The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c5.s4.1

c5.s4.1

This is a first and certainly very important, but purely material, verification of our hypothesis. There are proofs more subtle than the proof of statistics, which open up deeper views of the development of the ancient Buddhist school. The years have passed, technical skill has increased, the iconographic types of gods and genii have been formed, the gift of observation and a sense of the picturesque have awakened in it : but it remains nevertheless, as regards the capital point of the figuration of Buddha, the docile captive of custom. Around the old themes of the studios, it embroiders, it is true, some variations : it embellishes the stûpas, surrounds the wheels with wreaths, or, careless of the anachronism, gives beforehand to the tree of the Sambodhi the curious stone surround which, more than two and a half centuries after the miracle, it owed to the piety of Açoka (¹); but for all that it does not go beyond the ancient formulas. Weary of eternally repeating the sacred miracles, does it risk treating some still unpublished episode? The idea of taking advantage of this, in order to break free from routine, never occurs to it. It cannot but know that its business is no longer to supply pilgrims with a memento of what they had seen with their own eyes in the course of their visits to the sacred places;