is characteristically Chinese. Yet the touching pose of the prince's faithful steed Kanthaka as it takes leave of its master, now about to retire from the world, exactly reproduces that regularly adopted in the corresponding representations of Graeco-Buddhist relievos. Next we have the scene of the Prince preparing to have his hair cut before retiring into the forest. Below an emaciated figure in the traditional pose of Indian ascetics symbolizes the austerities practised by Gautama before finding the true way to illumination and delivery.
We find two scenes relating to the Prince's farewell to his horse Kanthaka and his faithful groom Chandaka represented also in the top portion of another banner. In its lowest portion we are shown in an excellently composed scene the pursuit of the mounted messengers sent in search of the Prince.
The frankly Chinese fashion in which these traditional subjects of the Life Story are treated contrasts strikingly with the fact that the figures of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas or future Buddhas alike conform more or less closely to the types as originally evolved in Graeco-Buddhist sculpture and transmitted through Central-Asian art. The problem thus raised is of distinct interest. Whatever the right explanation be, we have here a curious parallel to the transformation which Christian legend has undergone at the hands of Italian or Flemish painters.
Among the pictures showing single Buddhist divinities the representations of Gautama Buddha and those who preceded him in gaining Enlightenment and Nirvana are, significantly enough, very rare. Buddhist piety in China as elsewhere appears always to have been attracted far more
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