The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c12.34

c12.34

and now it appears more and more clearly that the two have a common source. If for a moment we disregard the intrusion of the Musalman Arabs, the history of religious art in the ancient world, from the beginning of our era, may — when reduced to its essential features and excluding numerous local variations — be summed up somewhat in this manner : on the decadent trunk of Hellenistic art were grafted in nearer Asia two vigorous young shoots, of which one has been called Græco-Buddhist, and the other might just as well be called Græco-Christian. It is not for us to ignore the fact that the latter has through Italy and Byzantium conquered the whole of Europe; but we must realize also that the former, growing and multiplying like the Indian fig-tree, has likewise gradually won over the whole of Eastern Asia. And thus, from the islands of the Atlantic to those of the Pacific, humanity has by degrees come to pray only at the feet of more or less distant, more or less unsuspected offshoots of Greek art. But on the most distant branches of this great evergreen tree never have there burst forth flowers more beautiful nor more full of resemblance, if not in regard to the moral perfume which they exhale, at least in regard to the material form in which they array themselves before our eyes, than the images, Christian and Buddhist, of the Madonna. Even if, as we venture to foresee, the field of artistic comparisons must habitually be widened from one ocean to the other, the most universally attractive role will always revert to those figures which incarnate the maternal — and in some cases at the same time virginal — grace of the eternal feminine.