Weiner Mihályné szerk.: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei 6. (Budapest, 1963)

HOPP FERENC MÚZEUM - MUSÉE FERENC HOPP - Tóth, Edit: Water-Pots with Gujarati Inscriptions in the Museum

• EDITH TÓTH WATER POTS WITH GUJARATI INSCRIPTIONS Among the eastern cultures of ancient tradition, India is one of the countries where the historical research of art, begun relatively late, has hardly paid any attention to ornamented objects of artistic value in everyday use, in short to products of industrial art. Compared with Chinese or Japanese bronzes, lacquered objects etc., elaborated in several monographs, one may observe that the appreciation of Indian industrial art, made from the viewpoint of the history of art, is relegated to some studies published in periodicals or to the last pages of comprehensive works dealing with the fine arts.

1 Interest may be limited by the extraordinary richness of Indian painting, sculpture and architecture in works of art and by the fact that research is occupied entirely with the numerous unsolved problems raised in these fields. At any rate, we find the opinion which distinguishes the fine arts as „formal" and „common" unfounded and disadvantageous to research. This view may not be held especially about Indian art since „art" in the modern and European sense started to develop only in the Mughal period. The exact meaning of the word silpa applied to art in Sanskrit works is „craft" and the word silpl, the name of the person engaged in such work, means „craftsman". The éilpl have been poor artisans handing down their knowledge from generation to generation according to the rules of the caste system.

2 The magnificent statues of the cave temples of Ellora or Elephanta, the masterpieces of Khajurdho and Bhuvanesvara, were made by silpl-s though more gifted ones, such as the subdued temple lighting, water-pots or the decorative ivory carvings. Many silpl worked in various materials. As it is generally known, one of the reliefs of the stüpa at Sand was manufactured by the ivory carvers from Vidisä. The unity of the fine arts was a natural outcome of the fact that all branches have originally endeavoured, in addition to producing an aesthetical impression, to fulfil some useful function. Statues were either the organic and structural parts of the buildings or, just as the pictures, conveyed illustrative material for the benefit of the common people, who were unable to read and write and who were totally unfamiliar with the sacred Sanskrit. We are aware of the danger of simplifying a complicated process in attributing merely a utilitarian tendency to Indian fine arts. It is necessary to emphasize this point since it is essential to the understanding of why the silpl found it natural to employ the style and theme of one branch of the silpa in another, for actually there was no other difference between them but