pupil, Arjuna. "Now, Arjuna, take aim and tell me what you see—the bird, the tree, myself and your brothers?" "No," said Arjuna, "I see the bird alone, neither yourself, sir, nor the tree." "Describe the bird," said the Master. "I see only a bird's head," Arjuna replied. "Then shoot," cried Drona, and in an instant the arrow sped, the bird fell shot through the eye, and the teacher embraced his pupil with delight.
It is the same way in Indian art and in all Oriental art inspired by Indian idealism. The artist, through a process of severe mental discipline, is taught to discriminate the essentials in forms and appearances, and to see clearly with his mind's eye before he takes up brush or chisel. Once the image is firmly fixed in the mirror of his mind by intense concentration, or when the daemon residing in the object to be depicted has been made to manifest itself by the power of yoga, the realisation of it, facilitated by the technical traditions of the school taught under the other five categories, was swift and sure. Rūpa-bheda is sruti—the revelation of the divine. The science of art—the rules of proportion, expression, beauty, likeness, and the use of tools—is of the kind of knowledge described as smriti—that which is remembered, or handed down by tradition.
Beneath the transcendental conceptions of Indian religious art as we see them at Ajantā and elsewhere, there is, however, an undertone of intense realism. Nothing could be more real and alive than the figures with which Buddhist artists peopled what Europeans call the unseen world. To them it was the real world in which their lives were spent; only the immortals were made not of common clay. There is abundant evidence of the most careful study of nature in the
