The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c12.30

c12.30

All taken into consideration, we believe that we thus arrive at a precise and sure identification : and the interest of this iconographic type is thereby increased. It announces, or recalls, in fact, congeners beginning with India, its fatherland, as far as Japan, the limit of its migrations, to say nothing of Java. Henceforward it would be difficult to choose a better illustration of the recently acquired knowledge concerning the progressive diffusion of Buddhist art throughout the Far East. It was not until 1900 that our public had a revelation of the existence in Japan, since the VIIth century, of a religious art of the human figure — of what was formerly styled the « grand art ». That its origin was to be sought in China, through the intermediacy of Corea, was quickly seen, and can easily to-day be verified by the photographs recently published by M. Ed. Chavannes (¹).