The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c5.s1.6

c5.s1.6

Blessed One is no longer visible except in the form of the *dharmakâya* (¹), of the « body of the doctrine »; but of any express prohibition of images we have in the texts no knowledge. Since when, moreover, and in what country does popular devotion trouble itself about the dogmatic scruples of the doctors? Certainly it was not so in ancient India: for otherwise we could not at all understand the enthusiasm with which the valley of the Ganges and the rest of the peninsula welcomed the Indo-Greek type of Buddha. From Mathurâ to Bodh-Gayâ, and from Çrâvastî to Amarâvatî, we see it installed in triumph on the circumference of the *stûpas* as in the interior of the temples. So rapid a conquest is a sufficient proof that the objections of conscience, if any such existed, were far from being insurmountable.