Is the preface to the first edition I tried to explain, in as clear language as I could command, what were the disqualifications under which I laboured in under- taking a work of this sort. My ignorance of the learned languages of India and my not having made a special study of ancient and more especially of Buddhist myths were serious drawbacks. Against these, however, I could place my practical knowledge of Indian art and architecture, and long familiarity with Indian modes of expressing their feelings in material representations. It would no doubt be desirable, but it must be confessed extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to find any one combining in his own person both these classes of qualifications; and, if this is so, it certainly seems expedient that the architect or artist should come first to arrange the materials and point out their affinities, and so prepare them for the study of any scholar or student of religious history who might come afterwards.
However this may be, I cannot in any way regret that I undertook the task, for this reason, at least, if for no other, that if I had not done so, no one else that I know of, in this country at all events, would have unaertaken it. No professional author could have devoted the years requisite to its performance without remuneration, and that the nature of the work does not admit of, and no amateur that I am acquainted with, has, with the requisite leisure, that devoted love of the subject which would induce him to enter on so thankless an undertaking, and to submit to all the annoyances which its performance is only too certain to entail on him. I consider the attempt, however, well worthy the sacrifice of any amount of time and feeling which it may give rise to, for the more I study them the more convinced I am that the plates of this work-I speak of the plates and the plates only, wholly irrespective of the text are the most valuable contributions that have been made to our knowledge of Buddhist history and art since James Prinsep's wonderful decipherment and translation of the Asoka inscriptions.
These plates present us with an entirely new but most interesting picture of religion, life, and manners in India in the first centuries of the Christian era, and carry back our knowledge of Indian art to the time when it comes in contact with that of the Greeks in Bactria, to whom it is now quite clear that the permanent lithic art of the Indians owes its first original impulse.
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