82 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY
crowned. He carries the flag of Dharmma. There is a freedom in his attitudes and in the arrange- ment of the adoring figures by whom he is surrounded. At the same time, the recurrence of the chequer-pattern instead of the Asokan rail, now forgotten, shows the influence of Gandhara. And so the substitution of grinning faces for lotuses in the horse-shoe ornaments shows the overwhelm- ing of the old purely Indian impulse by foreign influences. And so does the peculiar coat worn by the Buddhas. This garment appears to me rather Chinese or Tartar than West Asian. But it must be said that it is not purely Indian. What is the date of Cave Nineteen ? Kanishka was A.D. 150, or thereabouts, and Cave Seventeen is about A.D. 520. It is customary to assume that Nineteen is the Gandakuti or image-house referred to in the inscription on Seventeen. Critics profess to find an affinity of style which groups them together. For my own part I must frankly say that to me this affinity is lacking. I believe the Gandakuti to mean the image shrine at the back of Seventeen itself. A pious founder might well count this and the cave and the cistern three separate works. This inference is confirmed by a reference I find in Hiouen Tsang to a gandakuti or hall of perfumes, i.e. doubtless, of incense within a vihara in the kingdom of Takka. I cannot .imagine that Nineteen was made by the same hands or at the same time as Seventeen. I think it is considerably later and less conservative
