A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s3.t2.318.4

v2.c19.s3.t2.318.4

In all probability, the Greek artists, who came to India in great crowds after Alexander’s campaign and helped to build and ornament so many Buddhist monuments of art, also brought many Greek narratives and motifs to India. This is the more probable, as it is precisely the Jātakas which were in many cases pictorially represented on the Buddhist monuments. For, as the literature, so, Indian and non-Indian art too, was enriched by the Jātakas. They belong to the oldest subjects that were pictorially represented in India, and to-day they are still favourite themes for sculpture and painting in all Buddhist countries. We find them in the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C. on the stone walls of Bharhut and Sānchi, in the 2nd century A.D. on those of Amarāvatī, and still later in the caves of Ajaṇtā.[^1) When the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hien travelled in Ceylon in the year 412 A.D. he saw how, at the festival of the sacred tooth, in Abhayagiri, the king of Ceylon had the five hundred Jātakas represented by figures ranged on either side of the street along which the procession passed, brightly coloured and grandly executed, looking as if they were alive.