The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c11.s1.122

c11.s1.122

But the chief and most evident fault of these bas-reliefs is the persistent incapacity of their authors, in spite of their manual skill, to create figures having a characteristic individuality. Assuredly, it would be unfair to regard it as a crime on the part of the artists of those distant isles not to have reached a pinnacle of art which remained unknown to the Indian school and to which Greek art itself attained only at its best period. But the fact is patent. They are capable of representing types, but not individuals. They possess a model of a king, which serves without distinction for gods, as does that of the queen for goddesses; a model of a monk, which, with the exception of the coiffure, is equally suitable for Buddhas; a model of a courtier, an anchorite, a Brahman, a warrior, etc. This stock figure is used by them on all occasions. According to the circumstances it is capable, by the play of gesture and even by facial features, of expressing different states of mind : it is incapable of assuming a physiognomy distinguishing it from its congeners. Thus it is that, for example, in the same legend we have seen the same princely personage called here Dhana, Sudhana, or Druma, there Rudrâyaṇa, Bimbisâra, or Çikhaṇḍin. At a distance of five panels (cf. pll. XXXVII, 2 and XXXIX, 3) a king and a monk are similarly engaged in conversation with each other : nothing warns us that in the interval they have both changed their personalities. It would not appear that in ancient times the pilgrim who made the *pradakṣiṇâ* of these galleries was able without the oral commentary of some monkish cicerone to ascribe different names to figures so similar : still less can we, now that the local tradition is completely extinct, dispense with a written commentary. We may affirm that we shall succeed in identifying on the walls of Boro-Budur only those bas-reliefs of which we have somewhere read the legend : and, again, the example of the *Sudhanakumârâvadâna* proves that we must have read it in the same work as had the sculptor.