IRJMSH Vol 7 Issue 2 [Year 2016] ISSN 2277 – 9809 (0nline) 2348–9359 (Print) The Cultural and Architectural History India BALKAR SINGH ASST. PROFESSOR , DEPT. OF HISTORY , IGU, MEERPUR, REWARI MANOJ KUMAR RESEARCH SCHOLAR DEPT. OF HISTORY, IGU, MEERPUR, REWARI Abstract Before partition in 1947, the Indian subcontinent includes Pakistan, India and Bangladesh; today, the three independent countries and nations. This Indian Subcontinent has a history of some five millennium years and was spread over the area of one and a half millions of square miles (Swarup, 1968). The region is rich in natural as well as physical beauty. It has mountains, plains, forests, deserts, lakes, hills, and rivers with different climate and seasons throughout the year. This natural beauty has deep influence on the culture and life style of the people of the region. The culture of India is one of the oldest in the world which is rich and diverse. Culture is everything in a particular society and Indian culture is no easy composite of varying styles and influences. Indian culture was moulded throughout various eras of history. It is a medley of amazing diversities and startling contradictions, but above all, it represents the multifaceted aspects of India as a whole. India is the birthplace of renowned religions such as Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism, which have a strong prevalence and influence not only over India, but also the whole world. India has managed to preserve its culture and traditions through the ages, all the while absorbing customs, traditions and ideas from both invaders and immigrants. Many cultural practices, languages, customs and dances are examples of this co- mingling over centuries. Thus, Indian culture is a composite mixture of varying styles and influences. It would not be an exaggeration to note that all diverse in nature encompass to form the culture of India. Very few countries in the world have such an ancient and diverse culture as India. International Research Journal of Management Sociology & Humanity ( IRJMSH ) www.irjmsh.com Page 66 IRJMSH Vol 7 Issue 2 [Year 2016] ISSN 2277 – 9809 (0nline) 2348–9359 (Print) Indus Valley Civilization or Pre-Vedic Period The history of Indian subcontinent starts with the Indus Valley Civilization and the coming of Aryans both are known as Pre-Vedic and Vedic periods. The Indus River Civilization dates back to 2300 – 1750 BC and had two main cities; Harappa in western Punjab and Mohenjo-Daro on the lower Indus in Sindh – now the two important provinces of Pakistan. Both cities were urban grain growing civilizations and were believed to have run by Aryans who came from Iran (Mcintosh, 2008). Sculpture: The statues found at the sites include both human and animal forms with intricacies and finest details. Some seals were found engraved with figures and motifs also. All these things were made with limestone, bronze, stone and terracotta (Pal, 1988). Architecture: The Harappa and Mohanjo Daro sites show the great architecture patters of the time. The Houses were made of baked bricks, the drains and bathrooms were also laid down by bricks. There was a proper drainage system from the houses to the central drain. The houses were double storey with the ground floor made of bricks and the upper storey of wood. There was a public bath site found that could have been used for religious motives. Thus the cities were scientifically laid down. INDIAN ART AND ARCHITECTURE Art, is a very precious heritage in the culture of a people. “It is more so in India, where the story of art is as old as the history of the race- a panorama of five thousand years. The essential quality of Indian art is its preoccupation with things of the spirit. Art in India did not aim at objective presentation of the human or social facets of life. It was primarily the fruit of the artist‟s creative meditation and effort to project symbols of divine reality as conceived and understood by the collective consciousness of the people as a whole. It is a vast, unending social and religious endeavour of devotees to depict the forms of the gods and goddesses they worshipped. Any tourist desirous of understanding the real significance of Indian art should be prepared patiently to go to the length and breadth and savour deep of the symbolic meanings that make up a world of their own. “Indian religion does not yield its secret to one who only skims the surface; and of the same mysterious, secretive essence is the art of India” (Agrawala, 1976). The essential International Research Journal of Management Sociology & Humanity ( IRJMSH ) www.irjmsh.com Page 67 IRJMSH Vol 7 Issue 2 [Year 2016] ISSN 2277 – 9809 (0nline) 2348–9359 (Print) truth in the art of India is the tribute to the abstract and unmanifest power behind the material world, the primeval source of all things. The growing number of private art galleries in the metropolitan cities of India has played a significant role in the promotion of contemporary art. The Lalit Kala Academy and the State Academies subsidized by the government do undertake the promotion of contemporary art. Contemporary Indian art is yet to attain the level of greatness of ancient Indian art” states Pran Nath Mago. The creative scene and the art market in modern India, particularly in big cities, seem to have converged, with the blossoming of successful artists, seeking the limelight of the market place. However, it is not only art awareness that has contributed to the growing interest in „acquiring‟ works of art. The market for contemporary Indian art has grown as a result of economic changes, an open economic policy and the growth of the private sector. India's Secular Architecture Much of India's oldest secular architecture has not survived because it was built from wood. Stone was a cumbersome and time consuming material for construction, and given the intense heat, it is a particularly unsuitable material for closed construction. That is why stone was used primarily for buildings where much of the activity would take place in an outdoor setting. However, anecdotal accounts of Greek and Chinese travellers, surviving literature and court histories, ancient sculptural finds and cave paintings - all indicate that India was not lacking in secular buildings, many of which were embellished with architectural ornamentation and painted in naturally available colours. For instance, there is considerable literary evidence to indicate that public gateways known as Toranas were constructed by numerous rulers throughout India - some of which were vandalized or destroyed during the early period of Islamic invasions, and some remodelled or adapted, and incorporated into structures utilized by later royal courts. Nevertheless, some have survived intact and there are enough surviving physical remains to suggest that Indian architecture achieved it's greatest heights in the construction of these Toranas that once graced the entries to the major capitals of India's ancient and medieval past. The Indian Miniature International Research Journal of Management Sociology & Humanity ( IRJMSH ) www.irjmsh.com Page 68 IRJMSH Vol 7 Issue 2 [Year 2016] ISSN 2277 – 9809 (0nline) 2348–9359 (Print) Painting in India has a very old tradition, with ancient texts outlining theories of color and aesthetics and anecdotal accounts suggesting that it was not uncommon for households to paint their doorways or facades or even indoor rooms where guests were received. Cave paintings from Ajanta, Bagh and Sittanvasal and temple paintings testify to a love of naturalism - both in the depiction of the human form and in the depiction of nature. But in Ajanta, we also see the emergence of a style that appears aga in and again, and many centuries later: the tendency to draw abstractions from nature in a manner that is both aesthetically pleasing and very effective as decorative embellishment. In the illustrated manuscripts of later eras, it is this latter trend that becomes most important and provides the foundation for the Indian miniature in which even the human form can become exceedingly stylized. When analyzing Indian miniature paintings, art critics have often focused on the absence of perspective as employed by European painters. This has led many art historians to view Indian miniatures as naive or primitive and inferior to the large canvasses in Europe that depicted scenes with photographic accuracy. Indian art critics swayed by the importance given to the single vanishing point perspective scheme used by European painters after the European Renaissance, accept this as a weakness of Indian painting, and some have sought to classify Mughal paintings as superior because they were able to find hints of Western influence in some of the Mughal miniatures. What these art critics and historians fail to note is that every artist faces an enormous dilemma in deciding what aspects of multi-dimensional reality to portray in two dimensions. When we observe reality, our eyes rarely rest on a single scene absorbing it from one angle alone. Our eyes focus far and near, they move spatially across a wide panorama. A single snapshot- like depiction, no matter how skillfully executed, and no matter how brilliantly accurate, is obviously capable of relaying only one view of that reality. When the Indian painter employed multiple perspectives, he/she was trying to convey more than what would have been possible had he/she merely imitated the European approach. Often, the Indian painter was interested in conveying the reality that existed behind walls and doors, or on the other side of a hill or a tree. These attempts were not naive or simplistic, they reflected larger International Research Journal of Management Sociology & Humanity ( IRJMSH ) www.irjmsh.com Page 69 IRJMSH Vol 7 Issue 2 [Year 2016] ISSN 2277 – 9809 (0nline) 2348–9359 (Print) goals. They attempted to demonstrate that reality was more than what could be observed from a single focal point or a single perspective - that a reality existed that may be unseen from a certain vantage point - yet required to be conveyed. Since the genesis of the Indian miniature lay in the illustrated book, this approach to painting becomes very easily understandable. References 1. Shiv Kumar Sharma: The Indian Painted Scroll, Kala Prakashan, Varanasi 2. R.A. Agarwal: Bundi, The City of Painted Walls (Publications Division, GOI) 3. Leela Shiveshwarkar: Charupanchasika - A Sanskrit Love Lyric (Publications Division, GOI) 4. C. Sivaramamurti: Indian Painting, National Book Trust, India. 5. Richard, J. F. (1995). The Mughal Empire. UK: Cambridge University Press. 6. Schmidt, K. J. (1995). An Atlas and Survey of South Asia. USA: M. E. Sharpe Inc. 7. Bayat, M. & Jamnia, M. A. (1994). Tales from the Land of the Sufis. USA: Shambhala, Publications, Inc. 8. Thaper, R. (2002). Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300. California: University of California Press. International Research Journal of Management Sociology & Humanity ( IRJMSH ) www.irjmsh.com Page 70