Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/254

 220 BUDDHIST ARCHITECTURE. BOOK I. of our era, it follows that " the zenith of the art and period of its greatest expansion falls before the second half of the 2nd century." Such an argument must have much weight in deciding this question. 1 About the beginning of our era Greek art had become a matter of commerce and export, and Graeculi travelled in all directions with their wares and models, ready to employ their skill in the service of Gaul, Skythian, or Indian to provide images for their pantheons by imitations from their own patterns. They could also represent for their employers the different classical orders of architecture, and would teach their pupils how to carve them ; but, with or without models, the copy would be modified to suit the Indian taste ; and so, for the acanthus of the Greek capital, were introduced the palms with which the Indian workmen were familiar ; and the figures of Nike we see in the Corinthian capitals of antae in the temple of Augustus erected about A.D. 10 at Ancyra, or in those of Priene, were reproduced in Gandhara as little figures of Buddha. 2 It is an imitation of Greek forms with divergencies not a copy but the suggestion must have come from those travelling Greek artists probably lonians who were the agents by whom the Gandhara sculptures were inspired, and Greek statuary was the model from which the Mahayana pantheon was evolved. 3 Further, it is at least approximately correct to state that no statue of Buddha, in any of his conventional attitudes, has been found in India executed earlier than about the Christian Era. Those on the facade at Karle and in the western caves are avowedly insertions of the 2nd or 3rd centuries or later. There are none found at Bodh - Gaya, Bharaut, or Sanchi ; nor do I know of any one in India that can be dated before the ist century. In these Gandhara monasteries they are very frequent, and of a type which in India would be assumed to be as late as the 2nd or 3rd century ; some of them even later. It is true Buddhist books tell us frequently of statues of Buddha having been made at much earlier dates. 4 But Indian books have this fatal defect, that they represent facts and beliefs at the time they were written, or acquired the forms in which we now find them, without much reference to facts at the time at which they are supposed to have happened. The actual remains and the period to which they belong are our surest 1 Foucher, ' L'Art Greco-Bouddhique du Gandhara,' tome i. pp. 4off. 2 'Buddhist Art in India,' p. 153. There is also a capital at Siah, in Syria, on which a bust is introduced, which De Vogue, ' Syrie Centrale,' plate 3. 3 It may be accepted that Greek art furnished India with the images that served for the beliefs. Goblet D'Alviella, ' Ce que 1'Inde doit a la Grece,' p. 152. may be as early as the Christian Era. 4 'Buddhist Art in India,' pp. ijiff.