THE ANCIENT ABBEY OF AJANTA 107
After Shiva, however, the attention of sculptors in
Magadha was more and more concentrated on the
image of Narayana. It is probably an error to
think of this as rigidly fixed in form. An unyielding convention is always the end of an evolution,
never the beginning. And like Shiva in the west,
so also Narayana in Magadha is connected with
Buddha by a long series of gradual modifications.
Sometimes we can detect Chinese influence in a
particular statue. With the rise of the Guptas and
the necessity of a gold coinage, it would seem as if
Chinese minters had been employed, just as in his
time and capital Kanishka had undoubtedly employed Greeks for the same purpose. There is
no difficulty in imagining that such Chinese workmen might sometimes be employed on a statue.
The fact that the form itself, however, was not
of their initiating is best proved by the gradual
transitions which connect it with the image of
Buddha. So much has been said, so lightly, about
the impossibility of Indian inventiveness, that it
is necessary to guard from time to time against
petty misconception. Another point of the same
kind arises with regard to Hinduism itself. It
may be well to say that Buddhism did not
originate the ideas which in their totality make
up Hinduism. Indeed Buddhism was itself the
result of those ideas. But by its limmense force of
organisation, it achieved such a unification of the
country and the people, that it forced upon the
Brahmans the orcranisation of Hinduism.
