The Arts of India

Thanks to this book, I attained a large Flickr set of Indian imagery (including sculpture, but mostly paintings) from 3000BC to 1912, the latter date coinciding with a lot of publications illustrated by Edmund Dulac. I now have a far greater understand of how art, both regal and sacred, progressed in India during these times, how culture and religion shaped imagery, and how influences from outside at various stages, such as medieval manuscripts and Dutch oil paintings shaped style. The light, terrain and history of India makes the stories and stylisation in historical (and indeed contemporary) art very different to that of the west.
Looking at the pictures is one thing, but there were several occasions during the book where I learned about entire fables, or the origins of the deities. The birth of Krishna is particularly fascinating, as many of the events are synonymous with 'our' Christmas story.
The book was helpfully arranged in chronological order, and took me on a journey through kings, empires, symbolism, gods, monsters, imaginations, artists and schools, media, techniques, styles, fashions, legends and manuscripts. Though little is known about individual artists, I discovered a fondness for the delicate and highly stylised work of Nihâl Chand:


I copied down a pretty full version of the birth of Krishna here, but there is also a small section on the Wikipedia page on Krishna. Krishna Janmashtami is the festival of Krishna's birth, celebrated in mid-summer. While there are many similarities between Krishna and Jesus, Krishna is not revered in the same way, as there are so many tales and deities in the Hindu religion (of which 99% I'm completely oblivious), and Krishna is only one of the many faces of Vishnu, who in turn is one of the many faces of Brahman.