Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/113

THE ANCIENT ABBEY OF AJANTA 85 which included a constantly-growing number of factors. The little choultry outside is purely Hinduistic in its sculpture, as if to say that the order looked with no unfriendly eye on the less organised religious ideas and affections of the pilgrim householder. A mythological system which is practically identical in Japan, China, and India sheltered itself behind the Mahayana. All the sacred and learned literature of India was by it put in a position of supremacy. Hiouen Tsang was as careful to pass on to his disciples the comments of Panini on Sanskrit grammar as more strictly theological lore. He was as eager for the explanation of Yoga — the secular science of that age — as for the clearing up of points about relics and shrines. India, in fact, as soon as the Mahayana was formulated, entered on a position of undisputed pre-eminence as the leader and head of the intellectual life of Asia.

Nothing is clearer at Ajanta than the existence of two separate and almost divergent ways of treating the Buddha. One of these we see in the Buddha of the Shrines, which represents the moment of the First Sermon at Benares. Buddha is seated on his throne, and devas are flying into the halo behind his head. On the predella below his seat are the symbolic animals, and in their