Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/144

RV 120 eternal, passionless repose. Something of that idea may be contributed by the posture of the limbs, but nothing by a display of nude symmetry. It is not possible to tell how Pheidias would have sculptured a Buddha had the task been assigned to him, but neither his chryselephantine Zeus nor the Jupiter of the Vatican suggests that any Grecian or Roman artist could have produced a figure expressing more perfectly the attributes of Buddha than they are expressed by the Dai-Butsu of Kamakura. If this noble figure be examined closely, a combination of Egyptian and Grecian elements is found. It has the colossal size of Egyptian statues, and it exhibits also plain evidences of attention to the perpendicular and horizontal lines suggestive of eternal stability. On the other hand, the graceful beauty of the contours and the harmonious flow of the drapery belong to the domain of Grecian rather than of Oriental art. Still more characteristic is the Japanese sculptor's manner of representing Kwannon (Kwan-yin), the Deity of Mercy. The traits to be emphasised are limitless benevolence, a spirit elevated beyond the range of any ignoble sentiment, and profound sympathy guaranteed against anxious emotion by assurance of omnipotence to save. That combination of traits is scarcely conceivable in either male or female of the human species. Therefore the Kwannon of the Japanese sculptor does not seem to belong to either sex. It has the gentle graciousness of a woman, the placid resolution of a man, and the ineffable purity of a sexless being.

Human intelligence has never conceived an intelligent, sentient being in any shape other than human. The gods and goddesses of the Greek sculptor were