The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c8: The Greek Origin of the Image of Buddha

The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c8

Language: English

The Greek Origin of the Image of Buddha

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¹ Lecture at the Musée Guimet (*Bibliothèque de Vulgarisation du Musée Guimet*, vol. XXXVIII).

One of the advantages of the Musée Guimet most appreciated by its orientalist lecturers is that they are free to dispense with the oratorical precautions which they must take everywhere else. Generally, wherever they venture to open their mouths, they believe themselves obliged to begin by asking pardon of their auditors for the great liberty which they take in speaking on subjects so far removed from their usual occupations and for drawing them into surroundings so different from those in which they are accustomed to move. Such a formality would in this case be entirely superfluous. You could not but be aware of the fact that on crossing the threshold of this Museum you would immediately find yourself transported from Europe to Asia, and you would hardly expect me to apologize for speaking of Buddha in the home of Buddha. For, if he is not the sole inhabitant of this hospitable house, haven of all exotic manifestations of religious art, I dare at least to say that he is its principal tenant. To whatever gallery your steps may lead you, be it consecrated to India or to China, to Indo-China or to Tibet, to Japan or to Java, him you will never fail to meet again and again, in room after room, with the dreamy look of his half-closed eyes and his perpetual smile, at once sympathizing and disillusionized. If the distraction of your gaze, wandering from image to image, does not too much dissipate your attention, and if your minds succeed by degrees in disregarding the diversity of the dimensions and the variety of the materials, you will not be long in noticing that always and everywhere, minute or gigantic, carved in wood, cut in stone, modelled in clay, cast or beaten in metal, he continues to be astonishingly like himself. Soon, by dint of verifying the justness of this first observation, you will arrive at the reflexion that so great an uniformity supposes, at the origin of all these idols, the existence of a common prototype, from which they will have been more or less remotely descended. And thus in the end you are inevitably confronted by the question which I have to-day set myself the task of answering. If it shall appear that the reply brings us back straightway and in a rather unexpected manner towards the familiar horizons of our classic antiquity, well! that will simply be one more element of interest.

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But before interrogating the images of Buddha concerning their more distant origins, it is well to define exactly what we mean by the name. Europeans commonly make the strangest abuse of it. How many times have I not heard — and usually on the most charming lips — the very elementary principles of Buddhist iconography outraged, and no matter what statuette, Chinese, Tibetan, or Japanese, however monstrous it might be, thoughtlessly designated by the name which ought to be reserved for Çâkyamuni and his peers! What would you think of an Asiatic who should designate *en bloc*, by the one name of « Christ », not only Our Lord, God the Father, the Holy Ghost, and the Blessed Virgin, but also all the angels, all the saints, and even all the devils of Christianity? After having first laughed, you would soon cry out at the sacrilege : and yet that is what we calmly do every day by lumping together under the name of the one Buddha all the inhabitants of the Buddhist heavens and even hells. Therefore, let me implore you, once for all — especially the ladies — no more thus to profane the name of the Blessed One by applying it indifferently at one time to savage or even obscene demons, at another to extravagant divinities, bristling with manifold heads and arms, and at another to simple monks.

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In strictness, the title of « Illuminated » — for such is very nearly the equivalent of « Buddha » — ought to be reserved for a personage whom, for my part, I should not hesitate to regard as historic, for that scion of the noble family of the Çâkyas, who was born in the north of India, at the foot of the central Himâlaya, towards the middle of the VIth century before our era; who about his thirtieth year gave up his possessions, his parents, his wife, his child, in order to embrace the wandering life of a mendicant monk; who, after six years of vain study and austerities, finally at the foot of the ever-green fig-tree of Bodh-Gayâ discovered the secret of liberating human beings from the evils of existence; who during more than forty years preached in the middle portion of the basin of the Ganges salvation by the suppression of desire, the root of all suffering; who died and was cremated; whose ashes, regarded as holy relics, were distributed to the four quarters of India and deposited under vast tumuli, where we still find them to-day; whose image, finally, is still enthroned above the flower-adorned altars, mid clouds of incense and murmurs of prayers, in all the pagodas of the Far East. And, doubtless, this effigy served in its turn as a model for those of the mythical predecessors, or of the transcendent hypostases, which Indian imagination was not long in creating for him in unlimited numbers, through infinite time and space, in the depths of our terrestrial past as well as in the abysses where at this moment move all the other universes. But such is the servile fidelity of these copies that from the iconographic point of view one may say : « There is no Buddha but Buddha ». Now the essential character of this figure is precisely that always and everywhere, through all the differences of gesture and pose, it assumes only one form, simply and purely human. This is the most important fact to be borne in mind. As for the particular signs which prevent our ever failing to recognize the type, the first statue or photograph to your hand will familiarize you with them.

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Here then we are agreed : together we seek the origin of the image of the Indian mendicant who, by the prestige of his intelligence, his goodness and, perhaps, also of his personal beauty, exercized over his contemporaries an influence capable of forming a basis for one of the three great religions of the world, that which from his epithet we call Buddhism. At the first view the problem does not seem so very complicated. Granted that all these representations seem to descend from a common prototype, the question resolves itself into discovering the place, time, and occasion of the first appearance of this type. In other words, it will be necessary, but sufficient, to determine which are the most ancient known images of Buddha. Theoretically, nothing is more simple; in practice we quickly perceive that the thing is sooner said than done.

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It is in Ceylon, the first Buddhist stage on the maritime high road of Asia, that the European usually finds himself for the first time in the presence of veritable idols of the Blessed One. Most often he restricts himself to an excursion, along red roads losing themselves in the distance under a slowly diminishing arch of green palmeries, to the singularly modernized temple of Kelani, a little to the north of Colombo. But, even if he pushed on as far as the ancient ruined towns of the interior, he would be no more successful in finding in their old statues the original type which we are seeking. With still greater reason would he renounce the idea of encountering it in the other terrestrial paradise, that of the austral hemisphere; for the not less luxuriant island of Java was also only an Indian colony, and, doubtless, it became so later than did Ceylon. The hundreds of Buddhas who have given a name to Boro-Budur are attributed only to the IXth century of our era. The even more recent character of the majority of the idols which are still venerated in Cambodia, Siam and Burmah shows only too clearly through their tinsel and their gilding. The most ancient Lamaic images could hardly be anterior to the official proclamation of Buddhism in Tibet towards the year 632. In Japan everyone will tell you that the figure of the Master was not introduced there until the VIth century, and that it came from China through the intermediacy of Corea. Nor do the most ancient Chinese images known to us, those of the grottoes of Long-Men or of Ta-t’ong-fu, which M. Chavannes has just made known by reproductions, go back beyond the IVth century (¹). Finally, the last archæological missions in Central Asia have succeeded in proving, as had already been supposed, that their model came from India by the two routes which on the north and the south skirt the desert of Turkestan (¹).

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¹ E. CHAVANNES, *Mission archéologique dans la Chine septentrionale*, Paris, 1909.

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¹ See, for example, in GRÜNWEDEL, *Bericht über archäologische Arbeiten in Idikutschari und Umgebung im Winter 1902-1903* (Munich, 1906), pl. IV, fig. 1, a specimen from Turfan, and in M. A. STEIN, *Ancient Khotan*, pl. LXXXII, 2, another example from the environs of Khotan.

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Thus clearly were we directed in advance to seek the plastic origins of Buddha in the very places which saw the beginning of his doctrine. And, were it not of interest to prove the diffusion and permanence of the type through the whole of eastern Asia, we might have spared ourselves this vast circuit. The point clearly marked for the serious commencement of our quest is the country of Magadha, otherwise that province of Behar which the latest imperial proclamation of Delhi has just officially detached from Bengal. But the numerous statues in black basalt, which we there find — to begin with that which has been set up over the altar of the temple of Bodh-Gayâ, at the very spot where the Illuminated received his Illumination —, go back for the most part only to the dynasty of the Pâlas, which was overthrown by the Musalmans in the XIIᵗʰ century of our era. The excavations of Sârnâth, the site of the First Preaching, in the northern suburb of Benares, have furnished us with more ancient examples, carved in a grey sandstone of an uniform tint, which mark at the time of the Gupta Kings (IVᵗʰ and Vᵗʰ centuries A. D.) a kind of renaissance of Indian art. More to the north-west the ruins of Mathurâ, far to the south-west those of Amarâvatî have supplied us with still older ones, which the mention on the former of the Indo-Scyths, on the second of the Ândhras carry as far back as the IIⁿᵈ century of our era. But whether carved in the yellow-spotted red sandstone of Mathurâ or in the white marble of Amarâvatî, they are as like as brothers, and everyone will agree that they are descended from a common ancestor of blue slate and native to the north-western corner of India.

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Thus, following our thread, we have already remounted in the scale of years nearly twenty out of the twenty five centuries which separate us from the time of Buddha. The result is appreciable, and can only encourage us to continue. But just at this moment the thread which guided us step by step through the chaos of Buddhist art breaks off sharp in our hands. While statues of the Master, dated with certainty from the first century after, if not before, Christ, are to be found abundantly in the Upper Panjâb — as is proved by the collections of the provincial capital (pl. XI, 1) — we vainly seek their archetype in the still older monuments of central India, prior to the second century of our era. One significant fact robs us even of all hope of ever finding it by means of some excavation either better carried out or more successful. While on all the bas-reliefs of the Panjâb the Blessed One is represented standing in the middle of the panel, on the balustrades or the gates of Barhut or of Sânchî he is totally absent even from the scenes of his own biography. This fact is too well known to be again dwelt upon, especially as we have already made an experimental verification of it (¹). All that I wish to insist upon to-day is that the oldest known Buddhas are those which we have encountered in the « House of Marvels », as the natives call the museum of Lahore. To complete the geographical part of our quest, it remains only to find out exactly whence these Buddhas come. The former keeper — whom many of us know from the fine portrait drawn by the filial piety of Rudyard Kipling at the beginning of « Kim » — is no longer there to tell us; we regret to have heard last year of his death, and moreover he retired long ago. But his successor will answer you that all these carvings came originally from the district of Peshawar, on the right bank of the Indus, at its confluence with the Kabul-Rûd... And, doubtless, your first astonishment will be that, after having vainly sought not only throughout the whole of still Buddhist Asia, but in the very places which saw the birth of Buddhism, the cradle of the images of the founder, we have finally discovered it in a Musalman country and on the western confines of India.

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¹ See above, pp. 4-5 and 74-5.

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What this district is at present I would only too willingly stop to describe to you; for I have trodden it in every direction during happy months of archæological campaigning. Gandhâra — for such was its Sanskrit name — shows us after all only a vast, gently undulating plain, bristling in places with rugged hills, and three parts encircled by a belt of fawn-coloured or bluish mountains, which nearly everywhere limit the horizon. But the opening left by them on the south-east over the Indus is the great gate of India; and to the west the winding Khyber pass remains the principal route of communication between the peninsula and the Asiatic continent; and the towns which formerly guarded this ancient route of invading armies and merchant caravans were Purushapura (now Peshawar); Pushkarâvatî, the Peukelaotis of the Greeks; Çalâtura, the natal town of Pânini, the great legislator of Sanskrit grammar; Udabhânḍa (now Und), where the great river was passed, in winter by a ford, in summer by a ferry, and whence in three days one reached Takshaçilâ, the Taxilâ of the historians of Alexander... And immediately you feel how in this country, which one might call doubly classic, memories associated with the two antiquities, Hellenic and Indian, arise from the ground at each step. Even if history had not preserved for us any remembrance of the memorable encounter between the two civilizations, the mute witnesses in stone, which we have come purposely to interrogate, would be sufficient to establish it. To cut as short as possible (¹), let me lead you straight to the centre of the country, into the little garrison town of Hoti-Mardân : and there, at the hospitable mess of the regiment of the Guides, I will show you, leaning against the wall of the dining-room and no longer inhaling any incense but the smoke of the cigars, the most beautiful, and probably also the most ancient, of the Buddhas which it has ever been granted to me to encounter (pl. XI, 2).

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¹ Here, of course, we can only note the principal points. Those who are anxious for details concerning the country, its archæological sites, and the results of the excavations, will pardon us if we refer them to our works *Sur la frontière indo-afghane* (Paris, 1901), *La Géographie ancienne du Gandhâra* (B. E. F. E-O, I, 1901), *L'Art gréco-bouddhique du Gandhâra* (Paris, 1905-1914).

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Look at it at leisure. Without doubt you will appreciate its dreamy, and even somewhat effeminate, beauty; but at the same time you cannot fail to be struck by its Hellenic character. That this is a statue of Buddha there is not the least doubt : all the special signs of which I was speaking a short time ago bear witness to its identity. Is it necessary to make you lay your fingers upon that ample monastic robe, that pretended bump of wisdom on the crown of the head, that mole between the eyebrows, that lobe of the ear distended by the wearing of heavy earrings, and left bare because of the total renunciation of worldly adornments? These are all traits which we might have anticipated from the perusal of the sacred texts. But, if it is indeed a Buddha, it is no less evidently not an Indian work. Your European eyes have in this case no need of the help of any Indianist, in order to appreciate with full knowledge the orb of the nimbus, the waves of the hair, the straightness of the profile, the classical shape of the eyes, the sinuous bow of the mouth, the supple and hollow folds of the draperies. All these technical details, and still more perhaps the harmony of the whole, indicate in a material, palpable and striking manner the hand of an artist from some Greek studio. If the material proofs of the attribution constitute what I should be prepared to call the native contribution, neither will you hesitate to ascribe to an occidental influence the formal beauty of the work. Thus the statue of Mardân, with all its congeners, appears to us as a kind of compromise, a hybrid work, which would not in any language have a name, had not the no less heteroclite term of « Greco-Buddhist » been forthwith invented for it.

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Such is the — I must confess unexpected — result of our researches on the spot. It is only in the country which from our point of view we might quite correctly call the vestibule of India, that we finally discover the archetype of Buddha; and when at last we find it, it is to acknowledge that its appearance is at the least as much Greek as Indian. The fact is, doubtless, sufficiently surprising to call for some commentary. What historical circumstances can have rendered possible, and even spontaneously engendered, this creation of the Indo-Greek type of Buddha? What attracts us most in the question is, I will warrant, how the Hellenic influence could thus have reached as far as the banks of the Indus. Allow me to call your attention to the fact that Gandhâra is scarcely further, as the crow flies, from the mouth of the Hellenized Euphrates than from that of the Buddhist Ganges. In reality the problem has two faces, like the images which we have to explain. To account for the birth of such a statue, it is necessary to justify the penetration not only of Greek Art, but also of the Buddhist religion, into the country which was to be the theatre of their prolific union. And it is indeed with the latter that it will be best to undertake the historical part of our quest.

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At the present time not only is this unfortunate Gandhâra, which had always so much to suffer from its situation on the high road of the conquerors of Asia, no longer Buddhist; it has become more than half Afghan in race, Iranian in language, and withal Musalman. It is a curious fact that, according to Strabo, at the time of the rude and passing conquest of Alexander, the « Gandaritis » did not form a part of India, which at that time commenced only at the Indus. Seleukos, after his fruitless attempt in invasion in 305 before our era, is said to have ceded it by treaty, together with the hand of his daughter, in exchange for 500 elephants, to the first historical emperor of India, that Candragupta whom the Greek historians call Sandrakottos. Fifty years later this district still formed part of the domains of the latter’s grandson, the famous Açoka; and he caused to be engraved on a huge rock, half-way up a hill near the present village of Shâhbâz-Garhî (pl. XII, 1), the pious edicts in which he recommended to his people the practice of all the virtues, beginning with kindness to animals. From the fifth of these edicts it quite clearly appears that for him Gandhâra was a frontier country, still to be evangelized. We know, on the other hand, the zeal of this « Constantine of Buddhism » for the propagation of the Good Law. Then again, according to the Singhalese chronicle, the *Mahâvaṃsa*, it was precisely during his reign that the apostle Madhyântika converted Gandhâra as well as Kashmir. Thus the religion of Buddha would have taken more than two hundred years to spread from Magadha as far as the frontiers of northern India. We see no reason for contesting the authenticity of a tradition in itself so probable.

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Besides, whatever may be the exact date of the introduction of Buddhism into Gandhâra, it must there have been specially successful. We shall end by finding there, duly acclimatized and deeply rooted, a quantity of legends which the missionaries had brought with them from the low country. Some did not hesitate to bring Buddha himself on the scene. It was, they said, the Master in person, who had overcome the terrible Nâga of the Swât river, and had limited the disastrous inundations, whence this aquatic genius derives all his subsistence, to one in every twelve years. In the same way it was no longer at Râjagriha, but at one stage to the north-west of Pushkarâvatî, that the Blessed One is now supposed to have converted the insatiable ogress of Smallpox. Thanks to the want of orthodoxy on the part of mothers, when the health of their children is in question, this last superstition has in the minds of the present inhabitants of the country almost alone survived the total wreck of Buddhism. A small quantity of earth from a certain tumulus, placed in the *taviz*, or amulet-case, usually suspended round the neck of the new-born, is still considered an infallible preservative against the terrible infantile epidemic; and it is owing to this curious property, joined to the topographical information of Hiuan-tsang, that I was able to recognize the traditional site of this miracle.

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However, it was to be feared that these narratives of a personal intervention of the historic Buddha in Gandhâra might justly meet with the same incredulity as those which, in my native province, begin with the words : « At that time, our Lord Jesus Christ was travelling in Brittany... » For the purpose of localization in the country they preferred, it seems, to fall back upon the numerous previous lives in the course of which the future Buddha attained the summit — or, as we should say to-day, established a record — in all perfections. The monks of several convents in the neighbourhood of Shâh bâz-Garhî had, for instance, divided among themselves, by very clever adaptation to the picturesque accidents of the landscape, the various episodes of the romance of Viçvantara, that monomaniac of charity. Others had, so to speak, specialized either in the touching story of the young anchorite Çyâma, sole support of his old blind parents, or in the galant adventure of the wise Ekaçringa, whom the seductions of a courtesan reduced to the role of beast of burden, etc... But they did not stop there; an exceptionally holy tetrad of great stûpas, situated in Gandhâra proper, or in the bordering territories, soon marked the place where the Sublime Being had formerly, in one existence after another, made a gift of his flesh, his eyes, his head, and his body — the first to buy back a dove from a hawk, the last to satisfy a famished tigress, and the two others with an intention whose practical utility, if not its edifying character, escapes us. And thus northern India came to possess, like central India, its « four great pilgrimages ». It is not in any way an exaggeration to say that Gandhâra thus became (after Magadha) as it were a second Holy Land of Buddhism; and we see that certain Chinese pilgrims were quite content with a visit there, without feeling the necessity of pushing as far as the basin of the Ganges.

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Only this local prosperity of Buddhism can explain to us the number and the richness of the ancient religious foundations of the country. Some repose under the tumuli which dot the plains on every side, and are used by the present inhabitants as stone-quarries. Others are hidden in the folds of the mountains, or with their crumbling walls cover the sharp crest of some spur. Among the former I will name to you in particular those which underly the enormous mound of Sahri-Bahlol (pl. XIII) : though excavated long ago, they still with their artistic spoils enrich the museum which has lately been established in Peshawar, as capital of the new « North-West Frontier Province ». Among the second I will show you as a specimen the celebrated ruins of Takht-i-Bahai with their equally inexhaustible reserves (pl. XII, 2); on the platform above the imposing retaining walls rise the dismantled chapels where once were enthroned the statues which have since taken the road to our museums, those mortuaries of dead Gods. You are free to restore them in thought with the splendour borrowed from the colours, and even from the gold, with which in former days care was taken to increase in the dazzled eyes of the faithful their appearance of life. But, above all, you must grasp the fact that in this country you literally walk on ruins, and there is scarcely a corner where a few strokes with the pick-axe will not bring to light some Buddhist bas-relief or statue. Evidently Hiuan-tsang was scarcely exaggerating, when he estimated approximately, and in round numbers, at a thousand the number of monasteries which once constituted the ornament, as also the sanctity, of Gandhâra. If you will now reflect that this anti-chamber of India has from all times been the region most open to western influences, moral as well as artistic, you will understand the double role which it was naturally called upon to play in the evolution of the religion which it had embraced with so much zeal. The numerous doctors whom it has produced have taken a preponderating part in the transformation of the Buddhist egoistical « salvation » into the theory of a charity more widely active, but also of a character more metaphysical and pietistic, which its adherents adorned with the name of Mahâyâna. But the important thing for us here is not so much the abstruse depth of its theologians as the pious generosity of its donors. It was they who, according to all probability, took the initiative in utilizing for the satisfaction of their religious zeal the talent and resource of the Hellenistic artists, whom historical circumstances had led as far as Ariana. And thus they made their country the creative home whence Buddhist iconography was by degrees propagated throughout the rest of India and the Far East.

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Of the two elements, the Greek and the Buddhist, which concurred in the production of our Gandhâra statues, we comprehend then already the second. It remains to explain the intervention of the first. But this is a story already familiar to you, and it will be sufficient if I recall it in a few words; or rather I should like to give you an illustration and, as it were, a direct apprehension of it, by putting before your eyes the most artistic of the documents — or, if you prefer, the most documentary of the works of art — I mean the coins.

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In the first place, I shall mention only by way of reminder Alexander's forced entrance into India in the spring of the year 326 before our era. We too much forget that it was on his part a notable folly to venture during the hottest months of the year on the burning plains of the Panjâb; that he was soon forced to retire, and that his retreat across the deserts of Gedrosia (the present Beluchistan) ended disastrously — so that this expedition into India, if only we replace the cold by the heat, the snow by the sands, was, as it were, the Russian campaign of the Macedonian conqueror. Much more fruitful of results was the constitution of the Greek kingdom of Bactria, on the confines of the north-west of India, about 250 B. C., in open revolt against the Seleucides. The beautiful coin of Alexander, son of Philip, which you see in pl. XIV, 2, was struck not by Alexander himself, but in imitation of his by king Agathokles, whose name and titles you read on the reverse, encircling the image of Zeus. Everything in this medal is still purely Greek.

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Fifty years later Demetrios, son of Euthydemos, profiting by the break-up of the empire of the Mauryas, conquers and annexes the whole of northern India; and immediately you see in that helmet, made from the head of an elephant, as it were a trace of the Indian orientation of his policy (pl. XIV, 2). This latter must, besides, have ended by costing him his original kingdom. Another valiant condottiere, Eukratides, rebelled in his turn, and made himself master of Bactria; so that, as Strabo tells us, there remained to Demetrios nothing more than his Indian conquests, and he was henceforward known under the name of « King of the Indians ». This is a capital fact, to which I could not too strongly draw your attention. During a century and more the Panjâb was thus a Greek colony, in the same way as it afterwards became Scythian, then Mogul, and finally English. That is to say, a handful of foreigners, supported by mercenary troops, in great part recruited in the country itself, became masters there, and levied the taxes. You may easily perceive that this kingdom was a centre of attraction for Greek adventurers of all kinds, beginning with soldiers of fortune and mountebanks, and passing by way of merchants to the artists who took upon themselves, among other tasks, that of making the superb coins to which we are indebted for the survival of the classically sounding names and the energetic features of those so-called « Basileis », changed into very authentic râjahs.

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Of all these Indo-Greek kings I will name only Menander (pl. XIV, 2), since he is known to us not merely from the narrative of Plutarch, but also from Indian texts. A curious apologetic treatise, entitled « The Questions of Milinda » and composed as a dialogue in the Platonic manner, brings before us in the town of Sâgala on the one hand Hellenism, represented by Menander, the king of the Yavanas (Ionians), and on the other hand Buddhism, in the person of Nâgasena, one of the patriarchs of the church. According to native tradition the monk even converted the king. However, on the reverse of his coins, Pallas Athene continues still to brandish the paternal lightning of Zeus. She does not seem in any way to care how little her image squares with the exotic surroundings of the language and the writing in which Menander, generalizing a usage inaugurated by his predecessors, is always careful to have the Greek legend of the face translated for the use of his Indian subjects. Never, in truth, were the circumstances more favourable than during his reign (between 150 and 100 B. C.) for planting the germ of the whole subsequent development of Greco-Buddhist art by the creation of the Indo-Greek type of Buddha. What, in fact, is that beautiful statue which I showed you just now (pl. XI, 2), but an Asiatic coin struck in European style? And what more simple for artists initiated into all the secrets of Hellenic art, as were the authors of those magnificent medals, than to adopt for the representation of the Indian Saviour the most intellectual type of their beardless Olympians? Thus we arrive quite naturally at the strange and quaint mixture which we were analysing a short time ago, at this statue, which is a Hellenized Buddha, unless you prefer to describe it as an Indianized figure of Apollo.

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Thus must have been created under the industrious fingers of some *Graeculus* of more or less mixed descent — and perhaps, also, who knows? at the command of a Greek or an Eurasian convert to Buddhism — the earliest of the images of Buddha. Yet, since we are forced to touch upon the question of chronology, it is only, I must confess, in the first century of our era, that the type of Buddha at last makes its appearance on the reverse of the coins. And certainly his name is still written there in Greek characters « Boddo ». But on the observe, instead of an elegant Greek, we perceive the figure of another invader, of a bearded Scythian, grotesquely accoutred in his high boots and the rigid basques of his tunic (pl. XIV, 2). His name is given in the inscription : he is the « Shah of the Shahs » Kanishka, he who was after Açoka the second great emperor of the Buddhist legend, and whom M. S. Lévi has in his turn so well surnamed the « Clovis » of northern India : for he also — either from conviction or from calculation — became converted to the religion of the country vanquished by his arms. But, just as the Frank Clovis had no part in the development of Gallo-Roman art, you may easily imagine that the Turk Kanishka had no direct influence on that of Indo-Greek art; and, besides, we hold now the certain proof that during his reign this art was already stereotyped, if not decadent.

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All the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims who from the IVth to the Xth centuries of our era visited the holy places of India agree, in fact, in testifying, that Kanishka had built by the side of his winter capital Purushapura « the highest pagoda of the country ». Now in the course of my journey on the Indo-Afghan frontier, on the 21st of January 1897, among the numerous tumuli — simple refuse of brick kilns or vestiges of ancient monuments — which are scattered over the flat outskirts of Peshawar, I thought I recognized in one (pl. XIV, 1), by reason of its site, its form, its composition, its surroundings, finally of a number of concordant indications — not to count that secret voice of things, which soon whispers to the heart of the archæologist —, the remains of the great religious foundation of Kanishka. That dusty mound, which, if in circumference it measured three hundred metres, was not more than 4 or 5 metres above the present ground surface, did not look very promising. However, when the Anglo-Indian government did at last reorganize its archæological service, Messrs. Marshall and Spooner were pleased to consider that the proposed identification was at least worth the trouble of verification by digging. The results of the first campaign, during the cold season 1907-1908, were most disappointing. Fortunately the English archæologists were not discouraged; in March 1909 they at last determined the dimensions of the base of the sanctuary — the vastest, indeed, that has ever been discovered in India — and soon they were fortunate enough to unearth in the centre the famous relics of Buddha, which Chinese evidence assures us were deposited there by Kanishka himself, and which to-day Burmah is so proud of possessing. They were enclosed in a golden reliquary, about 18 centimetres high, of which you have before your eyes (pl. XV, 1) a view. All that I wish to take note of here is first, that this box does in fact bear in dotted letters the name, and in repoussé the image, of our Kanishka, the one perfectly legible and the other a good resemblance. Now, in point of execution the reliquary already betrays signs of artistic decadence; and this stylization is especially notable in the Buddha whom you see seated between two standing divinities on the top of the lid. This votive document is sufficient, then, to carry back at least a hundred years, and consequently, to the 1st century before our era, at the latest, the creation of the plastic type of the Blessed One.

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Thus, then, we are on the whole well informed as to the where and when, from the rencontre of the two inverse expansions, that of Hellenism towards the east consequent upon the political conquests of Alexander, and that of Buddhism towards the west by favour of the religious missions of Açoka, was born once for all the Indo-Greek type of Buddha. Our geographical and historical quest may, therefore, be considered as ended. But we have as yet accomplished only two-thirds of our task, and the iconographic question awaits almost in its entirety an elucidation. We have indeed from the first glance at the Museum at Lahore seen that, in opposition to the old native school, the image of Buddha is like a trade-mark of the workshops of Gandhâra. It remains to learn how it was itself manufactured. We are agreed that at the time of its composition the Indian material was poured into a western mould: among all the possible results of this operation, which one definitely emerged from the foundry? This we have still to analyse, at the risk of passing from one surprise to another.

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What in fact did I tell you? Here is a creation which the experience of centuries and the exploration of Asia have taught us to regard as one of the most widespread and the most durable successes that the history of art has ever chronicled. It is proved to have been adopted with enthusiasm by the entire Buddhist world: it was, and has remained, for the faithful the sole manner of conceiving and figuring the Master... And yet we cannot hide the fact that, if from the beginning the people must have felt the attractive charm of its ideal and serene beauty, it must at its first appearance have been the object of just and bitter criticisms on the part of the old champions of orthodoxy. To-day even, if we, Buddhists or students of Buddhism, could free ourselves from long custom and create for ourselves new eyes, we should be the first to be shocked by the ambiguous character of the Gandhâra type of Buddha. For in fact, what is it that Buddhist scriptures are never tired of repeating? It is not we, it is tradition which poses for the new-born Bodhisatwa the famous dilemma : « Either thou wilt remain in the world and reign over the universe; or else thou wilt enter into religion and become a Saviour of the world ». We all know that the second alternative was the one realized. Now what do we see here (pl. XI, 2)? This person is not a prince, for he wears neither the costume nor the jewels of one; but how could one maintain that he is a real Buddhist monk, since his head is not shaven? If he were a *bhikshu*, he would not have retained his hair : if he were a *cakravartin*, he would not have donned the monastic gown. A monk without tonsure or a king without jewels, decidedly these strange images, from whichever side one approaches them, are frankly neither flesh nor fish. From the artistic point of view we have already seen that, properly speaking, they were neither Greek nor Indian; from the iconographic point of view we must admit that they are neither cleric nor layman, but still and always a hybrid combination of two heteroclite elements.

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Shall we lean over the crucible in which the formula of this new compromise was elaborated, and try to reconstitute from the monuments themselves how things happened? Let us take the princely heir of the Çâkyas (pl. XV, 2) at the critical moment when he is realizing his religious vocation. The moral crisis which has just cast him out of the world, and, as a beginning, has made him flee by night from his native town, must, in fact, be translated occularly by a complete transformation of his exterior aspect. Now we read, and we see, that on the dawn of his escape, judging himself beyond capture, he stops and sends back horse and squire. At the same time he charges the latter to carry back to his home all his princely jewels, including the rich turban which encircled his long hair, gathered up in a chignon on the top of the crown. Thus he appears to us, his head bare and already in the act of changing his silken clothes, which are no longer suitable to his new state, for the coarse garment of a hunter. In all these details the figured tradition conforms with a good grace to the written. There is only one point on which the Indo-Greek artists have shown themselves intractable. At that instant all the texts will have it that the Bodhisattva himself with his sword cut off his hair : but to this last exigency of Indian custom the school of Gandhâra has never given its consent. Whether it represents the Master at the height of his ascetic macerations, or whether it shows him in all his splendour, at the moment when he has just attained to Illumination, his chignon continues to remain such as it was before his entrance into religion. When at last he begins to convert his first disciples, there is only the more striking contrast between his wavy hair and the shorn crowns of his *bhikshus*: for these latter, evidently sketched from life, wear the full tonsure, exactly like the bonzes of the present day. Accordingly, we may say that by systematically refusing in the case of the Blessed One to complete the expected transmutation of layman into monk, the Gandhâra sculptors have not only put themselves in intended contradiction to the sacred writings : they have also obstinately closed their eyes to the data supplied by the direct observation of a number of their own clients.

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Visit afresh the collections, or turn over at your leisure the reproductions, of Greco-Buddhist bas-reliefs. The sole distinction between the Bodhisattva, or any other great lay person, and Buddha consists in this, that the latter appears without jewels and draped to the neck in the monastic gown. On the other hand, the only characteristic difference between the Master and the monks of his order lies in the privilege, which he alone enjoys, of retaining his hair. At this point the recipe for fabricating a Buddha after the mode of Gandhâra presents itself spontaneously to you (pl. XVI, 1). You take the body of a monk, and surmount it with the head of a king (or what in India comes to the same thing, a god), after having first stripped it of turban and earrings. These are the two necessary and sufficing ingredients of this curious synthesis; and you divine immediately the advantages of this procedure. Were it not for the head, confusion with any other monk would be almost inevitable : and this simple consideration may help to explain why the ancient native school abstained from representing the disciples as well as the Master (¹). On the other hand, were

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(¹) See above, p. 76.

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it not for the monastic cloak, you might be a little puzzled to distinguish the Perfect Buddha from the future Buddha, whenever the second is shown without a headdress, or even when the lips of the former continue to wear that little moustache which you still find on the remote Japanese images. But join together the two elements, however incongruous, a layman's head on the body of a cleric : and this combination will at once give you an individuality sufficiently marked to answer all the practical needs of iconography. The result has shown it well.

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But, however complex the Indo-Greek type of Buddha may be, you doubtless consider that we have examined and dissected it more than sufficiently for to-day; and you tremble to perceive the endless conclusions which we might at once draw from this analysis, however superficial and summary. First of all, it would be sufficient to prove, even if history did not so state, that this type was created as an afterthought and, let us say, *de chic*, by strangers more artists than theologians, more solicitous for esthetics than for orthodoxy. I would go further : Not only at the moment of its conception had the face of the Master long been blurred in the mists of the past, and all precise iconographic data concerning him been lost; but among the vapours of incense which the worship of posterity caused to mount towards his memory, while waiting for the latter to be materialized in his image, he had already assumed a superhuman and, as is written, a « supernatural » (*lokottara*) character. At least, we could scarcely otherwise explain the success of that stroke of audacity whereby the school of Gandhāra assigned to him from the beginning a special physionomy, derived from, and at the same time remaining at an equal distance from, that of a monk and that of a god. It results, further, that this type issues from the fusion of a double ideal, that of the Greek Olympian and that of the *Mahāpurusha*, or Indian « Great Man », with no borrowing from living reality, if we except the detail of the distended lobe of the ears. And this would to some extent excuse the defect that many of these images are not exempt from some academic frigidity. Finally, we comprehend the reason for the retouches which later generations thought it necessary to apply, notably as concerns the hair. We can even see in how mechanical a manner through uniformly covering bandeau and chignon with the short traditional curls, their want of skill has suddenly caused to stand out on the top of the crown the boss called *ushnīsha*, a word which formerly meant only headdress.....

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And this is not yet all : what should I not have to tell you concerning the diffusion in India and the Far East of the idolatrous worship of Buddha, parallel to that of the images! But reassure yourselves : sufficient for each hour its subject, and I will not further abuse your patience. Moreover, as we remarked at the beginning, nothing is easier than to see how much better preserved — or, if you prefer, less deformed — at all times and in all places was the face of the Blessed One than his doctrine. I shall not, therefore, insist to-day on the conquest of upper and lower Asia by this irresistible propagator of the Indo-Greek school of Gandhāra. But you would not forgive me, if I did not show in conclusion how this Buddhist school finds itself by its origins in contact with our Christian art. Look at these two statues (pl. XVI, 2); the one represents Christ, and the other Buddha. The one was taken from a sarcophagus from Asia Minor, and is to-day to be found in Berlin; the other comes from a ruined temple in Gandhāra, and is at present in Lahore. Both, with the pose of the right arm similarly draped in their mantles, are direct descendants of a common ancestor, the beautiful Greek statue of the Lateran Museum, called the Orator, in which we have long recognized a Sophocles. It is not to be doubted that, plastically speaking, they are cousins-german. The one is a Greco-Christian Christ; the other is a Greco-Buddhist Buddha. Both are, by the same right, a legacy left in extremis to the old world by the expiring Greek art.

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After this last experience it will, doubtless, seem to you proved that this figure of Buddha, which, smiling at us from the depths of the Far East, represents for us the culmination of what is exotic, nevertheless came originally from a Hellenistic studio. Such, at least, is the truth to-day — I mean the conclusion arising from the documents at present known — and such, at the point which archæological researches have arrived, will probably be the truth to-morrow. Must we be glad or sorry for this? Facts are facts, and the wisest thing is to take them as they come. It was recently still the custom to triumph noisily over the artistic inferiority of the Indians, reduced to accepting ready made from the hands of others the concrete realization of their own religious ideal. At present, owing to æsthetic bias or to nationalist rancour, it is the fashion to make the school of Gandhâra pay for its manifest superiority by a systematic blackening of its noblest production. We for our part refuse in this connection to share either the unjustifiable contempt of the old criticism for native inspiration, or the ill-disguised spite of the new against the foreign make. It is not the father or the mother who has formed the child; it is the father and the mother. The Indian mind has taken a part no less essential than has Greek genius in the elaboration of the model of the Monk-God. It is a case where the East and the West could have done nothing without each other. It would be childish to associate ourselves, in a partizan spirit and turnabout, with the exaltation or the contempt, whether of Europe or of Asia, when so fine an opportunity offers for saluting in the Eurasian prototype of Buddha one of the most sublime creations wherewith their collaboration has enriched humanity.

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I. Photograph taken by the author in 1896 at the Lahore Museum (cf. p. 117). In the upper row reposes a colossal head with a moustache, obtained from the excavations of Kharkai (cf. Art g.-b. du Gandh., I, p. 18); in the middle one two Buddhas, seated in the pose of meditation; on the lowest and on the ground three others in the attitude of instruction. It will be observed that a great number of them had, before being collected for the museum, already lost their heads (cf. ibid., p. 14).

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II. Photograph taken by the author in 1897; for the description cf. pp. 119-120. This magnificent Buddha is, moreover, not the only masterpiece possessed by the English officers of the native regiment of the King's Own Corps of Guides. Their collection is one of the finest that we have met with, and there is nothing surprising in the fact, if we reflect that their garrison is placed in the centre of ancient Gandhāra (cf. ibid., p. 27, or Sur la frontière indo-afghane, p. 39, and the maps at the end of those works).

The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c8: The Greek Origin of the Image of Buddha

The Greek Origin of the Image of Buddha

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