The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c8.24

c8.24

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.