Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/256

 222 BUDDHIST ARCHITECTURE. BOOK I. or Gondophernes of Takshajila or Taxila, and in the year 103 of this era. Now early Christian tradition mentions this king in connection with the mission of St. Thomas, which would fall in the ist century ; and the only Indian era we know of about that time is the Samvat commencing B.C. 57, which makes the twenty- sixth year of Guduphara coincident with A.D. 46, and places his accession in A.D. 2021. This is quite in agreement, not only with the tradition, but with the place assigned to the coinage of Guduphara ; and we can hardly suppose that the other inscriptions should be dated in a different era. 1 Among these there are known three or four of the ist century A.D., one each of the 2nd and 3rd century, and that of Hashtnagar is dated in 384, that is A.D. 32/. 2 The last is not later than might be expected, for when Fah Hian passed through Gandhara at the commencement of the 5th century, the monasteries were still in a flourishing condition. It was only a century later that the Buddhists were persecuted by the Hunas under Toramana and his son Mihirakula, and by that time the art had probably declined ; these dates, however, are sufficient to substantiate the conclusion that the Gandhara sculptures belong to the early centuries of our era, and that its most flourishing period may be assigned to about B.C. 50 to A.D. 200. From what has been said above regarding the sculptures of Bharaut and Sanchi, it appears evident that the Indians had a school of art of their own before they knew anything of the arts of the Western world ; but that native art seems to have had very little influence on the arts of Gandhara. The Western arts, on the contrary, acting through that country, seem to have had considerable influence on those of India at periods about and subsequent to the Christian Era. It seems at least almost impossible to escape the conviction that the arts of Amaravati and the later caves, say of the Andhra period, betray marked evidence of Western influence ; and it seems that it is only through Gandhara that it can have reached them. So strongly marked is all this that it may become a subject of an interesting investigation to enquire whether the Greeks were not the first who taught the Indians idolatry. There is no trace of images in the Vedas or in the laws of Manu, or any of the older books of the Hindus. As repeatedly mentioned, there is as little trace of any image of Buddha or Buddhist figures being set up for worship much before the Christian Era. But the earliest, the finest, and the most essentially classical figures of Buddha are to be found in Gandhara, and, so far as we 1 Dr. Vogel ('Archaeological Survey j the end of Ajoka's reign, and Guduphara Annual,' 1903-1904, pp. 259(7".), proposes the Seleukidan era of B.C. 312, for these dates, which would place Mogas about not long after ! Conf. ' Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,' 1906, pp. 706-71 1. 2 ' Buddhist Art in India,' p. 84.