The Powers of Art: Patronage in Indian Culture Hardcover - 1992

From the rear cover

This volume is a collection of papers on patronage in Indian culture based on an international symposium that was part of the 'Festival of India in America' in 1985. The papers collectively engage in an examination of the categories through which we view the social dimensions of art, literature, and performance in the Indian context. They explore the interaction between the symbolic and material dimensions of Indian culture through a series of case studies on patronage at different periods of Indian history. Authors draw on sources that vary according to time, place, and medium. Inquiry into the aesthetic, ideological, and political constraints affecting cultural production throughout Indian civilization is based on a broad range of innovative thinking about the social contexts of art. Material is culled from the social histories, literature, and art historical studies of towering figures like Asoka, Kanishka, or the Mughal emperors Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan, as well as less prominent figures like the princes of the Punjab Hills and the Andhra region. Attention is paid to studies of folk art, literature, and social organization that challenge traditional Indian views of the artist-patron relationship. Patronage networks in India, as elsewhere, lie embedded in particular socio-political systems which in turn rest in deeply pervasive and culturally patterned conceptions of power and authority. Where this power emanates from and how it gains authority and legitimacy are central concerns of the papers. The essays in the volume are grouped into four broad divisions, corresponding to dominant ideologies of patronage that have appeared in Indian history: Buddhist and Brahmanic modes ofpatronage in ancient India; South Indian elaborations of Brahmanic patronage; imperial and regional patronage under Mughal rule; and modern transformations of patronage under the influence of British rule. Though the studies reveal no distinctively Indian style of patronage, they offer a broad perspective on the interplay between symbolic and material dimensions of Indian culture. They define an Indian reservoir of possibilities and constraints on cultural production that have persisted beneath variations of period, region, religion, political structure, social position, and personality.