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HINDU ART
And you shall be imprisoned in a flower.
Clown. Well, he doesn't seem afraid of your dreadful punishment. . . .
King. Will he not go, though I warn him?
••••••
Clown (aloud). It is only a picture, man."
(Ryder's version.)
There is no touch of pessimism, idealism, or subjectivism in all these remarks and suggestions. A modern lover examining the photo or oil painting of his darling could not be more realistic.
Does this conversation open up to us a society of ascetics or yogins waiting for Divine illumination to evolve shilpa (art) out of the neo-Platonic meditation or the Hindu dhyana? Or does it make the India of the fifth century a cognate of the modern world in
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