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The Indian Craftsman: With a Short Biography and Tributes Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy No preview available - 2018 |
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according amount art and craft artists beautiful belonging bringing Buddhist builders building called carpenter caste century ceremony Ceylon cloth colour competition completion craft craftsmen culture daily described detail district duties East England English example excellence existence eyes five four give given gold granted guilds hand handicrafts head held hereditary important Indian individual industrial instance interesting king king's labour land live machinery master means merchant nature offerings officers once paid painter painting passed performed perhaps person picture piece position possessed potters present production reason received regulation relation religious represented royal servants share Sir George Birdwood skill Smith social society spiritual standard status supply taking temple tenant things trade traditional village wages Western
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Page 24 - There are many that hate painting ; but such men I dislike. It appears to me as if a painter had quite peculiar means of recognizing God ; for a painter in sketching anything that has life, and in devising its limbs, one after the other, must come to feel that he cannot bestow individuality upon his work, and is thus forced to think of God, the Giver of life, and will thus increase in knowledge.
Page 104 - India, and who, for all the marvellous tissues and embroidery they have wrought, have polluted no rivers, deformed no pleasing prospects, nor poisoned any air ; whose skill and individuality the training of countless generations has developed to the highest...
Page 99 - India has undergone more religious and political revolutions than any other country in the world ; but the village communities remain in full municipal vigour all over the peninsula. Scythian, Greek, Saracen, Afghan, Mongol, and Maratha have come down from its mountains, and Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, and Dane up out of its seas, and set up their successive dominations in the land ; but the religious...
Page 117 - Each of these houses contains at least 12 men, whilst some contain 20 and some 40, — not that these are all masters, but inclusive of the journeymen who work under the masters. And yet all these craftsmen had full occupation, for many other cities of the kingdom are supplied from this city with what they require. The document aforesaid also stated that the number and wealth of the merchants, and the amount of goods that passed through their hands, was so enormous that no man could form a just estimate...
Page 58 - ... is to be beaten with the great Maul, he holds it, still sitting upon his Stool, and they must hammer it themselves, he only with his little Hammer knocking it sometimes into fashion. And if it be any thing to be filed, he makes them go themselves and grind it upon a Stone, that his labour of fileing may be the less ; and when they have done it as well as they can, he goes over it again with his file and finisheth it. That which makes these Smiths thus stately is, because the Towns People are...
Page 17 - Tanjore an agreement by which the entire guild binds itself to a contract executed on its behalf by an individual member of the guild for the supply of oil in perpetuity for a sacred lamp. The inscription runs as follows : ' We, all the following shepherds of this village . . . agree to become security for Eran Sattan, a shepherd of this village, (who) had received 90 ewes of this temple in order to supply ghl for burning one perpetual lamp.
Page 27 - go and fetch the golden image," and being charged a second time he brought it. The prince ordered the image that the smith had wrought to be thrown into the golden chamber, and that which he himself had made he had adorned and placed in a car and sent it to his mother, saying, " When I find a woman like this, I will take her to wife.
Page 49 - And he told a story of olden days. Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was king of Benares, there was a village of carpenters not far from the city, in which five hundred carpenters lived. They would go up the river in a vessel, and enter the forest, where they would shape beams and planks for housebuilding, and put together the framework of one-storey or two-storey houses, numbering all the pieces from the mainpost onwards; these then they brought down to the river bank, and put them all aboard;...
Page 104 - ... any air ; whose skill and individuality the training of countless generations has developed to the highest perfection ; these hereditary handicraftsmen are being everywhere gathered from their democratic village communities in hundreds and thousands into the colossal mills of Bombay, to drudge in gangs, for tempting wages, at manufacturing piece goods, in competition with Manchester, in the production of which they are no more intellectually and morally concerned than the grinder of a barrel...
Page 100 - ... all over the peninsula. Scythian, Greek, Saracen, Afghan, Mongol and Maratha have come down from its mountains and Portuguese, Dutch, English, French and Dane up out of its seas, and set up their successive dominations in the land; but the religious trades-union villages have remained as little affected by their coming and going as a rock by the rising and falling of the tide.
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Indian Craftsman Volume 1 of Probsthain's Oriental series The Indian Craftsman, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy |
| Author | Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy |
| Publisher | Probsthain & Company, 1909 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | 20 Jun 2007 |
| Length | 130 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |