Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c7.166

c7.166

the question, assuming that the Gandharan sculptors were the first to represent the person of Buddha, when and where did the Indian ideal originate? When did the Græco-Roman conception of Buddha as a god in human form, like the gods of Greece and Rome, give place to the true Indian conception of divinity in a superhuman, spiritualised body? In a subsequent chapter I shall discuss the evidence bearing on this point in the Buddhist sculptures of Bharhut, Sanchi, and Amarâvati. The idea of Dhyâna or Yoga as a means of obtaining spiritual power was older even than Buddha, but from the monuments of Asoka we can gather that the person of Buddha did not receive adoration from his disciples until several centuries after his death; certainly the idea was not introduced into Buddhist art until after the original teaching of Buddha had been modified by the doctrines of the Mahayana school, or somewhere about the first century of the Christian era.