Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c8.2

c8.2

With the increase in the number of divine and semi-divine members in the Buddhistic pantheon, the elders of the Buddhistic congregation and the artists employed by them were compelled to reduce the descriptions of the various gods and goddesses to writing. This class of books form a literature by themselves and are generally known as the Sādhanas. These Sādhanas have been discovered in very large numbers in Nepal and Tibet and form the basis of the modern enquiry into Buddhistic Iconography. The pioneer work on the subject is M. A. Foucher's *Étude sur l'Iconographie Bouddhique de l'Inde*, published in two parts. M. Foucher divided his subjects into five different parts :—