The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c7.44

c7.44

But, if these bas-reliefs have deserved to hold your attention for an instant, it is not solely for what they teach us or inspire us with a desire to know of the civilization and art of India : it is also and especially for the curious comparisons with our own religious art to which they lend themselves. You have surely observed among them an employment of symbols, in every way analogous to that exhibited by the first Christian artists of the Catacombs at a time when they also had not at their disposal an universally accepted image of the Saviour. The parallelism of the two developments might be pursued still further : and later on, when in both cases the type of the Master had been definitely fixed, it would be no less easy to find in Buddhist tradition written evidence of the tendency, so well known to