Ancient India: living traditions

Ancient India is a huge topic. The art of the major religions, Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism, is the focus of this inspiring exhibition at the British Museum. The items have been selected because of what they represent, rather than primarily for aesthetic reasons; but the exhibition and its design is very beautiful, with a big space divided into sections by long gauze drapes, the series of statues set off by dramatic lighting. The evocative sound design mixes art and nature including tabla and birdsong.

Particularly impressive are the Ganesh which appropriately initiates the visit and the great Varaha, one of the avatars of Vishnu, that dominates the centre of the show. The exhibition concludes with an exploration of the spread of Buddhism and Hinduism to Central and East Asia (consonant with a theme of William Dalrymple’s recent book). Throughout, the themes of the exhibition are complemented by videos and photos showing today’s devotion in Britain and India to the same ancient imagery, with a rich array of smaller ancient cult objects on display.

Nature is a central theme. The organising principle of the exhibition is that representational art starts with the nature spirits, the male yaksha and female yakshi. In diverse and not fully-understood ways these are then developed into the familiar Hindu pantheon. Folk cults, such as the worship of snakes and the presence of rats, mice, elephants and lions are also important elements brought out in the exhibition.

The curators are at pains to suggest that Indian art is essentially auto-generative, rejectingthe idea of significant foreign influence, notably Greek. This is not entirely convincing as many qualities of visual complexity suggest multiple influences and degrees of sophistication: both courtly scenes, particularly in Buddhist art, and representational devices of three dimensions, indicate a great painting tradition which survives in a few examples such as at Ajanta. Indian art, along with the whole culture of the subcontinent should perhaps be seen in relation to a wider frame stretching out to Europe and Eastern Asia.

It would be right to ask why this exhibition is happening and why here. The display is largely based on pieces in the collection of the British Museum – although there are significant loans from Delhi and Mumbai, as well as the Ashmolean – and it would have been useful to understand the formation of collections in the colonial period; not least in the light of the recent Hew Locke exhibition at the British Museum. Quite rightly the organisers of the exhibition call out the incompetence of the archaeologists of the colonial era.

Unsurprisingly, museum curators tend to be focused on the objects that make up museum collections. This means that architecture takes a back seat. This is a problem for Indian sculpture as much of the sculpture either decorated buildings or included architectural representations. An exception is the large section on the major Buddhist stupa at Amaravati from which the Museum has major material.

This handsome, coherent exhibition is approachable and attractive but it would be fair to say that it is not viscerally challenging and edgy in the way that the brilliant recent Tantra exhibition in the British Museum was (2020-2021). It is also worth mentioning an important aspect of sacred art which would necessarily be hard to display. Before any of these religions developed imagery and iconographies they were aniconic, without images. Indeed in early Buddhism non-representation was as important as the image later became. Images may have had their origins in folk nature imagery, but however widely popular, the elaborate iconography of Hinduism is emphatically an assertion of authority by higher castes and this may well have aided the demise of Buddhism. However, the aniconic tradition is still very present in India within the living traditions of Islam and Sikhism. If we privilege the art of the religious traditions with specifically ancient Indian origins, as this exhibition legitimately does, we should also remember that this is not the whole story.