dicates that purely Indian origins might not be found for
it. At Sanchi, as well as in Central India and at Ajanta such
characteristics are preserved. But the Greek dynasties which had settled
in northwestern India in the train of Alexander, had carried with them the
canons of Hellenistic art. The technique and methods of this art were
placed at the service of the new religion. They gave to Buddhist
art--which was just beginning to appear in the Gandharian provinces--its
outward form, its type of figures, its range of personages and the greater
part of its ornamentation.[9]

[9] See Foucher, "L'Art greco-bouddique du Gandhara." Paris, Leroux.

Buddhism found the expiring Hellenistic formula which had been swept
beyond its borders, ready at hand at the very moment the new religion was
gathering itself together for that prodigious journey which, traversing
the entire Far East, was to lead it to the shores of the Pacific. Once
outside of India, it came into contact with Sassanian Persia and Bactria.
With Hellenistic influences were mingled confused elements springing from
the scattered civilizations which had reigned over the Near East. Thence
it spread to the byways of Eastern Turkestan.

We know today, thanks to excavations of the German expeditions of
Gruenwedel and von Lecoq, the two English expeditions of Sir Aurel Stein
and the French expedition of M. Pelliot, that in that long chain of oases
filled with busy cities, Buddhist art was gradually formed into the
likeness under which it was to appear as a finished product in the Far
East. Here it developed magnificently. The enormous frescoes of Murtuq
display imposing arrangements of those figures of Buddhas and Bodhisatvas
which were to remain unchanged in the plastic formulas of China and Japan.
Meanwhile conflicting influences continued to be felt. Sometimes the
Indian types prevailed, as at Khotan, at others there were Semitic types
and elements originating in Asia Minor, such as were found at Miran, and
at length, as at Tun-huang, types that were almost entirely Chinese
appeared.

The paintings brought from Tun-huang by the Stein and Pelliot expeditions
enable us to realize the nature of the characteristics which contact with
China imposed upon Buddhist art. It had no choice but to combine with the
tendencies revealed in the painting of Ku K'ai-chih. The painter trained
in the school of Hellenistic technique drew with the brush. He delighted
in the rhythmic mo