Early Buddhist Attitudes toward the Art of Painting

Abstract

To the best of my knowledge, no attempt has been made to assemble and render into any European language the passages dealing with painting that may be found scattered through the Chinese translations of early Buddhist literature. Students of Indian art have turned to Pāli, Sanskrit, or Tibetan texts with profit, but their contributions have necessarily been limited. The Pāli books, bound to the Hīnayāna, in general show a less lively interest in the possibilities of the representational arts than is proper to the Northern School. Sanskrit remains are late, or non-Buddhist; the Tibetan literature is still doubly inaccessible behind physical and language barriers. In contrast, the Chinese translations cover the whole of Buddhist writings with unique completeness. At the same time they offer the most readily available collection of texts from the area and the period when sculpture and painting were first being granted high importance as a religious instrument: i.e. North India in the first two or three centu...