The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c8.9

c8.9

Thus clearly were we directed in advance to seek the plastic origins of Buddha in the very places which saw the beginning of his doctrine. And, were it not of interest to prove the diffusion and permanence of the type through the whole of eastern Asia, we might have spared ourselves this vast circuit. The point clearly marked for the serious commencement of our quest is the country of Magadha, otherwise that province of Behar which the latest imperial proclamation of Delhi has just officially detached from Bengal. But the numerous statues in black basalt, which we there find — to begin with that which has been set up over the altar of the temple of Bodh-Gayâ, at the very spot where the Illuminated received his Illumination —, go back for the most part only to the dynasty of the Pâlas, which was overthrown by the Musalmans in the XIIᵗʰ century of our era. The excavations of Sârnâth, the site of the First Preaching, in the northern suburb of Benares, have furnished us with more ancient examples, carved in a grey sandstone of an uniform tint, which mark at the time of the Gupta Kings (IVᵗʰ and Vᵗʰ centuries A. D.) a kind of renaissance of Indian art. More to the north-west the ruins of Mathurâ, far to the south-west those of Amarâvatî have supplied us with still older ones, which the mention on the former of the Indo-Scyths, on the second of the Ândhras carry as far back as the IIⁿᵈ century of our era. But whether carved in the yellow-spotted red sandstone of Mathurâ or in the white marble of Amarâvatî, they are as like as brothers, and everyone will agree that they are descended from a common ancestor of blue slate and native to the north-western corner of India.