Indian Asia [antikvár]

Introduction Indian civilization, between about 500 bc and 1200 ad, was perhaps the most glorious and influential the world has ever seen. Amazingly, the Indian achievement is still not properly recognized; India's present problems may obscure it to some extent. But there is no longer any reason why the western world should remain bhnd to the special importance and value of India's contribution to world history and culture. The subcontinent of India, which includes modern Pakistan and Bangladesh, is roughly the size of Europe. Westerners may fmd it hard to believe, but in fact her culture, literary and artistic, has produced more major works of art and intellect than the whole of the European tradition; and that despite the extraordinarily destructive tropical climate which has consumed untold quantities of sculpture, painting and manuscript. If the art and culture of Indianized Southeast Asia are reckoned in, the wealth of the integrated dvihzation appears so vast as to defeat the grasp of the imagination. The creative potential of Indian culture made itself felt far beyond the borders even of the Indianized kingdoms of Southeast Asia. Cultural realizations of fertile Indian conceprions took place in China, Japan, Tibet, inner Asia and the Mediterranean world. Their genuine influence in the west is still growing. There can no longer be any real doubt that both Islam and Christianity owe the fotm-dations of both their mystical and their scientific achievements to Indian initiatives. It is also surprising that western historians, when they discuss Asia, leave almost completely out of account the Indian tradition of maritime trade which was already over a millennium old before the Arabs came onto the stage of history, and which continued right through the Middle Ages. India's merchant adventurers were exploring the coasts of Asia, and developing international commerce over thousands of miles of sea in large cargo and passenger ships while the Romans were stiU developing the Mediterranean. What we know of material culture in Indian Asia is tiny in relation to what once existed. But an enormous amount certainly waits to be unearthed, and archaeology has in that sense only begun. There could be stupendous discoveries yet to be made. We know, for example, that somewhere adjacent to the Kabul region of modern Afghanistan there was in the 4th century ad a reclining sculpture of the dying Buddha 1,000 feet long, carved into a clifTface. It is no longer visible. It is scarcely conceivable that it should have been destroyed. It is probably still lying in position, buried perhaps under fallen rock. To defme the character of an entire civilization which extended at least two thousand years and many thousands of miles is a daunting task. But for Indian Asia there is a clear unifying root. This is a complex of ancient symbohc ideas which was fixed and condensed into two bodies of text that were treated as sacred, and so preserved unchanged over more than two and a half millennia. The first is the Hindu Veda, a collection of ancient hymns with their associated Sanskrit literature and famous appendix called the Upanishads. The second is the literature of Buddhism. Certainly in their modern forms scattered throughout this vast area of the world the various expressions of Hindu and Buddhist ideas may seem outwardly different from one another, each being intimately woven into the fabric of its specific society. But through the visual arts their intrinsic unity as branches from the same root becomes clearly apparent. This root spread out from India to strike deep into the soil of those disparate regions of Asia, with their widely various populations and totally dissimilar physical environments. Buddhism in particular naturahzed itself in the freezing wastes of Mongolia among a population of horse-breeding nomads hving in tents, in the cultivated heartland of China, and among tropical forest on the vast river plains of Southeast Asia. Hinduism established itself for varying lengths of time on the plains of Indochina and in the volcanic southeastern islands; there on Bah it still flourishes. The art which survives to testify to the greatness of the culture of Indian Asia represents a totally unique manifestation of the human creative spirit. It has taken many decades for it to win appropriate recognition in the west; that process will be charted in this book. Among the surviving monuments, fortunately, are many that have been reclaimed from the grip of very hostile environments — rocky desert or tropical jungle - and restored to surprisingly good condition; their sculpture and ornament, if not their surface painting, may be relatively well preserved, and give a good idea of their original magnificence. The way some monuments are still used can give vital clues to the meaning and usage of comparable ancient works now abandoned. But when pohtical and financial circumstances finally permit we can look forward to a considerable increase in our knowledge and appreciation of the splendid civilization that was Indian Asia.