Books that have appeared so far on the art of India confine themselves to architecture, sculpture and painting. In the present work, the coverage has been extended for the first time to include music, dance and handicrafts too. The weighty reason for this is that in traditional India, art reflected and further strengthened an integrated living. Temple architecture generally provided halls for the performance of music and dance, for these too were ways of worship. Some of the finest Indian sculptures have dances as their themes. Siva, deity and dancer, has been represented in dance postures and gestures in reliefs which are veritable manuals of dance illustrated through sculpture. Music parties and dances have figured repeatedly in painting. As for crafts, it is not elitist art that makes gracious the daily living of the masses but the art of the artisan who streamlines humble articles of daily use into timelessly enduring beauty. The textual outlines conserve the essential contours of the historical evolution of these arts and familiarize the reader with the masterpieces of the heritage which have been illustrated to the maximum extent possible.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Krishna Chaitanya
Krishna Chaitanya whom Edward Goldsmith, leading international campaigner on environment and winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize refers to in his book, The Way : An Ecological World View, as "possibly the greatest polymath of all time" and the national media have rated as "one of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century" (Hindustan Times), "our nearest approximation to the Renaissance Man" (Indian Express), a writer who has made "singular contribution to the advancement of thought, art and science in our times" (Times of India) and as "one of the most prolific and luminous intellects of our times" (Economic Times), has written over forty books outline summaries of all of which are available in Krishna Chaitanya a Profile and Selected Papers edited by Suguna Ramachandran (Konark, 1991 ). The main categories are : A five-volume philosophy of freedom which critics have compared to the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, the French Encyclopedists, Herbert Spencer, Bergson, Whitehead and Teilhard de Chardin; a ten-volume history of world literature; Indological works including a book on Indian culture, a history of Sanskrit literature, a literary study of the Mahabharata the most comprehensive book so far on Sanskrit poetics and a translation and commentary of the Gita; and books on Indian art. He got the "Critic of Ideas" award of-the Institute of International Education, New York in 1964, the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship in 1978, Honorary Membership of the International Cultural, society of Korea, Seoul in 1982, D. Litt. (Honoris Causa) of the Rabindrabharati University in 1986, the Padma Shri in 1992 and the Kalidasa award of the International Institute of Indian Studies, Ottawa in 1993.
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