File:Footfalls of Indian history (1915) (14803560523).jpg

Identifier: footfallsofindia00niveuoft (find matches)
Title: Footfalls of Indian history
Year: 1915 (1910s)
Authors: Nivedita, Sister, 1867-1911
Subjects: India -- Description and travel India -- Religion Ajanta Caves (India)
Publisher: London : Longmans Green
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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uld havebeen obvious that these were late examples, evenif Fergusson had not already announced thatopinion. The main chamber of each monasteryseems to have been a hall or court, either squareor circular, in the middle of which stood an altarsurmounted by a dagoba. Round this the wallswere broken up into quantities of small niches orchapels, each one containing its image, and thewhole decorated to excess. Regarding this as re-presenting theoretically the vihara surroundinga dagoba of earlier days, Fergusson is very properlystruck with astonishment by the phenomenon. Inno Buddhist monument in India of which he knows,he says, have the monks ever been thrust out ofthe cells to make way for images. If he had notbeen told what the plans were and where theycame from, he would unhesitatingly have pro-nounced them to be from Jain monasteries of theninth and tenth centuries. From architectural con-siderations he thinks that the classical influencesseen here must have culminated at and after the
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RELIEF FROM MUHAMMAD NARI, IN VUSUFZAI THE ANCIENT ABBEY OF AJANTA 115 time of Constantine, that is from A.D. 306 onwards,and that they speak even more loudly of Byzantiumthan of Rome. He has difficulty in understandinghow Byzantium should make itself so strongly feltin a remote province, without leaving any trace onthe arts of intermediate kingdoms, such as theSassanian empire. But we have already seen thatthis is no real difficulty, since it is precisely attheir terminal points that those influences act,which pour along the worlds great trade-routes.The Indian man of genius in modern times makeshis personality felt in London, and not in France,though he landed at Marseilles. For ourselves, however, while we grant themixture of elements in Gandhara, the questionarises whether the latter did not influence Byzan-tium quite as much as the Western capital influ-enced it. According to the data thus propounded,we may expect to find amongst these Gandharansculptures a vast mixture of decora

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