Buddha and the gospel of Buddhism . m-leaf manuscripts in the same style. Sub-sequent to this the Buddhist art of Nepal is modifiedby Tibetan, Chinese, and perhaps also Persian art persisted in Magadha and Bengal only untilthe final victories of Islam involved the destruction of themonasteries in the twelfth century. Colonial Indian Art India has been the source of a colonial art of great im-portance, developed from the sixth century onward inBurma, Siam, Cambodia, Laos, and particularly in Java:and the great part of this colonial art is Buddhist. Themost important school i
Buddha and the gospel of Buddhism . m-leaf manuscripts in the same style. Sub-sequent to this the Buddhist art of Nepal is modifiedby Tibetan, Chinese, and perhaps also Persian art persisted in Magadha and Bengal only untilthe final victories of Islam involved the destruction of themonasteries in the twelfth century. Colonial Indian Art India has been the source of a colonial art of great im-portance, developed from the sixth century onward inBurma, Siam, Cambodia, Laos, and particularly in Java:and the great part of this colonial art is Buddhist. Themost important school is the Javanese. Java was colonizedby Brahmanical Hindus in the early centuries of the Chris-tian era and largely converted to Buddhism a little later;the two forms of belief existed side by side until the Muham-madan conquests of the fifteenth century. The largest andfinest Buddhist monument is the stupa of Borobodur;here the procession galleries are adorned by a series ofsome 2000 bas-reliefs illustrating the life of the Buddha336. Plate D D MANJUSRI BODHISATTVA Java (14th century )Berlin 336 Colonial Indian Art according to the Lalitvaistara, as well as various legendsfrom the Divyavadana and the Jatakas. The reliefs areso extensive that if laid end to end they would cover aspace of more than two miles. We have here a thirdgreat illustrated Bible, similar in range, but more ex-tensive than the reliefs of Sanchi and the paintings ofAjanta. This is a * supremely devout and spontaneousart, naturally lacking the austerity and the abstraction ofthe early Buddhist primitives, but marvellously gracious,decorative, and sincere. The episodes represented areby no means so exclusively courtly as is the case atAjanta, but cover the whole circle of Indian life alike incity and village. The narrative element is more con-spicuous than at Ajanta, the craftsmen adhering closely tothe book. But every group and every figure are abso-lutely true and sincere in expression of face, gesture, an
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