Ajanta: The Colour and Monochrome Reproductions of the Ajanta Frescoes Based on Photography v1.c4.46

v1.c4.46

And yet in the art of Asia what a supreme and central position Ajanta holds! The grand Buddhist art of the T’ang dynasty in China was stimulated and influenced directly from the Indian art of Ajanta and, doubtless, other monuments, now destroyed, and not merely through the formulas of Gandhāra. The stream flows onwards through Corea to Japan. It is a great and fructifying stream, for it gives to the races of the Far East something which otherwise they would have lacked, but which they must unconsciously have desired or they could not have accepted and assimilated it so enthusiastically. The very landscape-painting and flower-painting of China and Japan are tinged and perfumed with Buddhist thought and the Buddhist ‘communion of life’. Whoever studies the art of China and Japan, at whatever point he begins, starts on a long road which will lead him ultimately to Ajanta.