The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c5.s5.6

c5.s5.6

It is no longer a secret to anyone that the regular sweep of this evolution was brusquely interrupted by a veritable artistic cataclysm. The Hellenized sculptors of the north-west, strangers to the native tradition of Central India, satisfied to the full; and even outwent, the wishes of their Buddhist patrons by creating for their use the Indo-Greek type of Buddha. Immediately their colleagues of the low country, seduced by this wonderful innovation, greeted with no less enthusiasm than the laity the rupture of the magic charm which had weighed so heavily and so long upon the ancient Buddhist school. We have already remarked upon the fact of the rapid diffusion of the new type (p. 7) : it is now clear to us that its adoption did not come into direct collision with any dogmatic prejudice. Always docile interpreters of current ideas, the texts set themselves henceforth to guarantee, by the aid of apocryphal traditions or an abundance of miracles, the authentic resemblance of those portraits whose possibility they were a moment ago denying (¹). The reason is that, in reality, the new mode (see pl. IV) did not expressly infringe any ritualistic prohibition: it did nothing but overthrow the artistic procedures of composition, and the bonds which fell were of a purely technical kind. We have seen clearly enough how the image-makers of the basin of the Ganges had slowly suffered the spider's web of custom to weave itself around them, and how, not daring to tear it apart, they had already endeavoured to free themselves from it. Under the stroke of the revelation which came to them from Gandhâra their emancipation was as sudden as it was complete: but even through this unexpected development we are prepared to follow up the test to which we have submitted our theory and from which it seems to us to have so far issued with honour.