A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s1.22

c15.s1.22

Students of Chinese and Japanese painting have been aware for some years past that the specially Buddhist forms of art in China were derived from India through Khotan, and passed on through Korea to Japan, the principal agent in the transmission to Korea, and so to Japan, having been Wei-ch’ï I-song, son of Bajna of Khotan. Bajna was one of the numerous foreign artists in the service of the Chinese Emperor, Yang-ti (a.d. 605–17), and had been preceded at the imperial court by two Indian monks, with names something like Kabōdha and Dharmakuksha. Both Bajna and his son, according to Chinese critics, worked in a foreign, that is to say, Indian manner, and enjoyed high repute as Buddhist artists. The marked Indian element in early Japanese art is thus amply accounted for.²