My excuse for venturing on a study of Portraiture in stone and metal in South India, and of the evolution of this art, is that, in spite of its interest, the subject has attracted very little attention. No product of the culture of south India has been more ignored, indeed, than its Art. It is my hope that the study attempted in these pages may help towards an adequate appreciation of an interesting development of Indian Art, and to a proper appraisement of the cultural influences which, in south India, have governed its evolution.
The character of this work has been determined largely by the importance I have attached to specimens which bear inscriptions, or are referred to in epigraphical or other dated or datable records. These records have proved of great value for this study, for they not only contain dates, but they also preserve information about the circumstances in which, and the motives from which, the sculptures were set up. Till the history of south Indian architecture is completely investigated and at least the outlines of the evolution of south Indian iconography are traced, it will not be possible to attempt a satisfactory history of the important branch of Art dealt with in this work.
Except for minor additions and alterations and some re-arrangement, this work has remained in the form in which it was completed by the middle of 1925. Some chapters written originally for this work are being separately published by me under the title, South Indian Portraits, in Stone and Metal.
It is perhaps superfluous to point out that the titles on many of the plates point only to the most probable identification of the sculptures illustrated. A full discussion of the probabilities is to be found in the text.
I am bound to acknowledge my great thank-fulness to Sir John Marshall, Director-General of Archology in India, for his kindness in granting me permission to utilise photographs taken by the Arachnological Survey of India, in specially relaxing for me the rules regarding their publication, and in sanctioning their supply at a nominal charge: were it not for his kindness the work could not have been published at all. My thanks are also due to the Madras Epigraphist, an officer of the Arachnological Survey of India, for having kindly followed up my request and secured photographs of various portrait-pieces, which could not easily be taken by the amateur. I am indebted to Mr. P. Visvanatha Aiyar, Artist of the Madras Epigraphist's Office, for many interesting hints.
To my friend, Mr. K. Ramakotisvara Rao, Editor of the Triveni, Madras, I owe a heavy debt of gratitude, as much for the readiness with which he took up the publication of this work in instalments in his excellent journal as for the kindness with which he consented to cease publishing further instalments in order that the work might be published by the India Society and reach a wide public. To the India Society itself my thanks are due for having brought out a work the publication of which in a suitable form had often been despaired of by me.
Well-authenticated portrait statues are rare in India': so wrote an able authority on Indian art not many years ago. This paucity was one of the symptoms on which he based a theory of 'Hindu disinclination to or aversion from realistic likeness, though, in the same breath, he made practically an admission that the paucity was due to no temperamental infirmities of the Hindu."
Very little search has been made for this class of sculptures, and no effort whatever has been made to understand or to appraise the value of such few specimens as have attracted attention.
In at least one portion of India, the southern, there have survived enough examples of portrait sculpture to compel us to abandon, in so far at least as that part of India is concerned, the theory of Hindu disinclination to realism, all too confidently asserted.
Even in the nooks and corners of south India and in its earliest monuments we come across sculptures which are indubitably portraits. We know no reason for supposing that the instinct for portraiture was stronger in the south of India than in the north, and if as many examples of the art of the portrait sculptor are not traceable in the north as in the south, it must be due to causes other than temperamental.
Indian art has yet to be studied with attention and sympathy, and the need for careful and unbiased study is all the greater in the case of the art of the south of India, for the cultural influences which moulded its growth have yet to be determined. In examining the examples and the evolution of portraiture in the south, comparison with specimens in other parts of India and with the course of the evolution in those areas is almost inevitable, and is certainly illuminating. Equally valu-able is a study of the class of sculptured monuments known as hero-stones. The true character of the art of portraiture as practised in south India can be grasped, and its history traced, only in the light afforded by the practice of setting up hero-stones and by the motives which impelled the peoples of India to patronise the art of the portrait sculptor.
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