THE AIMS AND METHODS' OF INDIAN ART. 49

body of one that seeks it ? He shall be seated like the
image, for that posture once acquired, is one of perfectly
bodily equipoise.

" He shall seat himself with thought intent and the
workings of mind and sense instruments restrained, for
purification of spirit labour on the yoga.

" Firm, holding body, head, and neck in unmoving
equipoise, gazing on the end of his nose, and looking not
round about him.

" Calm of spirit, void of fear, abiding under the vow
of chastity, with mind restrained and thought set on Me,
so shall he sit that is under the Rule, given over unto Me.

'* In this wise the yogi . . . comes to the peace that
ends in nirvana and that abides in Me "—(Bhagavad Gita,
YI.^ 12-15).-

How then should the greatest of India's teachers be
represented in art ? How otherwise than seated in this
posture that is in the heart of India associated with every
striving after the great Ideal, and in which the Buddha
himself was seated on the night when the attacks of Mara
were for ever foiled, and that insight came at last, to gain
which the Buddha had in countless lives sacrificed his body
4 for the sake of creatures' ? It was the greatest moment
in India's spiritual history; aiid as it lives in the race-
memory, so is it of necessity presented in the race-art.

It is usual now-a-days to demand what is called origin-
ality in works of art, to ask that they shall bear not only
the artist's name, but the impress of his individuality, he
is. expected to * be himself,' £ break away from tradition y
and the like. Only with such work, do men now associate
that emotional intensity that men less feverishly seeking
for some new thing, associated of old with the retelling of
a "twice-told tale,
4