... the soul is at leisure from life. That is an indication of the utmost value pointing to the nature of the appeal made by Eastern art and the right way and mood for looking at its creations. Indian architecture especially demands this kind of inner study and this spiritual self-identification with its deepest meaning and will not otherwise reveal itself to us. The secular buildings of ancient India... to find and not demand from it the satisfaction of some quite other seeking or some very different turn of imagination and more limited superficial significance. This is the first truth of Indian architecture and its significance which demands emphasis and it leads at once to the answer to certain very common misapprehensions and objections. All art reposes on some unity and all its details, whether... unity and help its significance; otherwise it is not art. Now we find our Western critic telling us with an assurance which would be stupefying if one did not see how naturally it arose, that in Indian architecture there is no unity, which is as much as to say that there is here no great art at all, but only a skill in the execution of crowded and unrelated details. We are told even by otherwise sympathetic ...
... following passage, Sri Aurobindo states the criteria of the different styles without condemning any: Now it may readily be admitted that the failure to see at once the unity of this [Indian] architecture is perfectly natural to a European eye, because unity in the sense demanded by the Western conception, the Greek unity gained by much suppression and a sparing use of detail and circumstance... thousand years ago - the whole country must have witnessed a similar splendour of artistic activity. This means a tradition of at least two millenniums, placing Indian painting on a par with Indian architecture and sculpture. Buddhist, Hindu and later Rajput painters - amidst all the changes in style - reveal nevertheless the oneness and continuity of all Indian art and its essential spiritual tradition... agony and unreality of the world and the anguished seeking for a way out; "hence the immense calm and restraint that support the sorrow, in the true bliss of Nirvana". 38 These chapters on Indian architecture, sculpture and painting are the quintessence of art criticism, and the Indian student as well as the unbiased Westerner will find in these pages insights and explorations of immeasurable value ...
... Ajanta springs from the remarkably inward, spiritual and psychic turn which was given to the artistic conception and method by the pervading genius of Indian culture. Indian painting no more than Indian architecture and sculpture could escape from its absorbing motive, its transmuting atmosphere, the direct or subtle obsession of the mind that has been subtly and strangely changed, the eye that has been... missed where it does not strongly impose itself, and is not fully caught even where the power which is put into the expression is too great and direct to allow of denial. Indian painting like Indian architecture and sculpture appeals through the physical and psychical to another spiritual vision from which the artist worked and it is only when this is no less awakened in us than the aesthetic sense that ...
... which gives its tone to an art and by which we must judge. 1 Indian architecture, particularly Indian sacred architecture, in its inmost reality is an altar raised to the Divine Self, a House of Cosmic Spirit, an appeal and inspiration to the Infinite. Symbolism is the main characteristic of Indian architecture, and this is true even of the Indo- Muslim architecture, where the Indian mind ...
... theory of ancient Indian art at its greatest. Page 17 Indian architecture, particularly Indian sacred architecture, in its inmost reality is an altar raised to the Divine Self, a House of Cosmic Spirit, an appeal and inspiration to the Infinite. Symbolism is the main characteristic of Indian architecture, and this is true even of the Indo-Muslim architecture, where ' Sri ...
... and must be seen with the intuitive and spiritual eye. This is the distinctive character of Indian art and to ignore it is to fall into total incomprehension or into much misunderstanding. Indian architecture, painting, sculpture are not only intimately one in inspiration with the central things in Indian philosophy, religion, Yoga, culture, but a specially intense expression of their significance ...
... as their background and then as coming into the front in a movement of kingdoms and armies and nations show a high architectonic faculty akin in the sphere of poetry to that which laboured in Indian architecture, and the whole has been conducted with a large poetic art and vision. There is the same power to embrace great spaces in a total view and the same tendency to fill them with an abundance of minute ...
... months, I sent to the Princess more than 500 books on a variety of subjects connected with India. Knowing her special interest in culture, a large number of these books pertained to Indian art, Indian architecture, Indian dance, and Indian literature. Books on the Veda, Upanishad and the Gita as also on a number of modern commentators on Indian tradition of Yoga Page 31 constituted quite a big ...
... (h) Significance of Ramayana and Mahabharata; (i) Indian Women; (k) Problems of Hindu-Muslim Unity; (1) Masterpieces of Indian Art; (m) Masterpieces of Indian Architecture; (n) Problems of Indian Polity and Unity of India; and (o) Yoga 7. Philosophy of Education and Life: There has been one criticism of the educational system that it ...
... to the greatness of Indian creation in this field or at least to those elements of it which are most characteristic and bear the stamp of the ancient spiritual Page 577 greatness. Indian Architecture has indeed been always admired, but chiefly in the productions of the Indo-Saracenic school which in spite of their extraordinary delicacy and beauty have not the old-world greatness and power ...
... the spiritual future of India. Another article contains a full and discriminating account, copiously illustrated by numerous figures, of the history of the Kirtimukha, a standing feature in Indian architecture, and the development of its use as a constant decorative element and in Java a prominent structural motive. The right understanding of these details is a necessary equipment for the complete ...
... a religion which he can no longer dismiss as a barbarous superstition. In art I shall not turn to the opinion of the average European who knows nothing of the spirit, meaning or technique of Indian architecture, painting and sculpture. For the first I shall consult some recognised authority like Fergusson; for the others if critics like Mr. Havell are to be dismissed as partisans, I can at least learn ...
... Music, Painting, Architecture and Sculpture; b) Various stages of development in Art, particularly paintings. c) Outstanding paintings, right up to Mughal period; d) Indian architecture, temples, palaces, churches, Gurudwaras and others; Mughal architecture in India: Importance of Taj Mahal. Page 244 Class XI a) Systems of Indian Philosophy: ...
... Indian culture and Indian system of values. It should also include the study of Indian religion and spirituality, Indian ethics and Indian concept of dharma, Indian literature, Indian art, Indian architecture, and Indian polity. It may be suggested that these programmes can be spread over three years of courses. Page 225 IX In the light of the foregoing, it may be said that ...
... On Art - Addresses and Writings Some Extract from Sri Aurobindo's "Significance of Indian Art" I "Indian architecture, painting, sculpture are not only intimately one in inspiration with the Central things in Indian philosophy, religion, yoga, culture,-but a specially intense expression of their significance". II "The great artistic ...
... Triyugīnārāyan (1980 m.) that Vishnu, or Narayana, performed the celestial nuptials. The fire lit for the wedding ceremony still burns. The temple with a gopuram is curiously reminiscent of South Indian temple architecture. 3 "... The native Yurok believe" wrote Rick Gore ('Cascadia,' National Geographic, May 1998, p. 35), "the Creator taught them about Earth's movements at the beginning of time. Every... Sanskrit language. 1 In due course, after some interesting adventures, Agastya reached the southernmost section of the Western Ghats, the 1 Majumdar: The History and Culture of the Indian People, vol. 2 (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan). Page 83 Podiyil Hills (Malaya mountains) from which flows the river Tāmraparni. "There, in the cool mountain fastness, Agastya produced a ...
... casts a spell by purposefully running unity and variety together, as for example in sangathis (improvisations) while rendering kritis (songs) in classical South Indian music or in the repetition of motifs in Indian temple architecture or in the Ajanta paintings .Things are not to be judged on apriori grounds but only by their valid effects upon us. 'Rhetoric', of course, is another... "the same key ideas, key images and symbols, key words or phrases, key epithets, sometimes key lines or half-lines.. .give an atmosphere, a significant structure, a sort of psychological frame, an architecture"; the poet, especially the mystic poet, can thus resort to ā vrtti, repetition, "as one of the most powerful means of carrying home what has been thought or seen and fixing it in the mind in... power, and the resulting victory too has consequences both on the individual and the cosmic planes. Of Beatrice, who plays in the Divina Commedia a role not unlike Savitri's in the Indian epic, Charles Williams writes: "Let us say then that this was the effort—the union of virtue and beauty. It is, I think, true that virtue eventually runs away with the book... Philosophy—lady or no ...
... colonising expeditions carried indeed Indian blood and Indian culture to the islands of the archipelago, but the ships that set out from both the eastern and western coast were not fleets of invaders missioned to annex those outlying countries to an Indian empire but of exiles or adventurers carrying with them to yet uncultured peoples Indian religion, architecture, art, poetry, thought, life, manners... A Defence of Indian Culture A Defence of Indian Culture Indian Polity The Renaissance in India XIV Indian Polity - 4 A right knowledge of the facts and a right understanding of the character and principle of the Indian socio-political system disposes at once of the contention of occidental critics that the Indian mind, even if remarkable in metaphysics... manners. The idea of empire and even of world-empire was not absent from the Indian mind, but its world was the Indian world and the object the founding of the imperial unity of its peoples. This idea, the sense of this necessity, a constant urge towards its realisation is evident throughout the whole course of Indian history from earlier Vedic times through the heroic period represented by the traditions ...
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