84 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY
on the stupa in the interior has the same look, is of the same quaHty. The expedition that colonised Java is said to have left Gujarat in western India early in the seventh century, and this was evidently the conception of fine art that they carried away with them.
In this visit of Hiouen Tsang to the abbey, we have a hint of the marvellous cosmopolitanism which probably characterised its life. It is another way of saying the same thing, that is said with almost equal distinctness, by the chaitya-fagade itself. Chinese, Gandharan, Persian, and Ceylonese elements mingle with touches from every part of India itself in the complexity of this superb edifice. The jewel-like decorations of the columns without remind us of Magadha. The magnificent pillars inside carry the mind to Elephanta and its prob- ably Rajput dynasty. The very ornate carvings of the triforium and the pillar-brackets were origi- nally plastered and coloured. The stupa also once blazed with chunam and pigments. The interior must have been in accord therefore with the taste of an age that was by no means severe. The Vakataka house must have ruled over an empire in Middle India in which civilisation had reached a very high level. It must have been the centre of free and healthy communications with foreign powers. And above all, the old international life of learning must have had full scope in the abbey's hospitafity. Buddha and the Bodhisattvas were only the outstanding figures in a divine world
