Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/151

THE ANCIENT ABBEY OF AJANTA 115 time of Constantine, that is from A.D. 306 onwards, and that they speak even more loudly of Byzantium than of Rome. He has difficulty in understanding how Byzantium should make itself so strongly felt in a remote province, without leaving any trace on the arts of intermediate kingdoms, such as the Sassanian empire. But we have already seen that this is no real difficulty, since it is precisely at their terminal points that those influences act, which pour along the world's great trade-routes. The Indian man of genius in modern times makes his personality felt in London, and not in France, though he landed at Marseilles.

For ourselves, however, while we grant the mixture of elements in Gandhara, the question arises whether the latter did not influence Byzantium quite as much as the Western capital influ- enced it. According to the data thus propounded, we may expect to find amongst these Gandharan sculptures a vast mixture of decorative elements, all subordinated to the main intention of setting forth in forms of eternal beauty and lucidity the personality of Buddha, it being understood that the form of the Buddha himself is taken more or less unchanged from the artistic traditions of Magadha. It may be well to take as our first point for examination the Gandharan use of the Asokan rail. We are familiar with the sanctity of this rail as a piece of symbolism in the early ages of Buddhism. At Sanchi — undoubtedly a very close spiritual province of Magadha, and intimately