The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c8.19

c8.19

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.