Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/42

 2,2 The Legends of Krishna.

which cannot be referred to any existing Indian people.^ Dr. Waddell describes the Lama of Tibet as a man with short curly hair, like the conventional images of Buddha ; the courtiers depicted in the rock paintings of the Ajanta caves have fair or dark brown curly hair, while the attendants are black with curly negroid hair, and some are dwarfs ; the images of the Jaina saint Gautama have crisp curly hair, thick lips, and black skin.^ The enlargement of the ear lobe has also been often noticed.^ Mr. Walhouse thus describes the image of Buddha at Karakal in South Kanara:* "Remarkable it is, too, that the features show nothing distinctively Hindu. The hair grows in close crisp curls ; the broad fleshy cheeks might make the face seem heavy, were it not for the marked and dignified expression conferred by the calm forward gazing eyes and aquiline nose, somewhat pointed at tip. The forehead is of average size, the lips very full and thick, the upper one long almost to ugliness, throwing the chin, though full and prominent, into the shade. The arms, which touch the body only at the hips, are remarkably long, the large, well-formed hands and fingers reaching to the knees." It may be suspected that in these representations we have a proof of negroid or negrito influence on Indian religious beliefs.

Again, in some cases, the blackness of certain images serves only to connote extreme antiquity. As we have seen, some of them are said to have been found in bogs or buried in the ground, and their dark appearance would corroborate this view of their origin, and sometimes, perhaps, tend to the growth of a conventional type. We know that in the Roman Catholic and Eastern churches it is a common

' Bombay Gazetteer^ xiv. , 83 ; Gujarat Gazetteer, i., 458 note ; Asiatic Researches, iii., 122.

- Waddell, Among the Himalayas, 161 ; Bombay Gazetteer, xii., 488 ; xiv., 67 ; XV. (l), 232.

^ Journal of the Anthropological Instittcte, ii., 192 seqq.

^ Frazer's Magazine, May, 1875.