decorative charm which pervades Indian art. India is indebted for her natural and inborn love of ornamental design to the Dravidian or pre-Aryan people. In the opinion of this celebrated archaeologist, the Indo-Aryans were destitute of natural artistry, and they did not know how to articulate their ideas with the chisel or the brush. But once their race had been blended with the Dravidian, the mixed stock, which resulted from the union, found itself possessed of the means of putting its thoughts into visible concrete form.2 It must be admitted that the ancient Aryans were indebted to the Dravidians for their knowledge of architecture. Numerous hymns in the Rig Veda show that the walled cities which excited the cupidity and envy of the Aryans were mostly owned by the aboriginal Asuras; and there is not quite as much said of lordly edifices constructed by the Aryans themselves. At a later age, Vyasa in the Mahabharata acknowledges that the great palace of Yudhishtira was built by a Dānava, Maya by name, who had been overcome by Arjuna in battle, and an admission like this in a work apparently intended to extol the greatness of the Aryans to the skies is of considerable importance. In this connection the remarks of Dr. Rabindranath Tagore may be found interesting. He says, "Let no one imagine that the non-Aryan contributions had no value of their own. As a matter of fact, the old Dravidian culture was by no means to be despised, and the result of its combination with the Aryan, which formed the Hindu civilization, acquired both richness and depth under the influence of its Dravidian component. Dravidians might not be introspective or metaphysical, but they were artists, and they could sing, design, and construct. The transcendental thought of the Aryan, by its marriage with the emotional and creative art of the Dravidian, gave birth to an offspring, which was neither fully Aryan nor Dravidian, but Hindu."3 Fergusson offers very weighty observations on this much-vexed question of Dravidian architecture. The Aryan races in his opinion are not builders. They had too firm a conviction of the immortality of the soul and consequently of the existence of a future state ever to care much for a brick or stone immortality in this world; and no material art ever satisfied the cravings of their higher intellectual powers. Fergusson adds, 'The Turanians on the contrary never rose to a distinct idea of an external God or of a future state, but supplied the place of the latter by metempsychosis and final annihilation, while their intellectual status never enabled them to create such a ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2 Sir George Birdwood Memorial Lecture on 'Influence of Race on Early Indian Art'-Sir John Marshall. 3 "A vision of India"-Viswa Bharathi Quarterly, No.1. |