The Orient or the North
BY Josef Strzygowski
Eastern Art
Vol.1,No.2, 1928.10 pp.69-85
p. 69
[AUTHOR'S NOTE: The foundation of a new
periodical devoted to oriental art, to which I am
invited to contribute, finds me at work on a summary,
Die Kunst Asiens in Stichproben, ihr Wesen und ihre
Entwicklung. Years ago, when I began work on it,
there appeared in the Jahrbuch der asiatischen Kunst
as an introductory article Die asiatische Kunst, ein
Versuch; this was continued in the Year book of
Oriental Art by an article, The Northern Stream of
Art from Ireland to China and the Southern Movement
Both periodicals came to an untimely end and this
work of mine was interrupted. Meanwhile the situation
has been more fully solved on European soil, as is
shown by my works, Der Norden in der Bildenden Kunst
Vesteuropas and Die altslavische Kunst. Two other
works of mine expound methodical questions and thus
complete my former efforts: Die Krisis der
Geisteswissenschaften and Forschung und Erziehung.
Now I am once more taking up the work from the
Asiatic side and am delighted to find stimulus in the
foundation of the present periodical wherein this
article is to appear.]
Research has led me to separate the Orient from
the North. It will be necessary for us to come to an
understanding on the definition of Orient. What is
the Orient and does it include northern Asia, or
where should we draw the boundary?
Going eastward in Europe we encounter the Orient
as soon as we pass the boundaries of Turkey. I do
not know whether anyone would still include Serbia,
Bulgaria, and Rumania in the Orient. Do the Turks, or
rather does Islam, represent all that is oriental?
But we also speak of the Extreme Orient, and hence
extend the concept of the Orient to eastern Asia
including not only Islam but the East as a whole. An
explanation seems necessary. I shall proceed in
chronological order, inquiring where the definition
Orient is first used. This occurs in its application
to the "oriental monarchies, " especially
Mesopotamia and Egypt. Immediately there is a factor
that forces us to confine this concept to a definite
type of art.
During the last few decades it has become
customary to designate the ancient Orient, together
with the art of Hellas and Rome as "antiquity." This
custom has obliged me to eliminate archaic Greek art
and to confine the phrase "antiquity" to the ancient
oriental monarchies, Hellenism and Imperial Rome.
Greek art of the golden age does not show the
characteristics of "antiquity" but goes its own way.
Crete, Egypt, and Mesopotamia have given it the art
of stone-architecture and of representation of the
human figure; yet it imitates in stone its own wooden
architec- ture, brought from the North, as is proven
by the Greek temple and, originally, the megaron. In
the use of human figures it also differs from the
oriental monarchies of antiquity, since the latter,
which invaded Europe with Alexander, glorify
power.(1) Similar is the fate of Asia, the region
generally called the Orient. In the sense of the
older monarchies the greater part of Asia--Asia
proper--has an art neither of "antiquity" nor of
the Orient, but emphatically Northern, much more so
than ancient Greece, and differing only in degree. We
could have established contact with the North, when,
by way of Hellas, Iran, and India, we discovered the
key to their spiritual relation since the Aryan
immigration. Meanwhile prehistory has found a clue to
the problem of Northern art in neolithic art.
Formerly there was a gap between these two schools of
research. History of art can bridge this gap by a.
study of styles and by drawing conclusions. Yet this
is no easy matter, for the North does not rep-
resent, but rather essentially decorates; also, since
well-preserved buildings are lacking, its problems
must be solved by referring to adjacent territories
for examples. in so far as imitations in stone have
there withstood the ravages of time. I have already
dealt with the palace of M'shatta, and its facade, as
such a monument.(2) I wish here to consider another
gigantic monument. the Stupa of Sarnath in India.
Thus there are two monuments, one at M'shatta, the
other in Sarnath, which were erected long after the
immigration of northern races. the Iranians and
Indians, to the southern peninsula. They are unusual
monuments. the one on the edge of the Syrian desert,
the other in northern India. They are related, and
yet they differ strikingly from each other through
evident influences of neighboring arts, Hellenistic
in Syria, Buddhist in India. In dealing with the
facade of M'shatta and the Dhamekh Stupa, we shall
----------------------
1. See Strzygowski, Forschung und Erzichung.
2. Strzygowski, Jahrbuch der preuss. Kunstsammlung,
XXV, 1904.
p. 71
attempt to decipher the nature and development of
their common center, the art of Iran. I owe the
enclosed photographs of the Dhamekh Stupa to Miss
Stella Kram risch. At my request she has also
furnished the description, which forms the basis of
my discussion.(3)
The Dhamekh Stupa of Sarmath. The monument
consists at present of a stone-cylinder of 27.9
metres in diameter. It stands directly on the ground,
rising to a visible height of 31.2 metres but its
foundations reach II.6 metres below the present
surface. The stones of the cylinder are held together
by iron clamps. The upper part of the monument
consists of bricks. The cylinder has been left smooth
for its lower third; above this it is ornamented by a
broad band of geometrical and plant designs in six
bands (risalits) of varying width. The pattern of the
central field changes with every risalit, emphasizing
each intervening wall-space. The risalits taper above
this band into a curve. Each of the eight triangles
has been hollowed in the center at the base into a
broad, round niche, the crowns of which occasionally
show a small pointed notch. Today the niches are
empty. The curved surfaces of the triangular risalits
are in part carved with an exuberant profuse vine
motive; however, neither this nor the other patterns,
nor even the whole Stupa, were ever finished. Its
upper portion, at present of brick, was no doubt
originally covered with stone. This casing was prob-
ably destroyed by Jagat Singh in the year 1793; at
that time the cylinder was also damaged. The present
repairs were made by the Archaeological Survey and
are clearly recognizable. The Dhamekh Stupa takes its
name from dharmeksa, the weighing of the law. It was
never finished, but it was plainly not the first
building on the site, for its foundation walls
consist of very large bricks, contrasting with the
bricks of the upper part, the small proportions of
which correspond to those customary in the Gupta
period. The large bricks, on the other hand, belong
to the third or second century B.C., and probably
formed the foundation for a building of that time,
possibly a stupa built by Asoka. Probably it was the
new building that Hsuan Tsang saw in the seventh
century.(4)
The eight niches mention above were probably
decorated with seated representations of the seven
Manusi--of Buddha and the Maitreya; or perhaps with
eight figures of Buddha in commemoration of the eight
great moments in the life of the Enlightened One.
The first risalit with vine rinceau (Fig.I) is
the first ornamental panel that presents itself to
the spectator when he is making the circumambulation
(pradaksina) keeping the sanctuary on his right.
The broad middle band of the Cylinder (Fig.2) is
filled with a continuous pattern consisting of a
chain of single hook-motives, the unit of which is a
double lock of two hooks, laid alternately
horizontally and vertically. The vertical ones are
retained throughout, but the vertical axis is tipped
diagonally, so that the pattern receives an
uninterrupted tendency of motion in the direction of
the circumambulation. The different motives of hook
or lock are placed respectively back to back in
pairs. These pairs of interlocked hooks form, as the
next larger unit, a diamond, the central line of
which is accentuated by a double hook motive. The
upper and lower horizontal hooks of the entire strip
are elongated vertically and diagonally, and over
them is laid a horizontal pair of hooks; thus within
each diamond there are produced four hook motives
with a small diamond, filled with a rosette, in the
center. Thus they are, so to speak, opened up and the
whole pattern set in motion and unified.
'Each hook consists of a perpendicular fret, cut
in stone. Their rims are slightly raised, and the
center is filled with a string of beads. The rich,
plastic motion of the relief surface is emphasized
and connected by the deep dark background, with its
simpler and sharper negative pattern.
----------------------
3. Cf. Strzygowski, Persischer Hellenismus in christ-
licher Zierkunst. Repertorium fur Kunstwissenschaft,
XLI, 1918, p. 125 f.
4. See, on the other hand, Daya Ram Salmi, Guide to
the Buddhist Ruins at Sarnath, p. 38.
p. 72
'The next adjacent risalit is shown in Fig.3,
with the main pattern of the broad strip; only about
a third of this has been preserved, the rest being
smooth repair work. The unit of the pattern consists
of two peculiar svastikas, connected with one another
by a double diagonal; the double diagonal runs,
occasionally alternating, sometimes to the right,
sometimes to the left. Each svastika is double
(svastika within svastika), the center accentuated by
a square rosette. Triangular half-rosettes are placed
between the double diagonals connecting the
svastikas. Treatment of fretwork and ground is the
same as in the preceding pattern.
'In Fig.4 the band of the Stupa cylinder (the
middle strip) has completely vanished.
'Of the risalit shown in Fig.5, a little more
than one-half of the middle strip is pre- served.
This again is a svastika pattern. The svastika with
square center has been tipped at an angle. Again the
arms are doubly broken and connect the simple
svastikas in such a way that one elongation does duty
for two separate svastikas. The single strips have
here been left smooth. The purity of the effect is
due to the simple contrast between relief work and
outline design.
'Fig.6 shows the band of the cylinder; the unit
of the pattern is a double svastika, tilted; rosettes
in relief have been closely fitted in the intervening
diamonds.
'Fig.7 shows the band of the next risalit. The
middle strip, partly damaged, is identical with that
of the risalit shown in Fig.3.
'Fig.8 shows the band of the cylinder. The
pattern is identical with that in Fig. 6, except that
the former fills the strip in five superimposed rows,
while the latter is in only four rows framed above
and below by corresponding borders of hooks.
'The band of the risalit shown in Fig.9 has a
svastika very much tilted as a unit. the attentuated
arms meeting in double tridents. The continuous
middle prong of each trident points in the direction
of circumambulation. These emphasize particularly
the diamond-shaped character of the pattern. A
pearl-string design is found as usual, within the
flat fretwork.
'Fig.10 shows a strip of the cylinder; the unit
is similar to that in Figs.6 and 8, except that here
the outer arms of the svastikas have been drawn out
to double length instead of bending at right angles
into new double svastikas. This attentuates the
pattern, the intervening spaces of which are likewise
filled with diamonds containing rosettes, which are
simpler in line and in carving.
'Of the risalit shown in Fig.11 none of the
central band is preserved.
'The section of the cylinder shown in Fig. I2 is
identical with that on the risalit in Figs. 3 and 7.
'Thus there are six different patterns in all. Of
these, Figs. 3, 7, I2 on the one hand, and Figs. 6
and 8 on the other hand are identical. All patterns
are derived from the double svas ti ka, with th e
resulting tri angular and rectan gular fields filled
w i th mo ti ves of petals more or less curled,
although where this is not the case the elongated
arms themselves function as filling and link, as in
Figs. r and S, or else single strips (tridents) are
inserted, as in Fig. 9.
'Each pattern (except that shown in Fig.10) is
clearly individualized, though they are all
variations of a single theme.
So much for the description of the Dhamekh Stepa.
I shall now return to the investigation of the
problem "The Orient or the North," and follow the
plan for a scientific procedure (that is, one that
has been thoughtfully planned) suggested in Die
Krisis der Geisteswissenschaften, 1923, and again
more lately in Forschung und Erzieumg.
I. Orientation. If we draw the boundary line
between the Orient and Asia proper at that mountain
chain which connects the Taurus with the Elburz and
the Himalaya, then the Orient includes Asia Minor,
both Indies, and China after the Han dynasty . This
Orient stands in vivid contrast to the regions
surrounding Central Asia: Siberia, Western Asia,
Eastern Asia up to the Han era, together with Central
Asia itself. My
p. 73
work on Asia will be based on this division. Here I
shall present merely a few introductory remarks
dealing with the monuments.
a. The Orient. This includes all that is
connected with the glorification of power,
characteristic of Mesopotamia, and as well the
pre-Aryan art of India and Eastern Asia since the Han
dynasty. Asia Minor is so closely allied to Egypt and
the Mediterranean sphere of Europe that it is
better treated together with these countries than
with Asia proper. Likewise, India was originally
rather related to Africa. The art of China was
gradually transformed by the influence from these
regions; during the Christian era this is best shown
by the spread of Buddhism. I shall discuss this group
only briefly, laying particular emphasis on Asia
proper.
b. The North. As I have done in my article Natur
und Unnatur in der Bildenden Kunst(5) we must first
define the entire North and compare its art with that
of the equatorial South, both in the paleolithic era
and at the present time. It must then be compared
with the area between these two districts, especially
with the art of the Mediter ranean basin. This will
bring to light the artistic peculiarities of the
North as a whole, in contrast with the South and the
intervening area.(6)
The monuments of Siberia have been collected in
Minns' Scythians and Greeks and Rostovtzeff's
Iranians and Greeks. These seem to constitute an
artistic sphere of their own to be explained neither
by Scythian nor by Iranian art, and even less by
Greek art. We are at present acquainted only with
gold and bronze relics. But probably the art was
really developed by the use of the crudest materials,
especially leather and birch bark, of which nothing
has been preserved. This is more or less true also
for the other regions of Asia proper.
Western Asia, chiefly Iran and Transoxiana, used
unbaked raw bricks, a material so perishable that
such traces as remain can only be discerned with
difficulty. The mosques of Persia, to be sure, while
built of raw brick, were fairly well protected by
their the facings. In addition to tiles other raw
materials characteristic of these regions were used
for covering the walls within and without. The ruins
of Kuh-i- Kuadja on the Helmand(7) in Afghanistan are
a good example of raw brick architecture without
facing and demonstrate how such buildings
disintegrate in the course of time, and through the
effects of weathering. Excavation might bring further
proofs of this both for buildings in raw brick and
for those faced with tile.
The use of tents was characteristic of primitive
Central Asia, that is of the regions around the Tarim
river and the Gobi desert. For the present we shall
omit Tibet. The reasons for the lack of remains are
obvious. However, discoveries in Turfan and Khotan
have produced sufficient evidence in the lowest
stratum. One should not be misled by the fact that
this intermediate region betwixt East and West was in
later times overwhelmed by Chinese, Buddhist, and
Hellenistic-Iranian influences.(8) If designated
merely as late-ancient, the monuments there
discovered would be robbed of their deeper
significance.
c. Eastern Asia in the Pre-Han Period. Museums
are today busy collecting the hieratic bronze vessels
of the Chou dynasty. These give the impression that
China went through a revolution similar to that which
occurred in Greek art when it adopted Mediterranean
stone architecture and representation of the human
body. The original art of China is consistently
decorative without any human representation.
To these primary regions of Asiatic art proper
are added spheres of expansion which I have discussed
in an article, soon to appear, about the Oriental
Exposition at Philadelphia, 1926. I wish to confine
the present discussion only to the two great mon-
uments, the M'shatta facade and the Dhamekh Stupa,
which are stone imitations in Asia Minor and in India
of the true Asiatic art.
----------------------
5. Mannus, XX, 1928.
6. America is treated in an article of mine which
will appear in 1928 in the Art Bulletin under the
title The Two Americas and the History of Art.
7. See my work on Armenia, p. 364 ff.
8. I have called attention to this in an article on
the Lambrequin in the Revue des Arts Asiatiques,
1926.
p. 75
II. Intrinsic Characteristics. It is peculiar to
Northern art neither to build in stone, as does the
Orient, nor to represent the human body. The
monuments at M'shatta and at Dhamekh differ from
Northern work in their stone architecture yet are
related to it in their exclusion of the human figure.
If human figures occur in exceptional cases, for
instance in the first triangle at M'shatta, they are
used purely as decoration, not as representation. The
prototypes of both these monuments were certainly
executed not in stone but in some other material. The
problem is to decide how much of the original
artistic character, determined in the beginning by
raw material and by workmanship and aim, still
remained when the art was translated into stone, or,
in other words, which of its elements, whose
translation into stone resulted from the Will to
Power, were carried over into the form of stone
architecture.
a. Material and Workmanship. The art of Northern
Asia has remained relatively unknown because of the
perishable raw materials it employed. In Europe the
decisive factor was wood; in Asia it was
leather--felt and fibre for tents--as well as raw
bricks. Stone was used only exceptionally in the
so-called Balbals, leading to the Kurgans or
surrounding them. These have, however, nothing to do
with architecture. The raw materials used in the
North were so impermanent that nothing has been
preserved. Nevertheless, it is possible to obtain an
idea of how these raw materials were handled
artistically by studying their present use and by
judging their present treatment, since they are still
being used, and by studying the stonework and
painting in Asia proper that imitate the structures
of wood or raw brick, or the tents of felt or fabric.
We can thus fill existing gaps by inferences drawn
from these remains. Take, for instance, M'shatta and
the Dhamekh Stupa. In what material was their
ornamentation originally executed? M'shatta stands as
isolated in Syria as the Dhamekh Stupa does in India,
and both were executed in stone. The facade in Berlin
has always produced the impression of a drapery; its
type is perhaps descended from textiles, or it may
perhaps have been originally of clay. I have found
similar houses in Samarkand, as shown in an article
in the Jahrbuch der asiatischen Kunst (1926). How can
we visualize the prototype of the Dhamekh Stupa? It
is the type of the Kurgan which Aryan immigrants to
India built for storing relics of the Buddha. Extant
Kurgans in the North show only that the lower
enclosing walls were sometimes built of stone, and
reliefs with representations of stupas, especially at
Amaravati, give evidence of their rich ornamentation.
The Dhamekh Stupa is only a representative of this
type because preserved in stone. In what raw material
were such ornamental strips and triangles executed in
the North? In an article in the Revue des arts
asiatiques (1926), I tried to prove that the
carpet-patterns of the tent materials were imitated,
in China in bronze, in the Dhamekh Stupa in stone.
b. Purpose and Subject. Nowhere do the standards
of the Orient and the North differ so sharply as in
the matter of intrinsic meaning. Gottfried Semper in
his Stil draws attention to influences in building
and decoration which even in antiquity testify to the
dominance of raw material, workmanship, and use. If
he had further distinguished guished between the
Orient and the North. his investigations would have
lost all their ambiguity. Take, for instance, the
Stupa of Sarnath. The ornamental band encircling the
lower part of the monument with the triangles as in
M'shatta, and establishing the upper boundary of the
stone work, must have had an original purpose, even
if it were only to symbolize the hallowing of the
monument, the endowing it with Hvarenah. We are just
beginning to feel our way into these matters, to
interpret ornaments as well as representations. It is
characteristic that, as at M'shatta, the monument is
incomplete, and the decoration of the triangles is
for the most part barely begun.
The main motive in the central zone of the
Dhamekh Stupa is the svastika. I should first of all
explain its meaning, yet it has been expounded often
enough, and future investigations of this kind will
find the Dhamekh Stupa of decisive significance. For
p. 76
the sake of brevity it is equally impossible here to
discuss the svastika and the significance of the
lotus in the fantastic vine rinceaux.
c. Formula. The two decisive factors were the
absence of stone and of the human figure. There are
of course exceptions, as for instance in the Balbals,
in the pictographic inscriptions, and so forth. The
main thing is that the human form never had the same
determining influence in northern art as it had in
the art of the central zone, the Orient. Although
Sarnath is on Indian soil, its architecture is devoid
of all human representation, though in general this
attained greater importance in India than in Hellas.
I am making special reference to Sarnath, because it
is essentially northern, and not Indian in its
emphasis on ornament, and especially in the purely
geometrical svastika bands and interlacings that
constitute the horizontal strip. The niche figures
show distinct Indian influence, which is also
responsible for the transformation of the vine into
the native lotus motive.
The Dhamekh Stupa shows how deeply pure northern
feeling can penetrate soil conquered by Aryans. It
can be stated as a law that all geometrical figures
originating in northern workshops gradually lose
their individuality, and are superseded by the human
form as soon as they enter the service of the
Glorification of Power. This is illustrated by the
striking facts concerning mosaics, pavement, wall,
and apse, that I pointed out in the Origin of
Christian Church Art; it is also borne out by a
similar series of comparisons of the glass windows in
the so-called Gothic architecture (which by this fact
alone is proven to be derived from Islam), of rugs,
woolen textiles, and soon.
The first of the two designs on the Dhamekh
Stupa--the bands of svastika and lotus--is discussed
in my Amida, p.158, and in the article Persischer
Hellenismus in christlicher Zierkunst. The motives of
the Stupa are so clearly related to the older ones on
the facade columns of Amida, to contemporaneous
Coptic stone pattern, and to the later decorations on
the so-called Mosul bronzes, that there can be no
doubt as to their alliance with the same sphere of
Iranian art. The massive yet flame-like lotus is so
important in tracing the derivation of the style of
Indo-China, that we cannot sufficiently emphasize the
significance of this Indian monument of the sixth
century.
d. Form. The statement that what we call building
comes from the North will find little credence. I
might mention the Greek temple, which transforms
northern woodforms into stone. I shall, however,
confine myself to Asia. It is uncertain how many of
the architectural forms that are to this day
fundamental motives owe their existence to
building in raw brick and to the tent. For example,
as I tried to show in my work on Armenia, it seems
that the cupola over the square, taken from square
wooden buildings with slanting roofs, was first
introduced into the rough brick architecture of Iran,
and then passed into the masonry construction of
Persia and Armenia. Its final stage of development
was in baked brick and in stone, as we find in S.
Sophia's and S. Peter's. These generalities should be
substantiated by independent studies of development
(see my work on Armenia). The Dhamekh Stupa bears no
relation to these styles, derived from wood and
unbaked brick, but bears a very close one to the
fundamental formula of the Kurgan and of tent
decoration. It offers, in stone, the clue to the lost
monuments of northern Asia, even as did M'shatta.
Only the ornament has here achieved a new formal
unity, which adds a half Iranian and half Indian
flavor to the original structure.
Of equal significance with the initial adoption
of the human form is the fact that when the North
adopts this human form, pure imitation of nature
ceases and the design takes on more or less regular
decorative tendencies. The human figure is in itself
not a design. It is conventionalized by art, in
ancient Greece by stiffness of pose and drapery, in
Iran by arrangement in a plane or relief,
substituting superposition for tridimensional
effects. This manner of representing objects above,
and not behind one another, is especially
characteristic of the North. The plane is the
determining
p. 77
factor, not the pictorial illusion of perspective. A
two-dimensional feeling predominates in the Stupa of
Sarnath; it even excludes an otherwise frequent
device--the transformation of the flat vine into a
pseudo-landscape by inserting swimming ducks (see
Altai-Iran, p.72 and also Pl. IX 2, one of the
columns of Sanci, but especially the ceiling frescoes
of Ajanta).
Semitic and Greek costume and drapery, form and
design, hardly concern Asia proper, which represents
the human form only under the influence of the South
and of Asia Minor. In these matters Asia must be left
out of the discussion of our problem lem of "The
Orient or the North." At all events, the East, if it
treats the human form, does not use costume in the
Mesopotamian style, but rather as "drapery In the
manner of Greek or Northern art, this is shown by the
surprisingly bold stucco figures from the Tarim
basin.
In the North, line has an independent function,
as has the human form in the central zone. In Sarnath
we find both types of entwined line, angular in the
svastika, flowing and swinging in the lotus-vine.(9)
All exterior decoration on Indian stupas shows the
same tendency in this type of ornament. Aside from
this, Kramrisch has drawn my attention to details in
Malauda from the sixth century (Fig.13), where
strange designs fill the niches of the metopes; below
is an endless pattern of notches, above which is the
typical bird on the bough, which emerged from Iran as
a Hvarenah motive and travelled westward over Syria
to Italy and the Frankish realm, eastward into the
Chinese landscape representations with the bird on
the branch. To the right of this is a cross inscribed
in the sacred bow. I shall not go into more detail.
Fig.14 shows another Indian monument which bears
on the problem of the North, a plaque in Maghai
(Chamba state). It shows a band of five figures
separated by pilasters. This is not the point I wish
to stress but rather the rich decoration, which
covers both the pilasters and the background and
overruns the entire surface, as well as the frame.
The details suggest a host of problems for research.
I wish to point only to the contrast of the double
strip of plaited work in the frame with the filling
of the lower field or the lightly incised motives
which occur in other places. As in the Dhamekh Stupa,
here also entirely different types go hand in hand.
The North does not model in light and shade, but
produces its effects on a flat surface either through
sheen or colour. As shown in the Stupa of Sarnath,
colour can often be understood in the sense of black
and white obtained by deep shadow-lines in the strips
of svastikas, and by under cutting "deep and dark" in
the lotus vines, where occasionally slanting planes
of carving add to the general richness of the design.
e. Contents. The spiritual attitudes differ in
this, that the Orient is under the sway of the Will
to Power, while the interests of the North are ideal
rather than material. So Oriental man tends to view
nature under the aspect of higher powers, whereas
Northern man perceives nature simply and directly in
symbols, in the cosmos, and in the depths of his own
spirit.
The Stupa of Sarnath should furnish evidence that
in spite of the Indianizing of plastic
representations of the human form, nevertheless pure
Northern sentiments have persisted in the cult of the
dead and of relics, and in the exterior decoration of
the stupa. Artistic urge finds expression in dynamic
line. It is impossible to say at such an early stage
of investigation whether this is pure delight in
decoration, or whether, as already suggested, it has
become involved in ideas of Hvarenah.
III. Development. Historical research could as
little discover the art of the North in Europe as in
Asia, because it was principally concerned with
examples and believed it unnecessary to consider gaps
between existing specimens. Still more important is
the fact that prehistoric research proceeded
likewise. A study of stone, bronze, and iron could
never lead to the foundation of the history of art,
which concerns the very
----------------------
9. See Strzygowski, Northern Influence in Southern Art
(Drawing and Design, Studio, 1927, p.76 f.).
p. 79
beginnings as well as the endless period of the
development of the fine arts. In dealing with the
old Orient, scholars always started with Egypt and
Mesopotamia, instead of inquiring into the artistic
origin of the monuments preserved in stone and baked
brick. These works did not originate in stone and
brick but in those raw materials which we have
found characteristic of the North. Various motives in
Africa and India are similarly derived from the raw
materials of the southern belt.
a. Enduring Forces. The decisive factors in all
beginnings, and in growth generally, are the forces
related to the building and roofing of a structure.
As stone, bronze and iron have nothing to do with
this, they, as well as pottery, can at best only
serve to throw light on the central problem. The
start must have been made with those materials which
served to protect Northern man from inclement
weather, in Asia tents, or houses of wood or raw
brick; then followed the raw materials used for
clothing. In this light the earth is a depository of
raw materials at the disposal of man, according to
the various localities, if he is not diverted by
unnatural conditions. One result of such conditions
is the use of stone, cut into blocks, which the
history of art has been inclined to place in the
foreground. This does not stand at the beginning of
artistic development either in Europe or Asia. The
materials heretofore ignored-- wood, raw brick, and
tents--determined the architecture of those
districts. It will be a task of the greatest
importance to make known that epoch, in order to
understand the development of Asiatic art, instead of
beginning prematurely with monumental architecture in
stone and baked brick. These historical spheres of
art grew out of much older artistic currents; for
instance, ancient Indian art of the time before Asoka
is explained by the stupa, which imitates earlier
creations in wood and other raw materials. This very
example shows which were the forces that promoted
independent building in stone. More will be said
about this presently. We must strive to infer the
unknown from the known, and only the methodical
procedure of the specialist can fill in the gaps. We
have mentioned two examples, M'shatta and the Dhamekh
Stupa. They both imitate, in stone, earlier
structures of wood.
America made a wonderful advance in this
direction through the Pumpelly Expedition to the
region of Transoxiana. The objects brought to light
in the excavations at Anau now form the basis of this
kind of research.(10) In an article in the Revue des
Arts Asiatiques, 1926, I have also tried to indicate
the beginnings of tent building. For building in wood
one may consult my own works and those of Johannes
Schwieger in the first volume of the new periodical
"Armeniaca."
b. The Will to Power. Oriental art starts with
the representation of the god and the king; it builds
monuments, temples, and palaces of stone. This
tendency evidently proceeds from the Will to Power,
to point out to the subjects their distance from the
sovereign, and to claim its own duration from
eternity to eternity. The Greeks were drawn into this
current of power by the expedition of Alexander the
Great; the Iranians already under the Achaemenides,
and the Indians apparently under Asoka, had felt it.
China never succumbed in the same degree as Europe,
and Asia proper was never completely conquered by the
old Oriental type of the Will to Power.
The Dhamekh Stupa is a document of the
transformation into stone structure of forces brought
along from the North and it has monumentalized the
old Kurgan type. This leads me to seek the origin of
the stupa as such in the North, just as I had in 1904
found the origin of M'shatta in the northern region
of Transoxiana. These are two typical examples of the
art of a region of expansion--copies in stone which
hint at originals in other raw materials. This
transformation was performed by power in India at
first by Asoka, in Asia Minor by a movement whose
historical background has not as yet been
established.
c. Motive Forces. In the so-called Orient the
demand for pomp in court and church
----------------------
10. See Rafael Pumpelly, Explorations in Turkestan,
Expedition of 1904. Prehistoric Civilization of
Anau, Origins, Growth, and Influence of Environ-
ment, Washington, 1908. He deals with the
subdivision of raw brick building.
p. 81
leads to commerce in more precious materials and thus
opens the way to the influence of technique and of
the motives associated with these materials. Thus
stone is exported from Egypt to Mesopotamia, and,
later on, precious textiles are exported from Asia to
the Hellenistic capitals, and finally also to
Byzantium.
I wish to trace just one phenomenon of migration
which shows the continuous contact between India and
the North. The art historian of today, studying the
globe as a whole, will always find it advantageous to
consider India in the solution of difficult problems.
One of the most notable facts is that the art of the
European East and North points to two currents or
routes of intercourse, one across Russia and western
Asia down to India, the other to that triangle which
has its base between the Caucasus and Altai and its
apex at the mouth of the Indus. I want to make a few
more suggestions, in the hope that my colleagues may
contribute something from their own points of view.
Europeans are so accustomed to tracing the
development of the fine arts from the Mediterranean,
that one meets with suspicion when one approaches it,
even if only to escape monotony, from the point of
view of the East or North. This is as though I should
consider the oldest art of the Indian peninsula
solely in connection with Africa, and should ignore
the fact that the spirit of the immigrating Aryans
gradually brought about a profound revolution. In
Europe it is actually a fact that the educative
tendency of the last few centuries, the so-called
humanism, will tolerate only Hellas, or Hellenism and
Rome, and perhaps the ancient Orient as well; but,
through its lack of information and understanding, it
opposes or ignores any reference to the North or
East. Yet it is just the North and the East that
constitute Europe, much more so than the southern
peninsulas which were affected by non-European
influences from the older countries around the
Mediterranean. As I have said before, this southern
area, the central zone, uses stone as well as designs
with the human form, while the North uses wood and
geometrical ornament. The Greeks carry wooden
architecture, transposed into their stone temples,
and geometrical ornament onto Hellenic soil. They are
the first to take, from the South, the representation
of the human figure.
Is it different in India and among the
immigrating Aryans? May we consider it selfevident
that the connection of the immigrating Aryans with
their old home no longer played an important role in
later times? I shall understand Greek art much
better, if I keep an eye on the North and East, as
well as on the central zone, and, as concerns India,
I can always find a solution if I compare monuments
of Northern Europe with those in India. Either the
northern races have nor radically changed since the
separation of the Indians from the Aryans, or else
some sort of contact along the line indicated by the
old Indo-Aryan trail must have continued into
Christian times.
A peculiar and highly important factor in the
comprehension of North European art is the recurrence
on Indian soil of the old wooden architecture which
can be seen on the facades of cave-temples as widely
separated in time and space as Karli and Ajanta. Cave
building itself is certainly not responsible for
this, but it seems that the traditions of the Aryan
immigrants, on their southward road found their way
into native Indian cave architecture. In dealing with
Northern Europe, with the appearance of the ribbed
vault, for example, and the origin of that flower of
Northern art commonly called "Gothic," I can find no
better proof that the use of the rib was customary in
wooden architecture than the fact that it appears in
the Indian caves.
Or supposing I want to show that the gable-board
is an old Aryan motive. The stone decoration of the
Lombards and Croatians furnishes proof that as early
as Carolingian times these northern tribes in their
southern settlements adapted this motive to stone;
but its extensive use in wood seems to occur only on
Indian soil, in the cave dwellings, where the facade
intersects with the arch of the interior barrel-vault
in the so-called sun window, and this is covered by a
frame similar to the gable- board of Northern Europe.
It is true, the curved keel-arch is not surmounted by
the
p. 83
crockets so typical of the North. But it is the same
idea of framing the arch with a motive on a level
with the facade. Similar is the development in Iran
of the mounting in this shape which I have discussed
in my work on Armenia, p.527 ff.
These two motives belong to that flower of
Northern European art, the Gothic, where for once the
North takes the lead. The invasion of the Normans,
with their admirable creation, the Norwegian
high-timbered church, infused new life into the
architectural methods of frame and wood block
building that prevailed on the European continent.
Would it therefore be surprising if the old wood
traditions, thus revived, again became of importance
in the whole architectural scheme as well as in
individual motives? It would then become
comprehensible why India has lately been suggested as
the source of the pointed arch. There are several
factors involved, including the raising of hands in
the Indian gesture of prayer translated into the
architectural symbol of the pointed arch. Of this
Islam appears as the disseminator, and likewise of
the glass window whose origin, we hope, will find
partial explanation in India. Iran can show no
relics, and there are no traces in India, which, like
the geometrical landscape,(11) might help us discover
the Iranian source. We have recently established, by
means of the decoration of the Stupa of Sarnath, a
new provenance for the M'shatta monument and for the
Hvarenah significance of its facade.
So India will solve many problems of origin, not
only for Eastern Asiatic art, closely allied with
India through Buddhism, but also for the West,
connected with India since time was by the Indo-Aryan
movement. But these threads will not become visible,
until the old land-road to the North, via Iran, has
been reopened. Then only will appear traces of the
most popular raw material of the old times, wood,
whose artistic value was pre-eminent in the beginning
of the Indo-Aryan times, as well as when the
Christian North was at its zenith.
Besides the Indian movement there is another. the
Siberio-Iranian, which leads from Northern Asia
across Northern Russia and the Baltic bridge to the
Occident, and which should be considered in
accounting for the distribution of parchment, of the
fish-bird, and of the so-called northern animal
ornament. I have discussed this in the Festschrift
fur Uspensky (Paris, 1928, and shall refer to it in
several works on old Slavonic and Asiatic art.
The movement which carries Iranian art forms to
the Mediterranean is mentioned in an article of mine
on Persian Hellenism in Christian ornament. This
theory is substantiated by the six duplicated
patterns on the Dhamekh Stupa, for they recur twelve
times, and by the same duplication in the famous
mosaics on the ceiling of the ambulatory of S.
Costanza in Rome. I have pointed to the partly
Iranian origin of these patterns in 1903 in an
article ''Seidenstoffe aus Aegypten im Kaiser
Friedrich Museum, Wechselwirkungen zwischen China,
Persien und Syrien in spatantiker Zeit," in the
Jahrbuch der preuss. Kunstammlungen XXIV p.147 ff.
d. Spectator. The history of art has heretofore
been studied without any knowledge of the North;
indeed, it has not even felt this deficiency because
it was altogether concerned with tracing the
development of the Will to Power. At the end of a
life's work I have adopted a different view; the
starting point of my difficult pathway lay in the
desire to investigate the origins of Italian art.
which in the eighties constituted, together with
antiquity, the idea of art. At first I sought the key
in Byzantium, according to the views held at that
time. This took me to Asia Minor and finally to Asia
proper and the North in general. Finally I contrasted
this with the South, and with the problem of how the
art of the central zone could have originated under
such conditions. I have published the results in my
book, "Origin of Christian Church Art," Oxford, 1923,
and in the article "Die asiatische Kunst" (Jahrbuch
der asiatische Kunst, I). In Europe these works met
with little success, for the history of art remained
in its century-old routine. Meanwhile an edition of
my book has come out,
----------------------
11. See my lecture in the India Society, first Roles-
ton Memorial lecture, London, 1922
p. 85
"Die Krisis der Geisteswissenschaften," Vienna, 1923,
of which Professor John Shapley has for years been
preparing a translation in America. In this work I
tried to lay the foundation for a new point of view.
It also forms the background of "Der Norden in der
Bildenden Kunst Westeuropas," published in Vienna,
1926, and of Stichproben, ihr Wesen und ihre
Entwicklung. I have hopes that America will forge
ahead of Europe in revolutionizing methods of
research, especially if attention be given to my new
book "Forschung und Erziehung," which demonstrates
the effect of such a reform on our university and
school training.