is instinct with a and mystic sorrow, which has passed into and tinged his very eyelids and hands. The picture however is no mere translation of an old story: it is a true painter's vision. The sorrow of Bharatha that sits here worshipping the feet of the "true king and noble brother" is not a mere brother's or patriot's; one sees in that saintly face traces also of a profound grief at an unrighteous world,

deep

where "all grows to seed and things rank and gross possess it." The colour of the painting is a soft dark blue which is wonderfully in unison with its spirit of sorrow.

Two other paintings by the same hand are also worthy of study. The one is a painting of Sujata. Sujata, childless daughter of the village-headman, rose early in the morning, milked the best cows belonging to her father and with this milk went to worship the tree-god of the village. Now on that very morning Buddha had completed his long fast and was resting under the tree. Sujata saw his glorious form and offered him the milk prepared for the gods. Buddha accepted it gratefully and granted her the boon of motherhood. Another is that of Uma who, finding her beauty of no avail, undergoes severe penance in order to win the love of the Divine 'Anchorite. The burden of both the paintings is the same. Both Sujata and Uma are full of a deep longing and prayer, the one seeking for the boon of motherhood, the other for love which is woman's fulfilment. In both the paintings is revealed a power wrought of austerity, and prayer and penance. Nanda L Bose's work, always tinged with a certain sadness, has however in the representation of these two austere, martyr-like souls of the ancient world, invested them with a more than usual degree of spiritual woe and severity.

Another artist, whose subjects are drawn from the same source of religion and mythology, and who has attained an equal depth and power in the treatment of them, is Sj Sailendra Nath Dey. There are three such paintings in the present collection, one dealing with the story of Sindhu, another Shiva's Wedding, and the third, a remarkable outline picture of Rama's farewell to Kaucalya. The first painting is full of beauty. and deep pathos. The story is well known, how Sindhu, the only son of old infirm parents, was, while filling his pitcher one evening in the Sarayu, suddenly killed by Dasaratha and the latter thereby incurred the curse that deprived him of his Ram... In the foreground is to he seen Sindhu, a fine, stalwart, well-built youth, carrying on his shoulder a dholi bearing his two blind old parents. The figures of the two aged parents are drawn with exquisite skill and feeling. They are full of an expressible pathos and sorrow, vividly recalling to our minds the touching simile of the ancient poet "like unto birds with their wings severed." Beyond flows the Sarayu and a little higher is seen the rising moon. The pale

twilight and the hushed stream seem already to hint of the coming tragedy.

Shiva's Wedding is equally characteristic. The whole figure of Siva moves with a serenity and mystic grace for a parellel to which one should go to the paintings of Ajanta or the sculptures of Borobudur.

The most remarkable work of this painter is however The Departure of Lama. If nothing else had come to us of this school but this single drawing, it would be enough to establish the greatness of this school. It is full of beauty of line and remarkable composition. Its exquisite perfection and grace recall the fine curves and chiselled beauty of some of our own bronzes. We have here a supreme moment in the epic story. Kaucalya, profoundly perturbed at the news of Rama's departure to the forest, begs him long and with tears, to desist from his exile and to stav and console her: but finding him determined upon obeying his father's behests, at last "that best of women, Kaucalya, with broad eyes, subduing her sorrow, propitiated the gods with flowers and hymns and began to offer oblations unto the fire with the help of Brahmins for the welfare of Rama." This is the scene represented. Kaucalya is seated before the holy fire; but her grief is rendered in a way more poignant than words could do. Before her stands Rama with his head bent and palms joined. Already over his bent head there seems to breathe the mother's benediction. "May all the gods protect thee when thou shalt repair unto the woods. May the mountains, oceans, heaven, earth, air and all things, moveable and immoveable, planets and stars, day and night and evening, protect thee."

Among the remaining groups of paintings, those of Sj. Samarendra Nath Gupta form one of the most charming and beautiful. His paintings are all excellent examples of fine colour-schemes, harmonious and most decorative in arrangement of colour. They can be best seen in The Holi Festival and The spring. Apart from colour, these pictures are full of delicacy and feeling. Two other paintings, The Moths and The Broken String, are brilliant studies in artificial light effect. The Moths especially is a striking one. inset, a patch of blue sky with stars. It is poetic, though perhaps conscious, symbolism, that, while contemplating the little world of moths, thus suddenly reveals the great world of stars above.

It contains an

The paintings of Sj. Charu Chandra Roy are as beautifully coloured as those of Sj. S. Gupta. Their content however is of greater interest.

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