Ajanta: The Colour and Monochrome Reproductions of the Ajanta Frescoes Based on Photography v1.c4.49

v1.c4.49

The real aspect of Sakyamuni, the Indian landscape, Indian habits of life, are to them also unknown. And in painting the Buddha legend they, like the Italians and the Flemings, have fallen back on what they know themselves, and have painted (as we see in the banners found at Tun-huang) the episodes of the legend in Chinese guise, with Chinese types and Chinese dress. Unlike Christian art, however, Buddhist art of the Mahāyāna tradition gives but a small space to the legend. It concentrates rather on images of contemplation, images which the later developments of Mahāyāna Buddhism created and multiplied but which are foreign to the simplicity of the primitive faith. The greatest works of Buddhist painting in China, the frescoes of Wu Tao-tzŭ and his compeers and followers, have perished. But the masterpieces of Buddhist painting and sculpture in Japan are unsurpassed in the religious art of the world. ‘The Descent of Amida with Angels to Welcome the Souls of the Blessed’, ascribed to Eshin Sōzu, at Koya-san—to name one among many sublime creations—has the power to carry the spectator into its own atmosphere of inward and abounding radiance and serene movement as of music, though he be totally ignorant of the religious conceptions it embodies. These