THE INFLUENCE OF GREEK ON INDIAN ART. 9?

Egypt, that sense of c Being beyond (or behind) Appear-
ance' which we miss in the Greek representations of
beautiful Olympians.

And so we may read anew the meaning of the Gandhara
.sculptures, and see in them, not the influence of Greek-
Roman art on Indian art, but the influence of Indian art
upon Greek-Roman. We see, not foreign craftsmen creat-
ing an ideal afterwards imitated throughout the East, but
we see the transforming influence of Indian philosophy, at
the time when Hinduism in its modern aspects was emerg-
ing from a diversity of origins, exerted upon, and gradually
Indianising, Greek-Roman art. The foreign influence
coincided with the first general development of ritual and
imagery ; but the late classic gods of Europe were ill-fitted
to express the infinities of Indian thought. And so we
gradually find in the later Gandhara work the germ of the
Indian ideal,—centred at first round the image of Buddha
conceived as a divine being, with a spiritual, superhuman
body—and soon finding expression in a thousand forms of
gods and angels. By the seventh or eighth century this
truly Indian art had reached its zenith ; the artistic canons
of Sukracharya and others had already been formulated, the
necessity of meditation and visualisation perfectly realised
and the finest work of Elephanta and Borobodur was done.
The Mahayana Buddhist bronzes of Ceylon and Java
attained the highest level of attainment in the seventh or
eighth century. Hindu art flourished still for several
centuries. The advent of the Muhammadans then put an
end to the natural development of Hindu art in the north*
but work of the finest type, and perhaps the most distinc-
tively Indian of all, continued to be produced in Southern
India and in Nepal for some centuries.

At last the great traditions seemed to lose their
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