For its easy availability and ready tractability wood was chosen by the earliest sculptor to express his creative urge and even in later times a sculptor perhaps tried his hand first in this medium before he worked in more solid and durable materials like stone and metal. In India, as in most other countries, the surviving examples are not adequate in terms of output and antiquity. And that perhaps explains as to why wood carvings have received scant attention from the art historians and are still regarded as a ‘minor art’. Geographically, the present work deals with the wood carvings of Eastern India, and the earliest specimen hailing from Patna falls within the area under study. Chronologically, it extends from the earliest times to the recent past with an obvious focus on the carvings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the samples assignable to earlier periods are few and far between. The author has for the first time presented a systematic, in-depth and perceptive account of wood carvings of the eastern sector of the subcontinent.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kalyan Kumar Dasgupta
Currently the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Kalyani, West Bengal, Kalyan Kumar Dasgupta is an alumnus of the Presidency College, Calcutta, and also of the University of Calcutta where he taught for about twenty-five years in the department of Ancient Indian History and Culture. Among several works of Dr. Dasgupta are A Tribal History of Ancient India: A Numismatic Approach, Itihas O Samskriti (in Bengali) and Catalogue of Wood Carvings in the Indian Museum. He has jointly edited with R.C. Majumdar Comprehensive History of India (Volume III) and has also contributed to it the chapter on Indian iconography. The Dictionary of National Biography is one of the collaborative works which contains his articles. History is not the only m?tier of Dr. Dasgupta, since history apart, iconography, art, literature and poetry in particular, have claimed attention from him in equal measure. As a well-known Bengali poet he has published three volumes of poems, contributed to magazines and anthologies over forty years and also participated in poetry readings widely.
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