Page:A Handbook of Indian Art.djvu/354

202 sympathetic copies subsequently made by Lady Herringham, assisted by the pupils of Mr. Abanindro Nath Tagore, are exhibited in the Indian section of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and were published by the India Society in 1915.

Two of Lieut.-Colonel Goloubeff's photographs, typical of the best work of the Ajantā school, are given in Pls. LXXI, LXXII. The first, from a ceiling panel in Cave I, shows Parvati sitting on Siva's lap and receiving instruction from the great Guru. The subject occurs more than once in the later paintings of Ajantā, for Mahāyāna Buddhism allowed to all Brahmanical deities a place in its pantheon. Parvati is drawn with a few sweeping brush-strokes which sum up in perfect rhythm the sweetness and purity of the Lady of the snows listening attentively to her lord's teaching. Siva's figure is less searchingly drawn: the painter has concentrated most upon the pose and expression of the two heads—Siva's a noble god-like type, and Parvati's with the surpassing grace of pure saintly womanhood. Behind the figures is a background of conventional clouds; the two deities are poised in the heavenly regions like birds resting on their wings, an idea which Indian artists always expressed finely without giving to the Devas any bird-like attributes. The practice of yoga made them familiar with the idea of levitation and demonstrated to them its possibilities even for mortal flesh and blood.

The head of the Bodhisattva (Pl. LXXII), with the royal crown and his long hair braided with jessamine flowers, belongs to the central figure in the wall-painting of the same monastic hall, which probably represents the marriage of Prince Siddhartha—a subject in which the Ajantā painters have drawn