<i>India: A History in Objects</i> by T. Richard Blurton

India: A History in Objects is yet another book that tries to understand India through its objects. Yet, an object is more than an object, particularly in India. In addition to a patron and a creator, it likely had an environment that fostered it, a textual source that inspired it, and a timeless creative tradition that sustained it. Such an object creates relationships with objects around it, usually as part of a religious or cultural tradition, meant mainly for its subjective, inward, aesthetic experience.An encyclopedic work like this one can have much to offer about its subject matter even if it lacks academic depth and treats objects of art as mere ephemeral curiosities. To be fair, Blurton makes this point himself at the outset. The title of the book is also a misnomer; the objects are not from every museum that makes a contribution to the history of the subcontinent; it is primarily a guide to the Indian art collection at the British Museum, intended for casual visitors, not for scholars doing serious research. With more than 500 illustrations, the book is a visual delight, despite its lack of academic vigor. Through a bird’s-eye view, Blurton attempts to connect today’s India with its past.Blurton presents a vast chronology from the Indus Civilization to the British Raj, covering many of the intervening dynasties. As mainly a visual tour, with only a simple and attenuated text, it will saturate readers’ eyes more than it will stimulate their intellects. The captions of the images are succinct but sufficient.Blurton does well to include not only objects from the Hindu tradition but also from the Buddhist, Jain, and Islamic traditions, in India as well as elsewhere in the sub-continent. His broad sweep fittingly encompasses objects in daily use, like the pan box and huqqa base; a feature of Indian art is its seamless blending of the quotidian and the classical.By including both photography and objects, Blurton is able to draw attention to a wide variety of art forms. He restores some degree of academic strength to the book via his introductions to such noteworthy chapters as “Dynasties and the Rise of Buddhism,” “Shiva Nataraja,” “Rural Cultures,” and Film and Cinema. By restricting himself to the British Museum, however, he is unable to incorporate significant objects within the genres that he presents. In the section entitled “Paintings From the Punjab Hills,” he makes no reference to Kangra and Raja Sansar Chand, among other places. In the genre of Rajput Paintings, he fails to give the ateliers of Bikaner, Kishangarh, Bundi, et al. their due. The chapter about Ragamala paintings makes no mention of the Ragamala texts or the seed mantras from which the paintings emanated. The absence of any allusion to underlying, seminal primary works—whether temples, poetry, paintings, or sculpture—is a consistent problem in the book. A comprehensive bibliography would have been helpful to serious students of Indian art.Overall, this book belongs on a coffee table rather than on a library bookshelf, but it makes enjoyable reading, lightly touching many objects and their histories. Readers can open the book to any page and embark on a pleasure trip. The book will certainly appeal to anyone interested in the long history of beautiful objects created on the Indian sub-continent.

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