Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c7.167

c7.167

It is impossible to fix it to any particular monument of Indian art, or to give it any precise date. It was no rapid and decisive movement, like that of the Renaissance in Europe, the steps of which can be easily followed in the artistic records of the time. The change from the early naturalistic art came very gradually and imperceptibly, following the evolution of the Indian philosophic systems. Probably the Buddhist monastic schools—the universities of ancient India, which comprised schools of painting and sculpture—were the first to adopt it as a canon, whether they originated it or not. Though it appears first, as far as we know, in Buddhist art, the idea was Brahmanical rather than Buddhist, and we must not exclude the possibility that it was borrowed from the orthodox Hindu sects, which worshipped anthropomorphic images long before they were introduced in Buddhism.