1875.] Rajendralala Mitra — On Greek Art in India. 167 



casts, and pictures only, whei-eas Europeans are familiar with large collec- 

 tions of authentic specimens in their great national museums. I have, how- 

 ever, one advantage : I have studied the subject in my mature years, and 

 am, I presume, free from those idolas of infancy which grow with our growth 

 as "the bone of our bone and tbe flesh of our flesh," and warp the result of 

 even the clearest reasoning. Nor have I, in this respect, I fancy, any of 

 those prepossessions which, according to Bacon, " infest the meditations, 

 opinions, and doctrines of certain men with some conceit which they have 

 most admired, or some sciences which they have most applied, and which 

 give to all things else a tincture according to them utterly untrue and im- 

 proper." Anyhow to judge of a thing we must have some data or proof, 

 and in the case of sculpture the general character or style is what is common- 

 ly appealed to. Relying on it some men have not only been able to distin- 

 guish Greek from Indian sculptures, but to classify them into Greek, Greco- 

 Bactrian, Greco-Indian, Greco-Scythian, and the like, and even to -identify 

 the portrait of Kanishka from the mere look of a statue fresh exhumed 

 from the bowels of the earth. And yet I find general appearance to be 

 a proof which is often of a very doubtful character and quite unreliable. 

 It is an uncertain quantity, liable to be diversified under different circum- 

 stances and the knowledge and predilection of the observer, and what may 

 be supposed by one to be decisively similar, may be pronounced by another 

 as radically different in every line and feature. Doubtless, there is such a 

 thing as style in painting and literary composition, which, however ethereal 

 and undefinable, is nevertheless easily perceptible by experts, and the 

 same may be said of sculpture ; but in the latter case the difficulty of de- 

 termining it is so very excessive that it cannot be accepted as a satisfactory 

 proof in settling any question at issue with reference to any particular 

 piece of sculpture. There may be, in a statue, a suavity of outline, or free 

 treatment of the position or drapery, or general finish in chiselling,— 

 peculiarities which are associated with Greek art — but they are of no import 

 when closely inspected ; and when the enquiry is what is the nationality of 

 a statue found in a foreign soil, it is a flagrant begging of the question to 

 say it must be Greek because it is good. I cannot better illustrate this than 

 by reference to these two collographs which I submit to your examination. 

 One of these is from the Ganes'a cave, Udayagiri, and the other from the 

 Hani Naur of the same place. Mr. Fergusson is of opinion that the story 

 of " the Ganes'a is the purer and the more nearly allied to Greek art. That 

 in the Raja Rani, (by which he means Rani Naur) though fully as vigorous 

 and full of life, is inferior in style and much more Indian in detail and cos- 

 tume ;" and he comes to the conclusion that " some of the Yavana invaders 

 mentioned" in his work (p. 17-3 of the Tree and Serpent Worship, 2nd Ed.), 

 " introduced Greek art into this remote corner some time, it may be, before 

 or about the Christian era ; but that instead of becoming more delicate and 



