A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s1.9

c15.s1.9

The reverse of the same panel offers a surprise by presenting a picture of a four-armed Buddhist saint or Bodhisattva in the guise of a Persian with black beard and whiskers, holding a thunderbolt (*vajra*) in his left hand. The combination on one panel of this almost purely Persian figure with the Indian image on the other side suggests questions, at present insoluble, concerning the forms which Buddhism may have assumed in Iranian lands. The art, seemingly of higher quality than that of the obverse picture, is certainly more pleasing. The four arms are a distinctly Indian feature (Plate LXI). The existence of this queer figure may help us in some measure to understand the introduction of Persian figures into the Buddhist pictures of Ajaṇṭā, which may yet be proved to be an Indian development of Central Asiatic Buddhist art. But that hypothesis at present lacks historical support.