11. Can We “See” Everything?

. Can We “See” Everything? By now you have had a glimpse of the rich visual traditions that existed in the past – expressed in brick and stone architecture, sculpture and painting. We have seen that much has been destroyed and lost over the centuries. Nevertheless, what remains and has been preserved conveys a sense of the vision of the artists, sculptors, masons and architects who created these spectacular works. Yet, do we always automatically understand what they wanted to convey? Can we ever know what these images meant to people who saw them and venerated them about , years ago? . Grappling with the unfamiliar It will be useful to recall that when nineteenth- century European scholars first saw some of the sculptures of gods and goddesses, they could not understand what these were about. Sometimes, they were horrified by what seemed to them grotesque Fig. . Kailashnatha Temple, Ellora (Maharashtra). This entire structure is carved out of a single piece of rock. Fig. . Entrance to a cave at Barabar (Bihar), c . third century BCE