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Marg (Pathway) is a noted quarterly Indian art magazine and a publisher of books on the arts, based in Mumbai. It was first published in 1946, with noted writer, Mulk Raj Anand as its founding editor, who intended it to be a "loose encyclopaedia of the arts of India and related civilisations." The magazine was mainly funded by J.R.D. Tata of the Tata Group at its inception, later on after 1951 and until 1986, it was mostly funded by the Tata Group companies, then the National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA) was formed as a trust, and the magazine has since then been funded by it, though many of the Tata Group companies continued to sponsor it [1]. Today, it is edited by noted art historian, PRATAPADITYA PAL and Marg Publications is one of the three leading serious art book publishers in India along with India Book House and Mapin Publishing, and is run as an Not-for-profit organization, issuing subsidized magazines, with the help of corporate and private sponsorship [2][3][4]. Each year, apart from its four quarterly issues it also published four books, a few hardbound special editions, single author titles, and guides on Indian art; over the years it has also produced a few films.

About my work Pratapaditya Pal has written: "Although I do not agree with your interpretations, I found them interesting reading. One of the few areas in which India is supposed to have made important contributions is religion, and now you are taking that glory away as well" Glory! Hmm. Anyway I have the same comment to make about his work. His remarks on the iconography of the god Revanta is interesting but I had expected something on Amyntas and Hermaeus.

I used to see (from a distance) Niharranjan Ray, the guru of Pratapaditya Pal often in the national library Calcutta. I have far greater respect for the work of Niharranjan Ray who never played to the gallery.

What Pratapaditya Pal says about the Iranian influence on the magnificent Buddhist art of Alchi is short-sighted. It is tragic that he sees nothing beyond the Gotama Buddha of Nepal.

@ Ranjit Rana ...Mukharram Jah used to be the Chairman of the Board of Governors of our school circa 1964 - 65 . The first time we saw him and his beautiful Turkish Princess wife was when they drove in , in their Ambassador car, late one evening , to pay a call on our housemaster,a Rashid Ali . Some months later , me and several others got our school prefect stars pinned on our shoulders by him ..

Pratapaditya Pal attempts to read the mind of the Buddha, The religion that created Alchi is so far removed from early Buddhism that if Buddha Sakyamuni himself were to visit the monastery today, he would be no less bewildered by its iconographic complexity than the average visitor. Would he be?

I entirely empathise with the lament of Pratapadithya Pal..."One of the few areas in which India is supposed to have made important contributions is religion, and now you are taking that glory away as well." : )

The glory of a false Gotama of Nepal versus the glory of a wider India in the world.

I personally feel that that if Buddha Sakyamuni himself were to visit the Alchi monastery today, he would be greatly bewildered by what Dr. A. A. Fuhrer, Dr. R. Thapar and Dr. Pratapaditya Pal have written about him.

I think the last sentence of Pratapaditya Pal's comment on my work betrays a very narrow tribal outlook. I intensely hate G. M. Trevelyan's idea that history should be tailored to suit utilitarian goals of national glorification. I can only quote Rabindranath Tagore who taught us to rise above blind nationalism ; Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls.

Could Ananda Coomaraswamy ever write a sentence like this? I think not.

The fact is that Pratapaditya Pal has no idea that what is commonly called 'Buddhist art' is only Greco-Buddhist Indian art that dates only from the 3rd century B.C. He fails to remember his guru Niharranjan Ray's candid remark; "The fact remains therefore that we have no examples extant of either sculpture or architecture that can definitely be labelled chronologically as pre-Mauryan or perhaps even as pre-Asokan." The art of Alchi which he thinks would have surprised the Shakyamuni contains elements of pre-Asokan Buddhist art that has 'Persian elements' not Nepalese elements. Pratapaditya Pal's remark is in sharp contrast with the work of D. Schlumberger, who succeeded Foucher. He wrote with uncommon boldness that Greco- Buddhist art was the Indian descendant of Greco-Iranian art. Does this support the Nepalese fables? Klaus Fischer also had a better idea about pre-Ashokan Buddhist art.