Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/189

THE CHINESE PILGRIM 143 are marked by chapels, monasteries, and stupas." Now a chapel of Buddha is undoubtedly an image-house. Nor is Fa-Hian himself entirely without feeling for the historical aspect of that Buddhistic sculpture which is one of the chosen objects of his study. He speaks always as if images were common enough in Buddhism, but he tells us that "the first of all images of Buddha, and that which men in aftertimes have copied," was a certain bull's head carved in sandal wood, which was made by Prasenajit,king of Kosala, at the time when Buddha was in the Tusita heaven preaching to his mother. The difference between an image and an emblem does not seem here to be very clearly apprehended, but the statement shows once for all that men in the fourth and fifth centuries looked to the eastern provinces, and to the country of Buddha's own activity, as the historic source of Buddhistic statuary. Again, when travelling in ihe kingdom of Tho-ly —north-east of the Indus, east of Afghanistan, and south of the Hindu Kush; or, as has been suggested, Darada of the Dards —he tells us that there was once an arhat in this kingdom who sent a certain sculptor to the Tusita heaven to study the stature and features of Maitreya Bodhisattva. Three times the man went, and when he came down he made an image of heroic size, about eight English feet in height, which on festival days was wont to become luminous, and to which neighbouring kings rendered periodic worship. "This image," adds the pilgrim, in the far-away tone of one who speaks on hearsay,