The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c7.42

c7.42

The keenest is to be found, perhaps — at least for those among us who have a taste for antiquity — in the very expressive and complete picture that they give us of the ancient civilization of India. Architecture both urban and rural, furniture, tools, weapons, instruments of music, standards, chariots, harness for horses and for elephants, costumes and ornaments for men and women etc., all these concrete and precise details merely await to be detached by a draughtsman, in order to serve as authentic illustrations to a future Dictionary of Indian antiquities. And side by side with this information, which is purely material, but in itself so precious, how much more may we gather concerning even the life of the courts, towns and hermitages, if we glance successively at these anchorites, so busy around their sacrificial fires (cf. further on, page 98); these women who attend to their domestic occupations (page 95); these kings seated in their palaces or proceeding with great pomp through the streets of their capitals, before the curious eyes of their subjects (pp. 91 and 93), etc. What is to be said then of the no less important information which these sculptures furnish concerning the external forms of worship and even of the beliefs, the features worn in popular imagination by genii and fairies, as also concerning the manner in which the religious conscience of the time conceived the written tradition of Buddhism!