Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/117

 THE ANCIENT ABBEY OF AJANTA 89

with established facts. Vincent Smith is not better able to form an opinion than Feri^usson. Indeed he is less fit in many ways ; yet his opinion is much more fixed. What the one man threw out as a tentative suggestion the other uses as if it were an axiom. Evidently even the best of us is apt to believe as he would wish, or as he has prepared himself to think, and there is a large fraction of predisposition in every robust conviction. There- fore the formidable concensus of opinion which at present exists on the origin of Buddhist icono- graphy, does not in the least exonerate us from examining carefully the grounds of that opinion. On the contrary, it rather challenges us to do so. Of the three famous names cited, it is precisely that of the man who knew his India best which is also that of him who attaches least importance to foreign influences in Buddhist art. And it is the man who knows least of Indian art at first hand, and is presumably most influenced by popular opinion, who delivers it over most cheerfully to a foreign origin and the assumption of native inade- quacy and incompetence.

There are two different theories about foreign in- fluence on the Indian art of the Buddhist period. One is that from the beginning India had owed almost everything artistic to external forces. The Asokan pillars were Persepolitan,the winged animals were Assyrian, the very lotuses and plant-forms were West-Asian. The school which thus almost holds that India has no originality in matters of art,