Visual art
India has a very ancient tradition of art, which has exchanged many influences with the rest of Eurasia, especially in the first millennium, when Buddhist art spread with Indian religions to Central, East and Southeast Asia, the last also greatly influenced by Hindu art. Almost all surviving ancient Indian art thereafter is in various forms of religious sculpture in durable materials, or coins. There was probably originally far more in wood, which is lost.
In the first millennium CE, Buddhist art spread with Indian religions to Central, East and Southeast Asia, the last also greatly influenced by Hindu art.Over the following centuries a distinctly Indian style of sculpting the human figure developed, with less interest in articulating precise anatomy than ancient Greek sculpture but showing smoothly flowing forms expressing prana (“breath” or life-force).
In spite of this complex mixture of religious traditions, generally, the prevailing artistic style at any time and place has been shared by the major religious groups, and sculptors probably usually served all communities. Gupta art, at its peak c. 300 CE – c. 500 CE, is often regarded as a classical period whose influence lingered for many centuries after; it saw a new dominance of Hindu sculpture.
Cuisine
The foundation of a typical Indian meal is a cereal cooked plainly and complemented with flavourful savoury dishes. The cooked cereal could be steamed rice; chapati, a thin unleavened bread; the idli, a steamed breakfast cake; or dosa, a griddled pancake. The savoury dishes might include lentils, pulses, and vegetables commonly spiced with ginger and garlic, but also with a combination of spices that may include coriander, cumin, turmeric, cinnamon, cardamom and others. They might also include poultry, fish, or meat dishes. In some instances, the ingredients may be mixed during the cooking process. India has distinctive vegetarian cuisines, each a feature of the geographical and cultural histories of its adherents. About 20% to 39% of India’s population consists of vegetarians. Much of this stems from caste hierarchy, as upper castes, such as the Brahmins, consider vegetarian food to be “pure”.
The most significant import of cooking techniques into India during the last millennium occurred during the Mughal Empire. Dishes such as the pilaf, and cooking techniques such as the marinating of meat in yogurt, spread into northern India from regions to its northwest. To the simple yogurt marinade of Persia, onions, garlic, almonds, and spices began to be added in India. Rice was partially cooked and layered alternately with the sauteed meat, the pot sealed tightly, and slow-cooked according to another Persian cooking technique, to produce what has today become biryani, a feature of festive dining in many parts of India.
In the food served in Indian restaurants worldwide, the diversity of Indian food has been partially concealed by the dominance of Punjabi cuisine. The popularity of tandoori chicken—cooked in the tandoor oven, which had traditionally been used for baking bread in the rural Punjab and the Delhi region, especially among Muslims, but which is originally from Central Asia—dates to the 1950s, and was caused in large part by an entrepreneurial response among people from the Punjab who had been displaced by the 1947 partition.
