The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c7.30

c7.30

To begin with the past rebirths, it is sufficiently well known that these *jâtakas*, as the Indians call them, are the favourite subjects of the ancient sculptors of Barhut (¹): and this time also we could not put ourselves to a better school to learn to read these riddles in stone. For we must constantly bear in mind that all these bas-reliefs are what our illustrators call « stories without words » : only, instead of depicting the successive episodes in a series of distinct pictures, the old Indian masters, like those of our Middle Ages, did not shrink from placing the incidents in juxtaposition or repeating the characters within one and the same panel. Once we are aware of this procedure, it is a mere pastime to explain their works and to follow the edifying thread of the story through the apparent disorder of the actors and under the accumulation of genre details wherewith they like to crowd the subject. Let us add that the pastime is all the more attractive as, in spite of certain failings in technical skill, we cannot but admire the natural gifts of our sculptors (²).