The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c9.104

c9.104

Inevitable, again, is the connection with many of the great rock-sculptures of northern China, less remote in time, but not less distant in space, from their Indian prototypes. We shall note especially, among the gigantic images which decorate the grottos of Ta-t’ong-fu (Vth century), those recently published by M. Chavannes, which, as he informs us, owe the possibility of their being so clearly photographed to the fact that the crumbling of the rocky façade has left them open to the sky (pl. XXI, 2). The presence of a second Buddha standing at the left of the great seated one, — the acolyte on the right has disappeared in the fallen débris — is sufficient to recall the mahâ-prâtihârya : and the innumerables figures of the Blessed One, superposed upon a kind of band, which form nimbuses and aureoles on the flamboyant background of the tejas, finally convince us that we have to deal with a representation of this miracle in the traditional form of the multiplication of Buddhas (¹).