A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c13.s7.28

c13.s7.28

Works of such unparalleled magnitude must have been executed by a multitude of expert artists. Whence did they come? By whom were they trained? Which Indian school is most closely related to them? These questions and others, easy to ask, are difficult to answer. The style, as well as the subject-matter of the reliefs, is distinctly Indian, and yet with a difference which marks it as Javanese. Nobody with the least experience could mistake a Javanese relief for one executed in India. But when we compare the Boro-Būdūr sculptures with the seventh-century reliefs at Māmallapuram (*ante*, 220), or the sixth-century friezes at Bādāmi (*ante*, 210), the difference almost amounts to that between fine art and barbarism. The artists of Boro-Būdūr cannot have been taught by their comparatively rude predecessors at either Māmallapuram or Bādāmi. It is difficult, merely from study of the sculptures