Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c8.58

c8.58

The Amarâvati sculptures show Buddha for the first time in Indian art as a divine being receiving worship, and as the type of Buddha closely resembles that of Gandhara, Professor Grünwedel and other archæologists infer that the Græco-Roman artists of the Gandharan kingdom supplied Indian Buddhists with the ideal of their Divinity. But the Amarâvati Buddha is *not* the Indian ideal of Divinity: it is a transitional type. In all the art of Amarâvati we see Indian sculpture passing from the naturalistic school of the Asokan epoch into the idealistic school in which Indian art reached its highest expression. The simple, direct naturalism of the Bharhut and Sanchi sculptures is here beginning to give place to a very pronounced style of an academic character, but wholly different to the style of Gandhara, though in the detail Gandharan, or Græco-Roman, types frequently occur.