Rajput painting, the subject of this work, is the Hindu painting of Rajputana and the Panjab Himalayas. Its period may be taken as from about the beginning of the 13th century A. D-when the Rajputs, dispossessed of capital cities such as Delhi, where classic Indian art and literature was still preserved, began to adjust their life to changed political conditions to the middle of the 19th century. The term Rajput is employed because all the works discussed have been produced under the patronage of Rajput princes; it conveniently summarizes the fact of broad distinction from Mughal; and is preferable to any sectarian name such as Hindů, because that would have too wide a geographical application. Rajput painting is the counterpart of the vernacular literature of Hindustan.
Rajput painting, needless to say, does not stand alone as the only school of Indian painting of its day. It is but one, though the most important, of several continuations and descendants of the old classic art of Buddhism and early Hinduism, adapted to changed demands; and at the same time it is to a considerable extent contemporary with a fresh and eclectic development, well known under the name of 'Indo-Persian', Mughal, or Indo-Taimuria' painting. The general relationship of all these schools will be most conveniently summarized in the accompanying table.
Rajput art stands to the classic art of India in the same relation as the contemporary vernaculars of Hindustan stand to Sanskrit. We are well acquainted with classic Sanskrit literature, typically of the period A.D. 300 to 800; this literature was written in the spoken language of the courts, and of all literati and savants. Less exalted personages used the dialects of the home and of the provinces, called Prakrits, and we are acquainted with the nature of these Prakrits through the quotations given in the Sanskrit plays, and through the literature written wholly in Prakrit. We know also the plastic arts of the classic age in their most aristocratic and accomplished forms, for example, the sculptures of Elephanta and Elura, and the brilliant paintings of Ajanta and Sigiri. We do not know the contemporary folk or 'Prakrit' plastic art in the same way. However, there can be no doubt that such an art existed, as it has existed everywhere until destroyed by Industrialism. Folk-art of the present day is a tradition handed down directly from the past, in Rajput painting, just as in the vernacular poetry of Hindustan, it is this folk-art, fused with hieratic and classic literary tradition, that emerges as the culture of the whole race, equally shared by kings and peasants.
The great cycles of classic Sanskrit literature and sastrija plastic art had passed their zenith before the end of the 9th century. The vernaculars of Hindustan, particularly the various dialects of Hindi, with Panjabi and Bengali, began to develop from the secondary Prakrits about the 11th century. This development was not merely an accidental change, but a movement of constructive evolution under the great spiritual impulse of the Pauranic renaissance, the emergence of the ultirnate phases of Indian religion in the cults of Vishnu and Siva. Another factor in the development of the vernaculars appears in the sense of national pride which inspired such bardic chronicles as the Prithviraj Rasan and the Hammir Rasan. The greater part of the literature, however, and almost all of the plastic art has a directly religious inspiration.
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