The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c8.3

c8.3

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.