The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c8.27

c8.27

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.