1889.] on the Civilization of Ancient India. 177 



Fergusson. One of the most remarkable paintings is in the hall of Cave 

 No. XVI, and is supposed to date from the sixth century. The subject 

 is the death of a lady, apparently a princess. The treatment of it has 

 elicited from Mr. Fergusson the comment that "Mr. Griffiths very 

 justly remarks on this picture that ' for pathos and sentiment and the 

 unmistakeabie way of telling its story this picture, I consider, cannot be 

 surpassed in the history of art. The Florentines could have put better 

 drawing, and the Venetians better colour, but neither could have thrown 

 greater expression into it.' "* 



Mr. Fergusson also quotes with approval the criticism of Mr. 

 Griffiths on a painting depicting flying figures in the so-called Zodiac 

 Cave, No. XVII :— 



" Whether we look at its purity of outline, or the elegance of the 

 grouping, it is one of the most pleasing of the smaller paintings at 

 Ajanta, and more nearly approaches the form of art found in Italy in the 

 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries than any other example there. The 

 easy upward motion of the whole group is rendered in a manner that 

 could not easily be surpassed."t 



"Whether these panegyrics are overstrained or not I shall not 

 attempt to decide, but I am fully persuaded that no art at all deserving 

 of such praise was ever born on Indian soil. 



" India, meditated, brooded, elaborated, but the originating imagina- 

 tion is not found in the dream-life. "J 



Whoever seriously undertakes the critical study of the paintings 

 at Ajanta and B;tgh will find, I have no doubt, that the artists drew 

 their inspiration from the West, and, I think, he will also find that their 

 style is a local development of the cosmopolitan art of the contemporai-y 

 Roman Empire. 



Section VII. The Art of Coinage in India. 

 The opinion expressed by Lenormant that the mechanical process 

 of coining money, properly so called, was unknown to the Indians until 

 they learned it from the Greeks after the invasion of Alexander, was 

 vigorously combated by the late Mr. Thomas on several occasions, and, 

 in my judgment, with success. § 



* Cave Temples of India, p. 307. 

 t Cave Temples of India, p. 311. 



t This quotation is taken from a lottor of my friend Dr. R. Atkinson, the learn- 

 ed Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Dublin. 



§ The question is discursively treated in Mr. Thomas' papers on the Earliest 

 Indian Coinage and on Ancient Indian Weights in the Numismatic Chronicle for 

 1884., and in his revised edition of the latter paper in tho first volume of the Inter- 

 national Namismata Orientaiia. 



