Digital Book :
The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology.
By Alfred Foucher
Published by Paul Geuthner, Paris & Humphrey Milford, London - 1917

The Beginnings of Buddhist Art.

Buddhism is a historical fact; only it has not yet been completely incorporated into history : sooner or later that will be achieved. Meanwhile its initial period remains, we must confess, passably obscure. To add to our difficulty, the little that we think we know of the social and political state of India in the times of its birth has been learned almost entirely through its medium : thus the frame is no better defined than the picture. But the task, arduous though it may be, is not impossible. The fifth century B. C. is not so remote a period that it must always elude archaeological research ; the interval between the death of Buddha and the first information transmitted to us concerning him is not so considerable that we cannot flatter ourselves with the idea of discerning across it the veritable physionomy of the work, if not - - in conformity with the pious, but too tardy wish of later generations - the actual features of the worker. This hope is still more confident, and the ambition less audacious, when it is a question of the beginnings of Buddhist art. The appearance of the latter is a relatively late phenomenon, since it presupposes not only the development of the community of monks, but also a certain organization of worship on the part of the laity. If among the productions of this art the sculptures are almost the sole survivors, we have at least preserved to us, notably in the labelled bas-reliefs of Barhut, documents of the very highest rank. Certainly the stones are by no means loquacious : but they atone for their silence by the unalterableness of a testimony which could not be suspected of rifacimento or interpolation. Thanks to their marvellous grain, they are to-day as they were when they left the hands of the image-makers (rupakaraka) two thousand years ago; and upon this immutable foundation we can construct inferences more rigorous than upon the moving sand of the texts. In the ever restless and changing play of the doctrines we are never quite certain that the logical sequence of the ideas is exactly parallel to the historical succession of the facts. On the other side, the routine character of all manual technique will allow us to detect with certainty, in the still existing monuments, the material traces of the procedures which must have been usual earlier : inversely, and by a kind of proof backwards, the correctness of these postulates will be verified in that they alone will be found to render a satisfactory account of the often uncouth character of that which has been preserved to us. All these reasons seem to us to justify the task which we have undertaken. In the assault delivered from various quarters upon the origins of Buddhism we believe even that the attempt to go back to the very beginning of its art is, among all the methods of approach, that which has for the moment the most chances of success.