The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c6.12

c6.12

be more edifying, in default of scenes derived from the last life of the Master, than narratives of which he himself had previously been the hero before becoming the narrator? On the other hand, their familiar and picturesque character fitted in marvellously — certainly much better than moral considerations or metaphysical speculations — with the exigences of an art so concrete as sculpture and necessitating so much precision in material detail. Thus the good stone-cutters of Barhut and Sânchî have had recourse, like the sculptors of our cathedrals, to the treasure of their « Golden Legend », and have created, by the very force of things, a plastic art at once narrative and religious, which recalls in many ways the formulas of our artists of the Middle Ages. Thus it is, for example, that they did not, any more than these latter, prohibit the juxtaposition of episodes and repetitions of persons in the framework of one and the same panel. We shall have many opportunities of remarking this naive proceeding.