The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c8.6

c8.6

It is in Ceylon, the first Buddhist stage on the maritime high road of Asia, that the European usually finds himself for the first time in the presence of veritable idols of the Blessed One. Most often he restricts himself to an excursion, along red roads losing themselves in the distance under a slowly diminishing arch of green palmeries, to the singularly modernized temple of Kelani, a little to the north of Colombo. But, even if he pushed on as far as the ancient ruined towns of the interior, he would be no more successful in finding in their old statues the original type which we are seeking. With still greater reason would he renounce the idea of encountering it in the other terrestrial paradise, that of the austral hemisphere; for the not less luxuriant island of Java was also only an Indian colony, and, doubtless, it became so later than did Ceylon. The hundreds of Buddhas who have given a name to Boro-Budur are attributed only to the IXth century of our era. The even more recent character of the majority of the idols which are still venerated in Cambodia, Siam and Burmah shows only too clearly through their tinsel and their gilding. The most ancient Lamaic images could hardly be anterior to the official proclamation of Buddhism in Tibet towards the year 632. In Japan everyone will tell you that the figure of the Master was not introduced there until the VIth century, and that it came from China through the intermediacy of Corea. Nor do the most ancient Chinese images known to us, those of the grottoes of Long-Men or of Ta-t’ong-fu, which M. Chavannes has just made known by reproductions, go back beyond the IVth century (¹). Finally, the last archæological missions in Central Asia have succeeded in proving, as had already been supposed, that their model came from India by the two routes which on the north and the south skirt the desert of Turkestan (¹).