A comparative view of antient monuments of India, particularly those in the island of Salset near Bombay / as described by different writers. [Anon].

Richard Gough

Date:: 1785

Credit: A comparative view of antient monuments of India, particularly those in the island of Salset near Bombay / as described by different writers. [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$t* *• \m j Several reprefentations in the Indian as well as the Egyptian* *Greek, or Roman temples. In proportion as the more fimple re- prefentations fell fhort of conveying the incomprehenfible and •inexpreliible ideas, the greater efforts were made by the human mind to attain this end, and thefe efforts multiplied produced the arts: the impoffibility of attaining the defired point oblig- ing them to .continual exertions led them to perfection. They never fucceeded in reprefenting the Divine nature, becaufe it bears no refemhlance to the human ; but they became able to give to the human nature a degree of beauty capable of at leafl recalling the idea of that which our weak underftanding afcribes to that Being, vvhofe qualities are not to be compared with thole of men [g]. The monffrous figures compounded like thofe of the Scy- thians, Chinefe, and Greeks, formerly extended wherever the Scythians extended their conquefts, have been deftroyed wher- ever Mahometans came at them : but in the Southern parts of Afia, in Tartary and Japan, they are ftill to be met with. When one reflects on the objeCt of thefe fort of figures, which has been to exprefs ideas impoffible to be comprifed by forms borrowed from nature, and to reprefent by imagery faCts as foreign to the order of events as the alliance of thefe forms is to the order of nature, we cannot doubt that the fpirit of the architect which ftill preferves this manner in Afia is exaCtly the fame with that of the artifts in the earlieft times of Greece. Obelifcs, triangles and Bars appear on the coins of the Afales, Chinefe and Tar- tars, as well as thofe of the Greeks [A]. The bull and the egg in the Japan temple at Meaco, emblems of the creator and creation, are handed down in the Grecian fymbols of Bac- chus [/] who is reprefented both as male and female, Liber ■■[§■] D’Ancarville ubi fup. Pref. p. rx. x. [i] lb. 4S- [*'] lb. 65. and$