The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c7.15

c7.15

Certainly these indications are far from being entirely devoid of interest. First of all, they tell us that, if not the monument itself, at least its enclosure was built by public subscription, with special appropriation of the contributions, as in certain modern religious foundations. Moreover these votive and somewhat ostentatious epigraphs enlighten us indirectly on many points — for example, as regards the social condition of the individual subscribers, who nearly all belong to the middle class, merchants and bankers, the class from which the Buddhist laity were most freely recruited; or again, concerning the details of the artistic execution, as when one of the jambs of the southern gate is given us as an offering in kind, the chef-d’œuvre, and at the same time the ex-voto, of the carvers in ivory of the neighbouring town of Vidiçâ; or lastly, concerning the date of the sculptures, which the incidental mention on this same gate of the reigning king Sâtakaṇi allows us to connect with the second, or first, century before the Christian era. But, as regards the subject of the scenes represented, the inscriptions and their engravers are aggravatingly silent. Evidently the sculptors of Sânchî, as a means of ensuring at all periods the comprehension of their work, counted on their artistic talent as illustrators: wherein they showed themselves much less far-seeing and less modest than their confreres who had just decorated the balustrade of Barhut, and who had not considered it futile to engrave on the stone the titles of their bas-reliefs.