upon his mind. He appeared then like the Devas, the Shining Ones, who thronged to hail him as their Lord, with a body like a lion—that is, with massive neck and shoulders; a narrow waist, and a golden or tawny skin; the veins and bones hidden, supple rounded limbs smooth as a woman's—a superman whose body combined the perfections of either sex but transcended all of them. This was the antithesis of the athletic ideal of classical Greek art based upon earthly notions of a mens sana in corpore sano. It was the symbol of spiritual rebirth by which mankind could become even as the gods.
Though this ideal was not realised in perfect artistic form until Indian sculpture and painting reached their zenith in Northern India about the sixth century a.d., the idea itself was of much greater antiquity. The god-like heroes of the Mahābhārata and Indo-Aryan athletes had long arms; in their shoulders, necks, and waists they were like lions. The same type appears in Minoan art of 3000 b.c., where men are shown with their waists pinched in with leathern girdles. It is also prominent in Egyptian and early Greek art. The prolonged Aryan domination of the Euphrates valley probably accounts for its survival in Indian art, as well as for many other evidences of Babylonian culture in India. It was the doctrine of Yoga, however, which gave the idea its characteristic Indian expression, in which the mystic tries to reveal the divine power of thought which controls all physical manifestations, a power which can only be realised when the mind, immovably fixed and undisturbed by worldly desires, attains to perfect tranquillity and the supreme joy of harmony with the eternal.
The two sculptures in Pl. LIII are classical Indian types of the Buddha as the Monk and Guru. The
