The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c12.17

c12.17

This is sufficient to explain to us the antiquity, number and character, at once classical and benignant, of her Indian images. All answer more or less to the general description given by Yi-tsing : she is depicted « as holding a babe in her arms and round her knees three or five children ». The little genii who are usually playing and worrying each other evidently represent her « five hundred sons ». There is nothing astonishing in seeing them all of nearly the same size : the texts admit that their mother, a true Gigogne, may very well have been able to bring them