The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c8.32

c8.32

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.....