Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/106

THE ANCIENT ABBEY OF AJANTA 79 was in existence at this early date, but it seems to have been used always as a medium of secular commemoration, as at Karli and Bharhut. The religious symbolism of Buddhistic devotion seems to have been at this period the tree, the stupa, the rail, the horse-shoe ornament, and sometimes a footprint. Nor can we adequately realise the thrill of sympathy and reverence which these austere and simple forms were at that time capable of producing in a susceptible mind.

The recognition of the Bodhisattvas, however, which came in with Kanishka, is a phrase which covers a great deal. It really connoted sooner or later the acceptance more or less entire of what may be called the Asiatic synthesis. And it too seems to go hand in hand with the worship of the personality of Buddha himself. It was in fact the emergence of a doctrine for which India has ever since been famous. It was an outbreak of the tendency known in Christianity as the religion of the Incarnation, a form of adoration by which Protestant England herself has wellnigh been torn in twain during the last fifty years. Whether or not Buddhism had before this inculcated the adoration of the Buddha's personality, no one who has read any of the early scriptures can doubt that she was always very ready for such a doctrine. There is a fine sentiment about every mention of the Teacher's name. One can feel the, intense sacredness of each of his movements to the early recorder. And the worship of relics, so early as