Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c7.131

c7.131

And here I must enter an emphatic dissent from the opinion of that distinguished savant, Professor Grünwedel, who is both artist and archæologist, that “the ideal type of Buddha was created for Buddhist art by foreigners,”¹ *i.e.* by the Gandharan sculptors, although in doing so I am disputing another article of faith subscribed to by nearly all European orientalists. If Professor Grünwedel had confined himself to the simple proposition that the Gandharan sculptors were the first iconographers of the person of Buddha, the statement would undoubtedly coincide with our present knowledge of Indian art-history; but, as Indian sculptors had, long before the earliest Gandharan sculptures, made images of the Hindu deities, it would be very rash to assume that this question is finally settled.