Some Of
These Buddhas Are Decently Clad, With Pyramidal Pagodas As Their
Head Gear; Others Are Naked; Some Sit, Others Stand; Some Are
Real Colossi, Some Tiny, Some Of Middle Size.
However, all this
would not matter; we may go so far as to overlook the fact of
Gautama's or
Siddhartha-Buddha's reform consisting precisely in
his earnest desire to tear up by the roots the Brahmanical idol-worship.
Though, of course, we cannot help remembering that his religion
remained pure from idol-worship of any kind during centuries, until
the Lamas of Tibet, the Chinese, the Burmese, and the Siamese taking
it into their lands disfigured it, and spoilt it with heresies. We
cannot forget that, persecuted by conquer-ing Brahmans, and expelled
from India, it found, at last, a shelter in Ceylon where it still
flourishes like the legendary aloe, which is said to blossom once
in its lifetime and then to die, as the root is killed by the
exuberance of blossom, and the seeds cannot produce anything but
weeds. All this we may overlook, as I said before. But the
difficulty of the archaeologists still exists, if not in the fact
of idols being ascribed to early Buddhists, then in the physiognomies,
in the type of all these Enkay-Tenkay Buddhas. They all, from the
tiniest to the hugest, are Negroes, with flat noses, thick lips,
forty five degrees of the facial angle, and curly hair! There is
not the slightest likeness between these Negro faces and any of
the Siamese or Tibetan Buddhas, which all have purely Mongolian
features and perfectly straight hair.
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