The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c9.163

v1.c9.163

The researches of James Prinsep have clearly demonstrated that some of the Hindu princes of the first century of the Christian era borrowed their numismatic devices from the Bactrian Greeks. They failed, however, to preserve the beauty of the original designs, and in a few centuries so entirely debased them as to render them irrecognisable. To what extent this importation of the art of die-sinking reacted on Indian toreutic art generally it is impossible now, in the utter absence of authentic, ancient, dated specimens, to determine. The only work of real value known is the Sultānganj Buddha; but it has no date on it. Probably it is from sixteen to eighteen hundred years old; and such as it is, it has no trace whatever in its composition of Greek art. None of the metal figures of gods and goddesses in ancient temples now extant, can confidently be said to be of a greater age than a thousand years: the great majority of them are about half that age; and their forms are strictly Indian.