A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c9.s2.34

c9.s2.34

The medallions on the rail-bars and the half-medallions on the pillars are filled with a wonderful variety of bas-relief subjects. The comic monkey scenes collected in Cunningham’s Plate XXXIII display a lively sense of humour, freedom of fancy, and clever drawing. They must, of course, like all the early bas-reliefs, be judged as pictures drawn on stone, rather than as sculpture. The rollicking humour and liberty of fancy unchecked by rigid canons, while alien to the transcendental philosophy and ascetic ideals of the Brahmans, are thoroughly in accordance with the spirit of Buddhism, which, as a practical religion, makes human and animal happiness its avowed object. Everything seems to indicate that India was a much happier land in