Ajanta: The Colour and Monochrome Reproductions of the Ajanta Frescoes Based on Photography v1.c4.53

v1.c4.53

The images of the Bodhisattvas in the marvellous early Buddhist paintings of Japan are isolated forms, seen as if evoked by the intensity of contemplation from the night of profound brooding in the mind; they appear, glowing with their own inward light, gracious and majestic and alone. But the great Bodhisattva at Ajanta is not, like those later creations of the Farther East, remote and detached from the world; he is in the world, he is a man with consort and companions, with the animation of the woods and the fields, the sun and the shadows and the green earth around him; he is a ‘surpassing spirit’, yet a man among men and women. For religion here is not something apart, something to which humanity pays homage as to an essence outside itself; it is a conformation of the mind, it is something inhaled with the breath.