The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c10.4

c10.4

workman, such are they still to-day; or at least, if they are likewise subject to mutilations and susceptible, strictly speaking, of being counterfeited, no attempt at rifacimento or interpolation, that scourge of Indian literatures, could in their case pass unperceived. Guaranteed against the insidious address of the diasceuasts, they are equally so against the individual fancy of their own authors, who are forcibly restrained by the material conditions of their technique. It results from this that they can be arranged with perfect assurance in chronological order and dated with a sufficient approximation. It is in this sense that we are able to say with Fergusson, that « in such a country as India, the chisels of her sculptors are ...immeasurably more to be trusted than the pens of her authors(¹) ». It is in virtue of this advantage that the figured versions seem to us able in their turn to render some service to the written accounts of the same legend. In short, after having so often applied the texts to the interpretation of the monuments, we should like on this occasion to essay the application of the monuments to the chronology of the texts.