Towards an etho-archaeology of Bengal As pointed out by Samik Bandopadhyay, this traditionalist-modernist debate is unending, but what is intriguing is that in spite of his realization that the comprehensive notion of oriental and Indian art, represented by overemphasized studies of Rajput art, Mughal art and the art of Ajanta, was a defective approach, because it was adopted 'in ignorance of the fact that living traditions of the distinctive arts of each province existed 54 in an almost unbroken current in its rural areas from remote antiquity", Gurusaday Dutt did not pursue the line of thought further to develop a model for the study of the regional artistic expressions of India. He got entangled in the web of the 'national art traditions of Bengal". Nothing of India's, and for that matter Bengal's, own perceptions and concepts, parameters and terminology, for understanding 'regional' or 'national'lines of art and art criticism would apply to Gurrsaday Dutt. What could have been so deftly identified and analysed in terms of 'deshi' and 'margi', as by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy in his article 'The Nature of Folklore and Popular Art', published in 1936, where he says, 'all traditional art is a folk art in the sense that it is the art of a unanimous people —jam', is left completely untheorized by Dutt. Equally perplexing is Nandalal Bose's polemical position about providing exposure and training to the patuas as they 'do not have an original creative talent', especially when we know that the patuas of Kalighat as well as those of Birbhum and Midnapore responded of themselves to their contemporary social situation, creating paintings with titles such as 'Dandy with Courtesan', 'Husband Beating Wife', 'Oval Portrait of a Calcutta Dandy', 'Courtesan Playing a Violin' and The Sheepish Lover'. A large mass of Kalighat paintings based on the famous contemporary Tarkeshwar murder case that took place in 1873, involving a love affair between Elokeshi, the young wife of Navin Chandra Banerjee and Madhav Chandra Giri, the mahant of the Tarkeshwar temple, the Journal of Arts <&' Ideas Terracotta rehef