The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c7.16

c7.16

It is as well to state at once that an analogy with a later and well-known motif, a characteristic detail awakening the remembrance of a text, a determinate number of objects forming a traditional group, all these helps and others besides would, no doubt, in the end have opened a way to the interpretation of some of the Sânchî panels; but it is doubtful if these isolated discoveries would ever have gone beyond the stage of ingenious hypotheses, or have deserved to be looked upon as anything but *jeux d'esprit*. If in this matter we are able to arrive at certainties of a scientific character, we owe it to the worthy image-makers of Barhut. It is they who, thanks to the perfectly explicit indications which they themselves have transmitted to us on the subject of their compositions, have furnished us with a key to ancient Buddhist art (¹). In the case of Sânchî, where we have to explain a monument closely connected in spirit, as in space and time, with Barhut, it may easily be conceived that these precious and trustworthy data will necessarily be our first and constant resource. While forming a fund of interpretation acquired in advance, they will at the same time furnish a firm starting point for fresh research; for we may expect that one identification will lead to another, and that the panels will mutually explain each other, were it only by reason of their proximity. On the whole, we must not despair of seeing the majority of these pictures in stone come to life by degrees under an attentive gaze; and, thanks to their