The heritage issue

The Art Heritage of Bangladesh"
Enamul Haque
The International Centre for Study of Bengal Art

It is a great pleasure introducing Dr Enamul Haque's latest comprehensive publication on Bengal art. This excellent voluminous empirical treatise indeed is a new plume on his crown. This rather costly publication comprises 408 pages of text (including bibliography and index) and 536 plates, mostly in colour. According to the author, it was initially planned for ordinary readers on a broad spectrum of the art heritage of Bangladesh. On second thought, however, he modified its scope to make it useful to scholars as well, as a handbook representing the noteworthy facets of the arts of all ages (albeit the handbook is too heavy to carry). It is an ambitious work and certainly a commendable attempt to sweep across a vast vista of over two and a half millennia of history and development of our creative art heritage.
Books such as this are rarely produced in Bangladesh. The Art Heritage of Bangladesh doubtless is a step beyond the beaten track of the past in a sense that this incomparable work not only has pressed into it an extensive range of over two thousand years of our artistic legacy but also covers the art treasures right up to our living generation. In this connection, I think it is our duty to convey our thanks to the High Commission of India for sponsoring this elegant volume.
The subject of the author's doctoral thesis at Oxford University (1973) was Bengal Sculpture: Hindu Iconography. Published in 1992, the book, an unprecedented analytical study of 1860 sculptures, which remains as a standard treatise on the subject, brought him the Ramaprasad Chanda Centenary Medal from the Asiatic Society of Kolkata in 1993. But his remarkable study of the fascinating art of terracotta, inventorised and documented from various museums and private collections, their stylistic classification, identification, analysis of attributes and collaterals in West Bengal and far afield scattered over Europe and USA, resulted in an outstanding book titled Chandraketugarh: A Treasure House of Bengal Terracottas (2001), forming a part of the ICSBA publication, with 678 plates of which 400 were in colour. This penetrating study and documentation is a significant addition to our knowledge. Now, as he claims, it is possible to assess the themes and motifs of the Chandraketugarh artists and evaluation of the matchless terracotta art of Bengal during the early few centuries of the Historic Period.
Haque begins with what he calls an exploratory introduction, elaborately dealing with the history and development of art in Bangladesh, chronologically and phase by phase. The major chapters are devoted to the sculpture, the architecture and the paintings. The masterpieces of Hindu, Buddhist and Jain images are presented with their iconographic and stylistic features. The ancient architecture studied is based on extant archaeological remains and also on the evidence of the votive specimens, manuscript paintings and those from the background of the sculptures.
The great variety of Muslim architecture has been rationally classified by the author under few distinctive categories, on the basis of their ground plan and number and types of domes and some other features. One wishes that Dr. Haque had dealt more elaborately with the fascinating passing phase of our glazed tile ornamentation during the Medieval period, which appear to have been introduced in the country in the 14th century but unaccountably disappeared completely in the 16th when this scintillating art in upper India was a craze.
A separate chapter on painting by Dr. Haque is indeed notable and a very useful guidance to the scholar on the subject. The manuscript paintings of the HIndu-Buddhist periods have been very thoroughly noticed considering all such specimens discovered till today and preserved in the different collections of the world. Similarly, the miniature paintings from the only known Sultanate manuscript of the Sharafnama dated 1531 CE of the time of Sultan Nusrat Shah are a welcome introduction of the scholars. The chapter has been very thoughtfully concluded with the discussion of the materials from the late Mughal, Colonial and Modern periods.
Dr. Haque's somewhat succinct treatment of calligraphy, metal work, textile, wood, ivory, jewellery, musical instruments, bamboo works, toys, sankhri A. and other minor arts have been illustrated ranging right up to the present day as a compendium of the minor and folk arts of Bengal. The cover page discreetly depicts an elegant Tughra inscription from the mid-17th century Bara Katra in Dhaka and a centrepiece portraying boldly a mithuna scene in terracotta medallion salvaged from an earlier excavation at Mahasthan about 70 years back. The back cover appropriately shows a beautiful wooden partition from Faridpur dating to about the 19th century. A reader may not ignore the novelty of the colourful dedication page. The author very respectfully has dedicated the volume to more than one hundred scholars, actually 102 of the past and present, who have been remembered for making contributions to the study of Bengal art.
Dr. Nazimuddin Ahmed is former director, Directorate of Archaeology, Government of Bangladesh.