The University of Nalanda c18.6

c18.6

But if Nālandā inherited a rich and varied legacy, it left to the posterity a style of art that was at once indigenous and one of the best specimens of Indian art. Religion, consisting of ritualism was the root cause of the birth of this school of art. From agnostic atheism, Buddhism had passed on to partial theism in the shape of Mahāyāna. Besides Buddha, Vajrapāṇi, Hāritī and other gods and goddesses had entered into the Buddhist pantheon.¹ With the advent of Tantrayāna, in about the seventh or eighth century, Buddhism became thoroughly theistic. This Tantrayāna, advocate as it did, the worship of godheads, could not be imbibed by the devotee unless he could visualize them as positive entities. This desire for the outward manifestation of the godheads brought forth the creative instinct, which found expression first in colours, then in stone and finally in bronze. But the artist—the religious artist—it appears, confined himself primarily to the representation of the mood in which he imagined the deity to be. Hardly do we meet with floral representations—except for the lotus stalk and the flower. Scenes from Buddha's life do not attract him so much as before, though we have got a beautiful specimen of this kind in a bronze stūpa.²