Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c7.129

c7.129

The leonine characteristics of this transcendental body are expressed with fine and subtle artistic feeling in the Java and Ceylon sculptures (Plates II. and III.) and in the Nepalese statuette (Plate X.). They are more crudely indicated in the Sarnath Buddha (Plate IV.), and exaggerated in the Bodhisattva Vajrapâni (Plate XIII.). These are the characteristics which distinguish the true Indian ideal of Buddha from the mixed types of Gandhara, and from those of Chinese and Japanese art, which are more closely allied to the Gandharan type than to the Indian, as they were formed by the fusion of Indian idealism with the naturalism of the Confucian and other indigenous schools of China and Japan.