A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s1.24

c15.s1.24

Although the descent of the specially Buddhist varieties of the art of the Far East from India, and more particularly from Indo-Greek prototypes in Gandhāra on the north-western frontier, is abundantly proved, the evidence does not warrant the larger inference drawn by Mr. Anderson that ‘a previously undeveloped art’ in China was dependent upon importations from India for its growth and development.³ The earliest extant Chinese painting, the fourth-century picture by Ku K’ai-chih in the British Museum, does not show the slightest trace of either Indian or Greek influence. Buddhist pictures form but a single subdivision of Chinese painting, the subjects of which, according to Professor Giles, may be classified under seven heads, namely—(1) history, (2) religion (including Buddhism and Taoism), (3) landscape, (4) flowers, (5) birds, (6) beasts, and (7) portraiture.⁴ Excepting the Buddhist designs under the second head, China learned nothing, and had nothing to learn from ‘the land of the Brahmans’. I am disposed to agree with Mr. Binyon, who finds in China ‘if not the parent art of Asia, its earliest mature flower in painting’.¹