A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c11.s2.28

c11.s2.28

Bacchus' of the Tank silver dish (*post*, Chap. X, Sec. 5), and the festive scenes depicted in the Aurangabad and Bāgh Caves. All such works appear to be expressive, as Mr. Growse suggested, of a little understood sensual form of popular Buddhism, not indicated by literature until a time seemingly much later than the second century. But when the true history of Indian Buddhism comes to be written it must be based on the evidence of the sculptures and pictures as much as on the books. M. Roller's question, addressed to Christian ecclesiastical archaeologists with reference to the art of the Catacombs, may be repeated to Indianists : 'La pierre ne servirait-elle pas à contrôler le manuscrit ?'³