The Ancient Heritage Spots

 

The Mind Blowing...... Indian Art..

Heritage - if one thinks of our ancient heritage , we will definetly feel so proud that our heart pounds. In this section we try to bring some great heritage sites of India.

The story of art is the story of humankind: of human perceptions and thoughts. From the early river valley civilisation onwards, we see the foundations of the art of one of the oldest civilisations of the world. We see a vision of the world and the roots of a culture that has survived for more than 5,000 years. It is a culture based upon the belief of an underlying unity of the whole of creation. Joyous surrender to the natural order, rather than assertion and control over the forces around us, mark the vision of life and art in the centuries to come.

The sites which are definetly engineering marvels stood testing times of climate, enemies , invaders , vandalizers... are eye openers with many stories to tell. The rich marvelous sculptures with a well defined delicacy and supremacy will question wheter the technology has improved in modern times or disappeared.

For the Indian sculptor, the Grace of divinity is everywhere. The stone before him contains the image of the Divine, and it is for him to but remove the outward aspects and to release that form that is within. It is not only a personal joy of discovery and creation, it is also one of sharing the beauty inherent in the world with others.

The creation of art in India has been a process of meditation: a process of a life spent in worship and discovery. The creation of the beauty of form is for the sculptor a joyous rediscovery each time of the glory and beauty that is divine. The sculpture of India is naturalistic in a vastly different way from the art that attempts to portray only the transitory shapes of the objects of the world. Here, naturalism is the expression of that sense that moves beneath the surface of objects, that inner being of trees, animals and people: the spirit that moves the whole of creation. As ego and belief in one’s identity is considered to be an illusion of our limited sensibilities, the focus is never on the individual. For about a thousand years in early times, vast quantities of art was produced in India. This depicted deities, mythical creatures, animals, plants, trees, forms that combined these beings in a great harmony, and also common men and women. Yet this art never depicted the kings who patronised it. Nor was the name of the artist mentioned. According to Chitrasutra, the treatise on art-making, personalities are too unimportant to be depicted in art. The purpose of art is a noble one: to show the eternal beyond the ephemeral.

In the fourth millennium B.C., one of the earliest civilisations of the world was developing in the river valleys of the Indian subcontinent. The basic cause for this was the growth of agriculture. Instead of fighting for survival, people could now begin to improve their lives. The first sites of this civilisation were discovered in the basin of the Indus river, and the name Indus Valley civilisation has remained. However, hundreds of other sites have been found in recent decades over a vast area, including coastal Gujarat, Maharashtra and eastwards up to Uttar Pradesh. Estimations of the area covered by this civilisation vary from 1.2 million square kilometres to 2.5 million sq km. In any case, it was by far the largest area of any civilisation in the world at that time. There was a sophisticated concept of town planning. The cities that have been excavated reveal that there were well-planned grids with broad main roads and smaller lanes intersecting at right angles. There were large networks of hundreds of wells, which supplied water to the residents. A sophisticated drainage system was in existence and even the smallest houses were connected to it. Houses were made of fired clay bricks. The standardised dimensions of these bricks, found in the many cities across this civilisation, are remarkable. The houses had several storeys. Excavations across this culture have not revealed evidence of military forces or weaponry for warfare. While the art of other civilisations has many images of prisoners, monuments to war victories and of other activities related to warfare, the art of the Indus Valley has not a single such depiction.

In the first of our Heritage Sites .. we provide information about Hampi - the UNESCO world heritage site

Click Here to have a look at HAMPI the WOrld Heritage SIte