The Indians have two great national epic poems, containing nearly the whole substance of all the epic poems of the other Aryan races, and the many scenes from the Ramâyâna and Mahâbhârata in carvings and sculptures stand in the same relation to Greek art, as these poems to the Iliad and Odyssee. In both, scenes of heroism are displayed; but, whilst symmetry and proportion rule in the Greek poems, fantastic irregularity, wild incongruities, exaggerations and impossibilities are heaped up in the Indian. The beauty of some thought is effaced by overburdened metaphors, gushing forth in an endless stream like the waters of the Ganges. There are passages in the 28,000 double verses of the Ramâyâna surpassing anything written. As an indisputable proof I will quote a few lines from the opening passages of the Ramâyâna. The gods are assembled before the first, incomprehensible cause, and address it in the following words:-- O Thou, whom _three_fold might and splendour veil, _Maker_, _Preserver_, and _Transformer_, hail! Thy gaze surveys this world from clime to clime, Thyself immeasurable in space and time: To no corrupt desires, no passions prone: Unconquered conqueror, infinite, unknown; Though in one form Thou veil’st Thy might divine, Still, at thy pleasure, every form is Thine. Pure crystals thus prismatic hues assume, As varying lights and varying tints illume; Men think Thee absent, Thou art ever near; Pitying those sorrows which Thou ne’er canst fear. Unsordid penance Thou alone canst pay; Unchanged, unchanging--old without decay: Thou knowest all things--who Thy praise can state? Createdst all things--Thyself uncreate! The endeavour to give forms to such sublime abstractions made the Indians lose their regulating power in pictorial and plastic art. A god was to be made powerful, and he was provided with four or twenty arms, and three heads. The miraculous and symbolic were the greatest enemies of Indian art. In the Mahâbhârata, exceeding Homer’s combined poems seven times in quantity, having not less than 110,000 double verses, we read of sentiments, feelings, and deeds which are our own--but nothing is within the pale of the credible. The birth of all the heroes is miraculous. Their deeds surpass the standard of human acts. They constantly associate with the gods, talk, argue, and dispute with them; their palaces are of immeasurable grandeur and splendour: ivory gates inlaid with jewels, golden pillars, diamond thrones, glittering with the splendour of a thousand suns; their armies are reckoned by millions; their heroes uproot trees, and kill hundreds of thousands at one blow; time and space have no meaning with them. Kings reign 27,000 years; Prathama-Raja reigned 6,300,000 and lived 8,400,000 years.[1] How could art in a higher sense exist under such conditions?