ABSTRACT
I SHALL here attempt to show in succession the evolution of the chief aesthetic tendencies to which the art of India has been subject. With this purpose, I shall sometimes simplify greatly, at the risk of being incomplete and slightly distorting the facts. A sketch, as we know, in a few lines, which are usually untrue because they are isolated and exaggerated, often renders a movement more correctly than a drawing which copies the model faithfully in all its details. After following the various lines of development which we encounter from the third century B.C. to about the eighth century of our era and sketching some of their later extensions, all that will remain for me to do will be to put together, to tie as in a bouquet, these various tendencies which curve, cross, and mingle, that we may have a general view of the whole of Indian art and determine its position among other arts. So we shall have quite a different view of that art from that given by an examination of its various periods in order of time, which I have attempted elsewhere.
