102 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY
early, and with this the evidence of the clay seal now before us is in agreement. But if we are to assign an early date to sculpture of this description, we must completely abandon the notion of pre- Buddhistic Indian art as semi-barbarous and crude. This degree of expressive power and this irresistible impulse towards the rapid modification of fixed symbols argues a long familiarity with the tools and the method of plastic enunciation. The Hina- yana doctrine would incline the stupa-maker at first to its aniconic development, but the innate genius of the Indian race for man- worship and its fundamental fearlessness of symbolism would triumph in the end over all the artificial barriers of theology, and the aniconic stupa would inevitably receive its icon. Of this moment our clay seal is a memorial.
The next step was to take the unmodified stupa, and carve on it four small JBuddhas, one on each of its sides. We can well understand the impulse that led to this. The dagoba was a geographical point, from which Buddha himself shone forth to north, south, east, and west upon the world. It is the same idea which in a later age led to the colossal images of the Roshana Buddha in Japan. The very thought of the Master, with his spiritual empire in the foreign missions, brought up a geographical conception. And this geographical idea it is that finds expression in those small and simple stupas, carved each with the four Buddhas, which one could often hold on the palm of one hand. In
