velopment of both painting and sculpture, as being
a polytheistic religion. In the early stages of society religion and
art are intimately connected, as is shown by the fact that images and
paintings are at first nearly always of deities or sacred persons or
animals, and it is only after a considerable period of development
that secular subjects are treated. Similarly architecture is in its
commencement found to be applied solely to sacred buildings, as temples
and churches, and is only gradually diverted to secular buildings. The
figures sculptured by the Mochis are usually images for temples,
and those who practise this art are called Murtikar, from _murti_,
an image or idol; and the pictures of the Chitrakars were until
recently all of deities or divine animals, though secular paintings
may now occasionally be met with. And the uneducated believers in a
polytheistic religion regularly take the image for the deity himself,
at first scarcely conceiving of the one apart from the other. Thus
some Bharewas or brass-workers say that they dare not make metal
images of the gods, because they are afraid that the badness of their
handiwork might arouse the wrath of the gods and move them to take
revenge. The surmise might in fact be almost justifiable that the end
to which figures of men and animals were first drawn or painted, or
modelled in clay or metal was that they might be worshipped as images
of the deities, the savage mind not distinguishing at all between an
image of the god and the god himself. For this reason monotheistic
religions would be severely antagonistic to the arts, and such is in
fact the case. Thus the Muhammadan commentary, the Hadith, has a verse:
"Woe to him who has painted a living creature! At the day of the last
judgment the persons represented by him will come out of the tomb
and join themselves to him to demand of him a soul. Then that man,
unable to give life to his work, will burn in eternal flames." And
in Judaism the familiar prohibition of the Second Commandment appears
to be directed to the same end.

Hindu sculpture has indeed been fairly prolific, but is not generally
considered to have attained to any degree of artistic merit. Since
sculpture is mainly concerned with the human form it seems clear that
an appreciation of the beauty of muscular strength and the symmetrical
development of the limbs is an essential preliminary to success in
this art; and such a feeling can only arise among a