Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c5.27

c5.27

(2) The creation of the image of Buddha, "Herein lies the most obvious, and at the same time, perhaps, the most important difference between the ancient schools of interior India, at Sāñchī, Bharhut or Bodh Gayā, and the school of Gandhāra, with the cognate branches at Mathurā and Amarāvatī, etc. . . . . The early schools of Indian art, as we have seen, were content to indicate his supposed presence by mere symbols, and did not presume to imagine his bodily likeness.¹