The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c9.86

c9.86

With this abridged version we may connect immediately other more developed pictures, such, for example, as that which totally covers another stele originating from Sârnâth (¹), and in which are staged no less than four rows of Buddhas, seated or standing pl. (XIX, 2). On seeing the upward-branching lotus stems which bear these small figures, we might believe ourselves in the presence of a genealogical tree of Buddhas. Thus we are invincibly led to recall those which, either carved or painted, entirely cover great stretches of the walls of several of the subterranean temples of Ajaṇṭā. One of these frescoes, of which a copy has been published, very gracefully combines wreaths of flowers and foliage with the dreamy figures of the seated or standing Buddhas (²) : it decorates the wall on the right, in the antechamber of the sanctuary of Cave I;