102 THE GANDHARA SCULPTURES. 



emperor who united India and made the influence of his 

 empire felt from Ceylon to the limits of Syria and Egypt, 

 deliberately recognised Buddhism as its unifying force. 



74. In India the Art of this early Buddhism was a natural 

 growth out of that of the Epic Age that went before. For 

 it is idle to deny the existence of pre-Buddhistic Indian 

 art, or to ascribe to it a hidden birth under the influence of 

 the Greeks, as European archaeologists are wont to do. 



The Mahabharata [" The great (war of the) Bharatas," 

 an epic of the war between the Kurus or Kauravas and 

 Pandavas, X.-XII. Cent. B.C.] and the Ramayana [" The 

 Adventures of Rama," V. Cent. B.C.] contain frequent and 

 essential allusions to storeyed towers, galleries of pictures, 

 and casts of painters, not to speak of the golden statue of 

 a heroine and the magnificence of personal adornment. 

 In the sculptures of Asoka's rails are images of Indras and 



75. Devas worshipping the bo-tree. There is here no trace of 



76. the influence of the Greeks. The lofty iron pillar of Asoka 

 at Delhi — strange marvel of casting, which Europe, with 

 all her scientific mechanism, cannot imitate to-day — like 

 the twelve colossal iron images of Asoka's contemporary, 

 the Shin Emperor of China, points to ages of skilled 

 workmanship and vast resources. Images of the Buddha 

 himself, though absent from the early stupas, may probably 

 have been the first work of his disciples, who soon learned 

 to clothe his memory with the Jataka legends and to 

 beautify his ideal personality. 



77. The remains of Mathura [birthplace of Krishna, the 

 modern Muttra], and Gandhara fall into the general 

 movement and reveal a greater prominence of Chinese 

 [Mongolian] than of the so-called Greek characteristics. 

 The Baktrian kingdom in Afghanistan was never more than 

 a small colony in the midst of a great Tartar population, 

 and was already lost in the late centuries before the 

 Christian era. The Alexandrian invasion means rather the 

 extension of Persian influence than of Hellenic culture. 



