The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c11.s1.2

c11.s1.2

Whatever from an architectural point of view has been lost to Boro-Budur through the tyranny of religious tradition is abundantly compensated in the decorative aspect. The 2,000 bas-reliefs, more or less, which formerly covered its walls, and of which about 1,600 still exist to-day, are all borrowed from the legend, or from the Pantheon, of Indian Buddhism; and it was the testimony of these that from the first established the sectarian character of the monument. In abundance and variety of subjects the Brahmanic art and epopee of India have provided for the labour of the sculptors of Angkor-Vat nothing comparable hereto. Neither can these latter vie in skill of execution with their confrères of Boro-Budur. While their chisels could only moderately carve the fine Cambodian sandstone into rather shallow pictures, the artists of Java, not disheartened by the coarse grain of the volcanic stone furnished by their island, have drawn from it veritable high-reliefs of an astounding depth. Their figures, in spite of the effeminate softness of their lines, are rightly celebrated for the justness of their proportions, the naturalness of their movements and the diversity of their postures. Above all, they exhibit a knowledge of foreshortening, which is totally lacking in the later, but, owing to want of skill, apparently more archaic works of the Khmer artists. Even in India, if we except the few chefs-d’œuvre that we still possess of the schools of Gandhâra, Amarâvati and Benares, we find nothing to surpass this final Far-Eastern florescence of Buddhist art.