The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c12.12

c12.12

these three figures proceeds directly from either of the other two, their simultaneous existence serves in the end only to induce us to bring a prudent reserve to bear upon our statements. If our short enquiry does not at all result, as we had begun to think, in guaranteeing the entire absence of the type of Nursing Virgin from ancient Christian art, it at least proves the extreme rarety thereof. Consequently, it suffices — and it makes no further claim — to divert us from the first trail along which our European prejudices would have started us.