The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c5.s3.1

c5.s3.1

Such is the sole part which hypothesis plays in our theory. The whole subsequent development of Buddhist art flows logically from these premises; and henceforth there are none of the still surviving documents which do not successively corroborate the various stages of its evolution. The oldest monuments which have come down to us from Indian antiquity are a few rectangular coins of copper or silver. Now it is very remarkable that, among the symbols with which they are punch-marked, the tree, the wheel and the stûpa play a considerable, and indeed, on many of them, a predominant part (¹). Thanks to the chance of their discovery, the existence of the signacula, which we imagined to have been made for the use of pilgrims, ceases to be, for as far back as we can go, a pure conjecture (see pl. I, B, C, D). Better still, we can clearly discern in the infantile simplicity of these emblems the style of the most ancient manifestations of the religious art of the Buddhists. They are, properly speaking, less images than hieroglyphics endowed for the initiated with a conventional value : and, at the same time, we succeed in explaining to ourselves what we have already more than once had occasion to note, that is, the abstract and quasi algebraical character of this art at its commencement (²). Moreover, we easily conceive that, in consequence of being conveyed beyond the great centres of pilgrimage, artistic emblems of this sort may have seen their initial signification modified. They came, by degrees, to be regarded less as mementos of sacred spots than as figurative representations of miracles, the memory of which was connected with those places. In other words, in proportion as they were propagated further and further from their place of origin, their topographical and local character diminished more and more, to the advantage of their symbolical and universal value, until they ended by becoming the common patrimony of the image-makers and being fabricated everywhere without distinction where a Buddhist donor ordered them. It is just this state of diffusion and subsequent generalisation that is proved to us even in the IVth century by the banality and dispersion of the so-called « Buddhist » coins.