The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c5.s1.8

c5.s1.8

But, it will be said, if it is true that the ancient Indian image-makers asked for nothing better than to represent the Blessed One, and that, on the other hand, they were capable of it, why then have they so carefully abstained? To this we see but one reply, in appearance, we must confess, simple-minded enough, but one which, in India, is still sufficient for all: « If they did not do it, it was because it was not the custom to do it ». And, no doubt, it would be easy to retort: « But you confine yourself to putting off the question; if it does not arise with regard to the sculptors whose works we possess, it still holds good entirely with regard to their predecessors... » — Certainly, and far from contradicting, that is just the point at which we wished to arrive. We hold that this monstrous abstention, such as we observe on the monuments of Barhut and Sânchî, remains perfectly incomprehensible, unless we enquire into the traditional habits which it supposes and which, for that very reason, it is capable of revealing to us. Like certain anomalies in animal species, it can only be explained as an inheritance from a nearly obsolete past, which this survival helps us to reconstitute. In other words, it is vain for us to seek a solution of the problem in the few relatively late specimens at present known to us; it is to the anterior history, to what is still the prehistoric period of Buddhist art that we must go to discover it. To such a typical case of artistic teratology it is the evolutionist method of embryology that it is proper to apply.