The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c9.127.3

c9.127.3

But at the same time — and this third observation is the most important of all — it is to be feared that we must relinquish the idea of indubitably distinguishing, in the whole repertory of the Greco-Buddhist school, an iconolatric group of « Buddha between two Bodhisattvas ». As far as concerns the great scene of the descent from heaven at Sâṅkâçya, the texts had already forced us to recognize in the two divine acolytes of the Master the gods Brahmâ and Çakra. Here again ought not the same evidence to constrain us to accept the same identification? Then will disappear our last hope of discovering by the side of the Blessed One an Indo-Greek Avalokiteçvara or a Mañjuçrî, as plates XXIV, 1 and XXVI, 1 seem specially to invite us to do. In fact, all that we can say is that we believe we discern already on these stelæ in the type, head-dress, attributes, meditative or pensive pose of the attendants the suggestion of the procedure which later served to represent, and to differentiate from one another, the great Mahâyânic divinities : but methodically we may not go further and light-heartedly oppose to the peremptory assertions of the texts any quasi-gratuitous conjectures. Even the sign of the ûrṇâ, so distinctly marked on the forehead of the acolytes in plates XXIV, 1 and XXV, 2 fails to induce us to lay