88 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY
that Velasquez was the product of Spain or Titian of Venice. Even if we had not been informed of this we should have assumed it. To this rule, however, India has so far been an exception. The synthetic study of her past suffers from having been largely initiated by foreigners. The modern method has been forced upon the country from outside, and it is difficult for outsiders to believe that the same thing has not happened before, that it is not indeed somewhat distinctive of Indian development. The German scholar Griinwedel, writing on Buddhist art, reiterates his sincere conviction over and over again that India derives her new impulses from foreign sources. Fergusson, with the pre-possessions of his long work for Indian architecture fresh upon him, finds more difficulty in minimising the purely native elements in Buddhist art, and though not untouched, is yet vastly less impressed by the pre-eminence of Gandhara types, when he comes upon them, than are his successors. And perhaps it is useful to know that neither of these writers is so assured of the negligibility of the indigenous contributions to Buddhistic symbolism as the latest of all, Mr. Vincent Smith, in his Early History of India. This is worth mentioning, because it may serve to remind us that even in a matter which has seemed so fixed and determined as this of the Gandharan influence on Buddha types, we really have to deal rather with a strong and cumulative drift of opinion or prejudice or preconception — as we may choose to call it — than
