A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c10.s3.28

c10.s3.28

But outside India the Gandhāra school achieved a grand success by becoming the parent of the Buddhist art of Eastern or Chinese Turkistan, Mongolia, China, Korea, and Japan. The stages of the transmission of the style to the Far East have been clearly disclosed by the abundant discoveries of sculptures and paintings in the manner of Gandhāra throughout Chinese Turkistan, both to the north and south of the Taklamakān (Gobi) Desert. Through China the imported forms of Buddhist art passed to Korea, and thence to Japan. Pious pilgrims, like Fa-hien and Hiuen Tsang, played a large part in determining the course of Buddhist art in China by bringing back from the Indian Holy Land multitudes of images and pictures which became the authoritative models for Chinese monastic artists. The Indian influence, it must be clearly understood, affected the art of China and Japan only in its application to Buddhist uses. In other departments Chinese art, and its daughter in Japan, developed independently of Indian teaching.