Ajanta: The Colour and Monochrome Reproductions of the Ajanta Frescoes Based on Photography v1.c4.50

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conceptions, with all their imagery and symbolism, are of Indian origin. It is often assumed that the Buddhist art of the Farther East derives from India only through Gandhāra, where Hellenistic formula was made to serve for the expression of Indian ideas. But though the hybrid art of Gandhāra has left its permanent traces, like a deposit, on the Buddhist art of China and Japan, especially in certain arrangements of drapery; yet it is indisputable, as I have already said, that in the greatest times of Buddhist art in China, when Chinese pilgrims journeyed to all the sacred sites and monuments in India and brought back images and drawings, a fresh contact with Indian art was made and a direct influence established. In the paintings brought back from Tun-huang by Sir Aurel Stein, those so precious documents for the history of Buddhist art in Asia, there are figures which do not recall Gandhāra at all, but which are directly reminiscent of Ajanta; and similar parallels can be adduced from sculpture.