EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE BUDDHA IMAGE

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David Waterhouse

The subject of this paper is the Buddha image, or rather ways of approaching and analysing it: but we shall-not be concerned with the merits and drawbacks of particular approaches so much as with factors that influence our thinking about art of any kind - and which are therefore applicable also to artistic representations of the Buddha. These factors are partly socio-cultural, partly linguistic and philosophical, partly psychological and biological. They may be partly characterised in other ways besides. In other words, before we allow ourselves to pontificate about Buddhist sculpture, we need(even if we know what different kinds of Buddhist sculpture look like) to consider the possibility of bias in various anterior chains of reasoning.

Mutatis mutandis, the same applies to Buddhist painting and Buddhist prints; but in what follows I am mainly thinking of sculpture, and particurarly of sculptures of the Buddha image, whether seated, standing or reclining.

Thus, Buddhism is a religion (and a very distinctive one); Buddhist sculpture is a kind of religious art; religious art differs in function (and in other ways) from secular art; art historians commonly differentiate sculpture (and other art-forms) according to style, technique and so on; aesthetic judgments may be made (or implied) about religious art by believers, by non-believers, by art historians, and by laymen in all walks of life and of any

time and place. Even if we decide that the above statements are acceptable

ways of describing the situation, we should not disguise from ourselves that each of them makes breath-taking assumptions about the meaning and application (or "sense" and "reference", in Gottlob Frege's terminology) of key words:particularly about their meaning, or the contexts in which words are used without misunderstanding. If one examines dispassionately the sense (as opposed to the reference) of "Buddhism", "art", "religion", "sculpture", "style" and other terms which could reasonably be expected to appear in a philosophical essay on Buddhist sculpture, it actually becomes difficult to discover any entry into the subject which will not be open to misinterpretation. In this

situation, therefore, I make no apology for approaching the theme of this paper from a considerable-distance, in the hope that a preliminary sweep of the horizon will make it easier to hold the forward position at which I am aiming.

Moreover, in giving space to some novel ideas, I am obliged to leave out of account a number of topics which would appear to be relevant, and to omit for the most part any discussion of particular historical contexts.

I start with three propositions: that a work of art comes into existence when by human agency something has a frame put around it; that in determining whether the result is good or bad or negligible, the doctrine of art for art's sake provides the only criterion which is ultimately valid; and that there is no essential difference between understanding in the humanities and understanding in the sciences. These propositions are probably not self-evident; and may at first sight be repellent to some: so I shall amplify them slightly-

I use the word "frame" as a more trendy way of stating Aristotle's position that "A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle,and an end". Another trendy term is Gestalt",but that has implications which I do not wish

to pursue at present; and it is too broad for our context, which is art(including both visual and performing arts). Aristotle, whose concern is of course the definition of Tragedy, and specifically the proper structure of the

Plot, goes on to explain that

A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end,on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing,either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. (2)

This is obviously a one-dimensional model, which will not do even for paintings, much less for sculpture; and it has other shortcomings for our purposes. We may agree that a beginning (the boundary of the frame, in our terminology) is arbitrary and not governed by causal laws: but the end too may be arbitrary. Because Aristotle is thinking about the demands of a well-constructed plot, he confounds logical and aesthetic criteria when he allows for the end occurring "by necessity, or as a rule" ( ). He may

also be influenced by the ambiguity of the Greek word ( ) which can mean both "termination" and "objective" (as can the English word "end").

However, it is not my intention to provide a commentary on Aristotle. In the context of my theory, "beginning. and "end" have to be treated as opposites, and as symmetrical: but, as I have indicated, more general terms are called for; and, for the theory to ring true, it should be possible to apply it to anything which may deserve the label "art". For this reason I opt for "frame", or sometimes boundary".

The frame which defines a work of art can take many forms. I have argued elsewhere that in music the individual work of art is the performance

(rather than the composition)(3); and there are various ways in which the frame of a particular performance may be determined: not only by the beginning and end of,the one-dimensional flow of sound, but also by the ambient environment of the performance. The frame of a two-dimensional visual work of art, similarly,includes not only the physical margins of the paper or other medium on which it is executed, but also less tangible factors such as the lighting of the gallery and the social context deemed appropriate to its enjoyment. In other words,"frame", as I am choosing to use the term, is very broad indeed. As applied to three-dimensional art (and I am thinking especially of sculpture), there may be no physical frame at all; since a plinth, or a lotus seat, does not set bound-

aries for the work, so much as aid in its display. On the other hand, sculpture is framed by the interior or exterior space in which it is viewed; and by the sanctity with whi ch it is liable to be invested by its surroundings.

The neutral concept of "frame", with which we lop6ned,-here,starts to sound like the religious concept of an enclosure which demarcates the sacred from the profane (I return to this point later). However, in allowing for the

ambience of a concert hall, or art gallery, or, for that matter, of a Chinese scholar's cottage in the mountains, I am consciously introducing quasi-religious considerations. I do not believe that it is p ossible, in the world of art, to

make clear behaviouristic distinctions between what is religious and what is secular. The handbooks for qin (Chinese 7-stringed zither) which were translated

by Robert van Gulik(4) lay down canon law like any High Churchman; casual visitors often respond to the atmosphere of a museum (at least of the old-fashioned kind of museum) by speaking in hushed, reverent tones; and the devotion with which the collector or connoisseur will contemplate and tend his objects is akin to the adoration lavished on holy images. Yet, as other writers have pointed out,

aesthetic and religious sentiments are basically different (5), even if they are frequently bestowed on the same object, and mingled in the mind of the observer. It is not necessary for a fetish to be beautiful for it to be regarded as holy;or even for it to be genuine.(6) Idolatry is always to some extent symbolic.

The only.way to keep one's head above water in this argument is, I believe, to fall back on the second of the propositions with which I started:namely, that for the appreciation of art we must cling to a doctrine of art for

art's sake. In saying this, I emphasise that I am making an epistemologicalpoint. I am not mounting a political platform from which to proclaim the auto-nomy and fundamental uselessness of the work of art, or the absolute freedom

and alienation of the artist from conventional morality. The latter thoughts,most fully developed in the nineteenth century by such writers as Theophile Gautier and James A. McNeill Whistler(7), actually begin at least two centuries

earlier, at a period when in both Europe-and China, the idea was bruited about that the true artist, as opposed to the mere craftsman, is a being set apart from the rest of mankind: a kind of shaman, in touch with hidden realities of the universe.(8)

In its political aspects, the theory of art for art's sake is thus contingent on history; and it has received its due share of opprobrium during the past hundred years. Here, however, we are concerned with the individual's intuitive response to art, which must lie at the heart of any attempt to validate art itself, and on which any aesthetic theory has to be based. This intuitive response is often difficult to isolate, but it is the logical anchor of the epistemological scheme I am proposing. It is attached too by silken threads to the aerial creeds of Taoists and Romantics alike; and it is implicit in many statements of.-artists themselves, of both East and West.

I shall put the matter another way. It will be recalled that God placed in the Garden of Eden both a Tree of Life and a Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; and warned, in His inscrutable way, that the penalty for eating from the latter would be death. Religious leaders who like to keep their flock in blissful ignorance have taken the warning to heart: but Adam and Eve chose to listen to the serpent, who told them not to worry about it. This was fortunate for those of us today who toil in universities dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge; but, as Adam and Eve discovered, knowledge has its price. We are informed that the Garden of Eden contained "every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food", and that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was perceived by Eve as both good for food and pleasant to the eyes, even before she ate from it. This was, then, the first aesthetic response in history, unless we include the

satisfaction previously felt by God at His own creations; and it will be seen that,it already embodies a value judgment. Furthermore, before the Fall, the only value

judgments which had been made, or indeed could be made,.were favourable; and there were presumably no degrees of goodness either, since that implies qualification, criticism and negation.

If we use this fable to assist us in understanding the intuitive response to a work of art, we see that it has to be positive; and that it has to be singular. It cannot imply, or suggest, comparison with one's response to other works of art, or to objects which are not artistic. In short, it is a response to art for art's sake. Because of what happened in the Garden of Eden, the intuitive response presumably exists now only as a logical fiction, at least

here on earth; but it is nevertheless logically necessary.

At first sight, it might appear that the Buddhist attitude to this problem would be very different, given that in Buddhism ignorance ( ).

is the primordial sin, rather than knowledge. However, there are more parallels than one might think between the history of Buddhism and the Judaeo-Christian tradition. In Buddhism knowledge implies above all an awareness reached through revelation; and the goal is some kind of salvation from the toils of this world. Genesis, for its part, indicates that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is "to be desired to make one wise", even if the immediate con-sequence turned out to be sorrow - like the Buddhist duhkha - and mortality.

I shall allude further to Buddhism, and particularly to Buddhist sculpture. Meanwhile, I wish to point out that in the theoretical approach I am outlining, the study of art, from any point of view whatsoever, takes second place to the raw, immediate appreciation of it. Needless to say, in practice most of our thoughts about art, in general or in particular, are of this second-ary variety; but I do-insist that unless we pay theoretical lip-service to this other component, whether it be a single satori-like flash, or a steady state of bodhi mind, art will lack the ultimate justification it needs. On the other hand, it does not follow that the appreciation of art in this way is a spiritual exper-ience. It is sui generis; and mystical only in the sense that it is incommunicable.There are no grounds for equating it with the experiences or the states of

mind which are the apparent goal of so many religions, including Buddhism.It would be a mistake to attempt to define religious art in these terms; or to think of art per se as morally and spiritually uplifting. Art can be and

frequently is used for religious purposes, so that it may have consequences of this kind: but strictly speaking they are epiphenomena, From the epi-stemological point of view, art serves only as decoration for a religion; and the fact that certain kinds of religious art - notably icons and images - can move the viewer greatly has to be explained on other grounds. This

conclusion may at first seem eccentric: but, just a holy images are not nec-essarily beautiful, artists are not necessarily holy, even when they engage in the production of religious art.(9) Similarly, even if art often does influence public morality, for better or worse, there is no logical or intrinsic connexion between the two. Plato, Confucius and other totalitarian thinkers commit a fallacy when they assert otherwise.

I shall say least about my third proposition, that the basic intellect-ual aims of the humanities are no different from those of the sciences (though I recognise that in a Humanities Researeh Centre it may raise a few eyebrows). I interpret the late Lord Snow's journalistic separation of the "Two Cultures"(i.e. science and letters) as at best a historical contrast between two milieux,which often exist in physical proximity to each other (in Snow's case, within

the precincts of Cambridge University, if not of Christ's College), and which share the same socio-cultural level (niveau)(10). It is easy to think of other human groups which are separated far more, both geographically and culturally,both from each other and from Christ's College: for example, Canadian Inuit and Australian aborigines, not to mention the High Table at a Buddhist monastery in

ancient India.

I like to remind myself that science, scientia, is etymologically another word for knowledge generally. Even if scientists and humanists have drifted.apart, they are both engaged in the same intellectual endeavour, to which the same subjective idea of understanding can be applied, and for which many of the same methods are appropriate. From another perspective, it is one of the contributions of Claude Le"'vi-Strauss to have shown the continuity between science and magic; and, as Paul Feyerabend likes to point out, modern

scientific thought preserves some other elements of a naive ideology. In brief,there is much common ground between the humanities and the sciences, where the two can be helpful to each other; with which remark I shall for the time being leave a large subject that invites discussion on many fronts.

The three propositions with which we have started may be regarded as analogous to axioms in a system of intuitionist logic. They are arbitrary; but that does not matter if they prove to have utility, for example by corresponding to actual situations. I now wish to put forward two further ideas, which may be regarded as analogous to rules of inference in the system.First of all, I suggest that the multifarious types of art to be found in the world, past and present, and the continuing changes we see in artistic form,style and t echnique, can most readily be explained in biological terms. In other words, the taxonomic schemata of biology, and a suitably modified version of evolutionary theory, together offer useful models for the study of art.

This suggestion too may not be immediately palatable. An evolutionary approach to art history has been tried (with reference to European art) by Max Dvorak, whose philosophy and method Arnold Hauser found to be fruitful, "though tending to result in rather too drastic generalizations"(11). In itself this criticism only serves to put us on guard; and it is actually a recommend-ation, if the "drastic generalizations" turn out to be true. In that both a steam engine and a stone Buddha are human artifacts, the designed works of living organisms, they both partake of life in the biological sense, and have more in common with each other than with a rock. In the same way, a Song

landscape painting is more like a steam engine than it is like the mountain which is depicted in it (assuming that mountain to be potentially real, rather than only a mountain in the mind of the artist); while a complicated thangka

painting or a mandala is perhaps more like a computer (or at least a computer wiring diagram). When we say that the Buddhist caves at Ajanta or Elura are carved out of the "living rock", we mean only that the rock is still in situ,

not that it is qualitatively different from the stone used for a detached Buddha image. Mountains and rocks have unplanned shapes which are the result of natural events accidentally related to the final outcome.(12) Steam engines,Buddha images and Buddhas themselves (at least in their human manifestations,or niraranakya) give evidence of having been designed, though not necessarily by an identifiable Designer or series of designers. If we take the

Mahayana view that the whole physical universe is a Buddha, or that the Buddha-nature is everywhere, the argument will not work: but pan-psychicalism is on another metaphysical level altogether, and our immediate concern is with the kamadhatu, in the lower realm of ordinary existence.

The three kinds of evolutionary mechanism allowed for by Charles Darwin were sexual selection, natural selection and the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Obviously the first of these does not apply to art, except in so far as aesthetic preferences are influenced by sexual proclivities; but the second two can quite easily be modified to describe processes of change in the arts. Natural selection, the best known of Darwin's ideas, works through sur-vival of the fittest in the struggle for life; but the world is so varied that it cannot provide a complete catalogue of the factors which make for survival. In the arts, similarly, it has to be determined, by examination of each case,why certain art-forms and styles persist for hundreds of years, while others

fall by the wayside. We should also note that in art the time-frame for change by selection is very much shorter than it is in the world of plants and animals. The inheritance of acquired characteristics is no longer taken seriously by

most biologists, since modern genetics is able to give a much fuller explanation of the mechanisms of heredity than was available to Darwin (or to his prede-cessor Jean Baptiste de Lamarck). On the other hand, if we are willing to speak of lines of descent for works of art, it makes sense to speak of modifications in form, style and technique as being passed on to the next generation as acquired characteristics.

It will be objected that all this is absurd, since works of art do not reproduce themselves, but depend on the intervention of their makers: but insofar as there is what has been called "art history without names", the bio-logical model is no more arbitrary than any other abstract structure which has been applied to the study of art; and it has both descriptive and explanatory force. For purposes of description, the chief value of the biological model would appear to be taxonomic; and any large encyclopedia of antiques, describing and classifying the innumerable varieties of decorative art, already employs quasi-biological system(13). Beyond this, since "art" is commonly contrasted with "nature",we should probably avoid calling the evolutionary process "natural selection" in this case; and "artificial selection" implies deliberate mani-pulation - stylistic gene-splicing, one might say - which may fit certain cases but cannot be regarded as the general rule. I therefore propose simply "artistic selection"; or, more broadly (and impersonally), "cultural selection".

it is also desirable to re-cast the traditional theory of evolution to allow for still other mechanisms. In recent years, Sir Karl Popper, for example, has proposed a more generalised model for evolutionary theory, (14) designed above all to fit

his theory of the evolution of scientific knowledge, in which Problem 1(P,) leads to multiple tentative theories or solutions (TS). These are then subject to error-elimination (EE), which in turn gives rise to a new set of problems (P,). He expresses this by the formula

P -> TS,...TS n -> EE -> P2

However, this works best for situations in which truth is the goal (regarding truth, as Popper does, in terms of correspondence to the facts); and it further implies acceptance of the idea of progress. Neither of these

considerations applies straightforwardly to art; and in general it appears that Popper has not thought through sufficiently the implications of his theory for works of art

- even though it is designed to cover them.

His formula presumably repeats itself, so that the set of TS which follow P2 will be an improvement on the TS which follow P, . In art, however, even if the later TS take account of the earlier ones, there may be not only art-forms

which pass into a period of decadence (and which modified evolutionary theory can account for in terms of inbreeding and mutation); but also the case of two equally great works of art (for example, pieces of Buddhist sculpture) in radically different styles, the one much earlier than the other. In the latter instance,it is clear that other criteria of judgment are being applied: but what are

they? One possibility would be to define truth pluralistically, or hierarchic-ally, so that, in addition to truths which correspond to the facts, we say there are artistic truths, religious truths, political truths and so on. This is superficially appealing; but reflection will show that it leads to

epistemological anarchy. A much better remedy is to grant autonomy to the "tentative solutions" (in this case, the individual works of art), for pur-poses of appreciation. Appreciation in itself is then neither true nor false,

though it may very well have practical implications; and in this way too the evolutionary "rule of inference" chimes in with one of our three initial propositions. We shall return to Popper's theories again later.

III

At the risk of scaring nervous readers further, I shall intro-duce a proposal for a second "rule of inference" which may turn out to be useful for the analysis of art. Before I do, however, I shall digress slightly.In a typical essay in stylistic analysis by an art historian, the language we shall encounter is technical -sounding but informal. Terms such as "form", "Plasticity", "volume", "rhythm" and so on are used in special ways which are liable to puzzle the layman. The development of this language over the past

sixty years can be illustrated by'the following examples, both of which concern the treatment of drapery in Chinese Buddhist sculpture of the Tang period. Describing a stone figure of a Buddhist disciple, Roger Fry, writing in 1926, wrote:

In the Chinese statue the folds scarcely have any plastic existence.They are inscribed on the surface of the figure and are used to envelope it in an exquisitely lovely system of simple linear rhythms which harmonise with and illustrate the linear scheme of the whole contour. (16)

Fry's main purpose is clearly to make the reader feel good about Chinese sculpture. He was one of the first critics in the West to write with sympathy about Asian art and about tribal art; and there is reason to be grateful to him for that. Lord Clark wrote after his death: "In so far as taste can be changed by one man, it was changed by Roger Fry"(17). However, if we ask about the literal or exact meaning of such phrases as "plastic existence",or "linear rhythms" which "harmonise with" (rather than keep time with) "the linear scheme of the whole contour", and which somehow also illustrate it, we shall only confuse ourselves. Fry was particularly impressed by "linear rhythm" in Chinese art. To quote him again:

This predominance of linear rhythm is felt in all Chinese decorations and even in sculpture. In sculpture it makes itself felt in the emphatic continuity and flow of the contour and in the treatment of drapery, which is often rather inscribed on the form than modelled as a plastic element. And whenever such drapery is inscribed or however it is indicated he direction of the folds takes on the character of a linear rhythm.(18)

Fry further offers the thought that "Plastic forms in the round are, I think, always referred, however unconsciously, to some basic mental schema. It seems to me that the Chinese keep as their basic schema and point of departure the egg, whereas the European bases himself upon the cube, or simple polyhedron." (19) It would take us too far afield to refute this curious notion; and in any case

grand generalisations have mercifully gone out of fashion. In the earlier 1920's, in Europe or in the United States, Fry could not have seen much actual Chinese sculpture. The Tang piece which he praises (and illustrates) was pro-bably a subsidiary figure in a five-fold grouping, centred on the Buddha

himself. Such groups appear in North Chinese stone sculpture from the later 6th century onwards; and the subsidiary figures, of disciples and monks, are frequently in a plain, simply modelled style, such as is seen here. The result

may indeed be "exquisitely lovely" or, as Genesis puts it, pleasant to the sight: but. as I have maintained earlier. that is another matter entirely.

Since Roger Fry's time the evocative mode of analysis employed by him has evolved into a professional jargon for art historians. My second example is drawn from a fairly recent and much admired analysis of the Buddhist cave sculptures at Tianlongshan, in Shanxi Province.

The seventh century A.D. witnesses the gradual development of an artistic style in sculpture which matures into and becomes the dominant sculptural trend around 700 A.D. A quest for self-sustaining order govern-ing the demarcation of the human body form in its principle [sic] com-ponent parts is a basic precept of this style. Differentiating The body is primarily accomplished by ordering garment folds and exposed body parts in distinctly patterned groups of lines and demarcated planes. In the last

part of the seventh century A.D. emphasis and modulations in the line and plane center on the articulation of the structure and the observed human proportions of figural representations. Nevertheless, the figures exhibit the ungainly appearance of newness in their individualistically accentuated lines and planes ordered into isolating perpendicular arrangements. In the best examples of sculpture datable to the years ca.700 A.D. the multiple

functions of the human figure are stated with forthright impartiality towards each section. Integration of limbs and torso does not exceed the unity of the sum total of the potential movements of the figure. In the figure of the Buddha dated 711 A.D. a shift of emphasis is noticeable in

the ease of line as it rounds the corners of knees, parts together and they lay the initial claim to function as a vehicle towards a new unity of tense balance between the bold physical being of each part and the pronounced interaction of coordinated planes, scarves and garment pleats...

The tense balance described above is found in its initial stages in the Buddha figure of 711 A.D. and ... is portrayed in the figures of Cave XXI. The broad shoulders and slim waist of the Buddha of the north wall stand out in individual assertiveness and the planes, tightly rounded and

swelling, demarcate the insistently exposed areas of the chest, knees and limbs. The cohesion of the image is achieved by the tautly elastic and con-tinuous contours as well as by the steady, precise and symmetrical grouping

of lines. The strong, -visible presence of the lines, while lending pointed emphasis to the physical body structure, coordinates the parts by giving them powerful associative attraction.

The strength of the taut planes and rhythmic lines is enhanced by variations which pay constant heed to structural articulation of the body. Singular arrangements and subtle changes occur in the treatment of the sanghati folds of the north wall Buddha. In this image fold lines radiate from below the knee joint and fan out over the lower part of the leg,sprouting a separate branch of lines over the foot. The modifications from the complex bunch of garment folds over the chest to the fewer parallel folds over the stomach denote a change in the physical structure beneath, thereby creating a focus on the major sections of the human figure.

Thus the figures of Cave XXI with all their superb elan abide by the laws of communicating physical presence of body in charged gestures of exposed limbs expressed by sensitive but very conscious interplay of lines and planes. In effect, the enlivened movements, clearcut shapes, taut planes and elastically tensile lines imbue the figures with an agressively [sic]active existence and an appealing sensuous beauty of idealized worldly. The appealing human quality of the images in Cave XXI sets the stage for an immediacy of communication between figure and beholder previously un-

known in Chinese Buddhist sculpturexor all this, the figures retain remoteness of existence behind refi ent of deliberate rhythmic patterns.Hence a face may be shown in almostNrance-like beauty, yet with the human touch of parted lips as in the Bodhisattva from the north wall of Cave XXI.(20)

This passage is quoted in extenso, both to be fair to its authors and to convey the rococo flavour of their prose. Like Fry, they wish the reader to feel good about Chinese sculpture; but they also have complicated thoughts about drapery folds and other niceties of style. In the process they parade before the reader a sequence of bewildering images - insistently exposed limbs, tautly elastic contours, the laws of communicating physical presence of body, and so on - in which words are used as much for their emotive effect as for their factual content. The total effect is grotesque, as though they are describing a fat courtesan who is wearing clothes which are too tight for her. Moreover, despite its wealth of detail, the description fails. Without

having the originals before one, or good photographs (which the article does include), one would scarcely have any idea what the authors were talking about. If reasonable simulacra of the originals cannot be constructed from

the descriptions, what purpose do they serve? Despite repeated reading, and familiarity with the pieces in question, I cannot visualise from the words which are quoted just what happened in the last part of the seventh century,

or what further distinguishes the Buddha of 711 A.D., and those in Cave XXI,as they hide behind their rhythmic patterns.

Like the language of Marxism and the language of psychoanalysis,with both of which it. is on occasion allied, the language of art history has become the arcanum of a priesthood: impressive at first, and not wholly devoid

of meaning, but ultimately barren. One member of Roger Fry's audience said: "He had only to point to a passage in a picture ... and to murmur the word 'plasticity' and a magical atmosphere was created"(21). Like the sorcerer's

apprentice, his latter-day followers would like to do the same.

On the other hand, is it possible to devise an alternative and more precise language for describing and analysing art? There are countless technical terms and materials, for techniques and for the subject-matter of art: but these do not tell the whole story. The missing ingredient is usually identified as style. According to Arnold Hauser,

Above all, style is the basic concept of art history because its fundamental problem can be formulated only in terms of this concept. The concept of style derives from the paradoxical fact that the endeavors of several artists working separately and often independently are found to exhibit a common direction, that their individual aims are unconsciously subordinated to an impersonal, superindividual trend, and - seemingly insoluble contradiction of art history - that an artist, by giving free rein to his own impulses, produces something that goes beyond what he

actually intended. Style is the ideal unitXAif a whole that consists in a lot of concrete and disparate elements. (22)

Style, whether it be considered in general or in particular cases,

here sounds like one of Plato's Forms; and is subject to the same crticisms as that hoary theory. More than this, however, the word "style" is used by many writers on art in similar ways to the word "race" or "breed": namely to dis-tinguish particular types at the sub-species level. Thus we hear about pure styles, mixed styles, hybrid styles, national styles, and so on. This usage is open to many of the same methodological and ethical objections as when it is

applied to humans or any other sentient beings, as Buddhists call them, it is probably no coincidence that the most influential theories of artistic style were formul-ated in Germany in the 1920's and 1930's. Even Meyer Schapiro, in his cele-brated essay, "Style", admits:

The theory that the world view or mode of thinking and feeling is the source of long-term constants in style is often formulated as a theory of racial or national character... [Such concepts] ... have been common in

European writing on art for over a hundred years and have played a signi-ficant role in promoting national consciousness and race feeling; works of art are the chief concrete evidences of the affective world of the ancestors...

The weakness of the racial concept of style is evident from analysis of the history and geography of styles, without reference to biology.(23)

Nevertheless he is apparently unable to propose a superior model. He defines style as follows:

By style is meant the constant form - and sometimes the constant elements, qualities, and expression - in the art of an individual or a group. The term is also applied to the whole activity of an individual or societ as in speaking of a "life-style" or the "style of a civiliz-ation" (24)

This is more of a dictionary definition than a recommendation; and,

by inviting qualitative distinctions, particularly in the second sentence,it does not escape the charges which can be made against the racial theory. Schapiro later says: "In describing the Western development, which is the model of cyclical theories, historians isolate different aspects of art for the definition of the stylistic types".(25) Except for some passing references to Chinese painting, and to "Old Oriental art", Schapiro's own examples are mostly taken from the history of European art; and the "different aspects"

which he isolates are "form elements or motives, form relationships, and qualities (including an all-over quality which we may call the 'expressions')"(26) This is as close as he comes to providing an alternative model; and he does

not tell us how to isolate particular aspects under these three headings.

In fact the method has long been criticised by biologists: because the selection of aspects can only be arbitrary, and because it brings one up against the uncomfortable facts of discordant variation, which make it logic-ally impossible to select natural divisions in a population differing intern-ally by several characters. As Kennedy has put it:

Students of human variation ceased to advance a race concept when they perceived, as had their colleagues in animal taxonomy, that efforts to define a type for subspecies were as unrealistic-as the habit of thinking that interfertile populations could be divided into categories

as though these populations were closed genetic systems, as are species.(27)

Schapiro too recognises that "The characteristics of styles vary continuously and resist a systematic classification into perfectly distinct groups"(28). Nevertheless, we do need some way of cutting the cake; and, just as some anthropologists recommend more neutral terms such as "ethnic group", or a precise and carefully qualified use of the old terminology in specific

contexts, so there is obviously a useful though limited role for the concept of style. However, I have no hesitation in recommending that it should be de-throned from its present revered position among art historians. It has become a fetish or icon in itself, and prevented them from actively exploring or even seeing that there are many no less important ways of studying and analysing art.

We may now return to the second example of what I am inviting the reader to consider as being analogous to a rule of infernece in logic. In some comments on Schapiro's original paper, Claude Levi-Strauss observed that style

referred not only to works of art and to the works of man, but also is widely applicable to nature. He gives as instances of this trees, animals, crystals and molecules. In his opinion, "the main Problem of style is to develop common

methods to translate into the same language the phenomena of style in nature and in culture". For this purpose he proposes mathematical methods, recommend-ing specifically the study of topological transformations. He does express

reservations about mathematical methods, the suspicion that there will be a residue; but submits "that a large part of the problem will be solved when we hear one of the more rigorous and precise ways to approach the problem of this

relationship". (29)

In reply to Le"vi-Strauss, Schapiro correctly pointed out that various attempts have been made, in "the ancient [Western] world, in the Renaissance,and in the modern period", to analyse and even to create works of art by

mathematical methods. He does not mention that in Hindu and Buddhist traditions also there 4%o have been similar uses of mathematical formulae, or rather of

geometrical constructions. In many traditions of architecture, both European and Asian, Euclidean types of analysis have been applied with considerable success; and topology has been put to work in the study of such three-dimen-sional ornament as Celtic weave patterns, as Schapiro says,

For a mathematician proving a theory, it does not matter whether he draws it in red chalk or white chalk. It does not matter whether his triangle is big or small or to the right or left of the blackboard. But for an artist the precise thickness or thinness of a line and the colors and the position with respect to others - these are really constituent factors. That does not mean that there are not, in forms, in compositions,certain recurrent patterns of relationships that, in a broad way, can be described through mathematical equations or through geometrical schemes.

But I think that is so primitive, on so elementary a level of structure,that we do not advance far into the character of the work of Art. (31)

This is the nub of the matter. Works of art, including those of the most formulaic kind, are so much more complex than anything that has been said about them, whether by mathematicians or by art historians,' When we consider

also our perception of them and our response to them, which involves not only Eve's primary aesthetic observation but also our culturally conditioned aesthetic norms, the difficulty of providing a complete description and

analysis increases a hundredfold.

Nevertheless, even if the old-fashioned and awkward language of art history is self-regarding and often vacuous, the outlook for mathematical analysis is not quite as bleak as it appeared in 1952. A new branch of mathe-matics, or rather of geometry, has been developed by Benoit B. Mandelbrot, which takes into account precisely the kind of variation to which Schapiro draws attention, as well as the styles of trees, crystals and human profiles. This new geometry of nature identifies shapes which Mandelbrot calls fractals;

and it transcends both Euclidean and topological analysis.

A central feature of the theory of fractal s is that it regards the notion of dimension as subjective. Roger Fry's "linear rhythm", whatever else it means, implies two dimensions, in the standard Euclidean sense; and

"plasticity" and "volume", whatever else he wanted them to mean, imply three-dimensions. Mandelbrot substitutes for this the notion of fractal dimension (D), which is defined mathematically, and whose count often differs from those

of Euclidean dimension (E) and topological dimension (Dt). Mandelbrot further introduces effective dimension, which is,intuitive, which should not be defined precisely and whose value can be a fraction.

Effective dimension concerns the relation between mathematical sets and natural objects... (Effective dimension] inevitably has a subjective basis. It is a matter of approximation and therefore of degree of resol-ution.

To confirm this last hunch, a ball of 10 cm diameter made of a thick thread of I mm diameter possesses (in latent fashion) several distinct effective dimensions... I

The notion that a numerical result should depend on the relation of object to observer is in the spirit of physics in this century and is even an exemplary illustration of it.(32)

On this last point Popper would disagree strongly: (33) but the validity and utility of the notion of effective dimension remain unaffected. The technical details of Mandelbrot's system are beyond the scope of this paper:

but it has been successfully applied to a surprising variety of phenomena, ranging from the measurement of coast lines to the fluctuation of commodity prices and even to music. In passing, Mandelbrot himself has considered it in

relation to art, including Hokusai's famous woodcut print, popularly known

in the West as "The Great Wave", from the series Fugaku sanjurokkei, "Thirty-Six Views of the Peak of Fuji"; and, together with his followers, notably Richard F. Voss and V. Alan Norton, has experimented with the computer gener-ation of graphic images on fractal principles. This is now a rapidly expandingfield, in which many further developments can be expected.Without invoking fractals at all, one can think of various ways in which computers and computer graphics might aid the study of Buddhist art. Their uses for purposes of inventory and classification are obvious, though as yet little exploited; but computer graphics could also be used to display different types of Buddha image, presenting them from various angles and with various lighting sources, colouring and so on. By changing the appropriate variables, we could also generate sub-types and sub-styles, some of which would be completely new and potentially'attractive to Buddhists. In a sense, the prescriptions of the old slilpa texts are like computer programmes, or could be rendered into them; and in the late twentieth century should perhaps

be replaced by them. In this way Western Buddhists, for example, could most conveniently devise new types of Buddha image, which would reflect Western physiognomy. Analogous processes of transformation have taken place over the

centuries, as Buddhism has moved to China, to the Malay world and elsewhere in Asia. There is no religious or historical reason for non-Asian Buddhists to use Asian-looking icons of the Buddha. This suggestion is not made facetious-ly or in order to promote Buddhist beliefs, but rather as a practical means of breathing new life into a great artistic tradition, and as a logical extension of the modes of analysis used in this essay.

From a purely philosophical point of view, fractal geometry can more easily be related than Euclidean to Mah'IyTha notions of the omnipresence of

the Buddha nature. Leaving this aside, however, the most obvious application of fractals is to the analysis of drapery folds in Buddhist sculpture. We have already seen that this topic is dear to art historians; and it is indeed of some importance, both for an appreciation of the art and for the dating and attribution of particular pieces. The naturally occurring irregularites of drapery folds, represented by sculptors with varying degrees of fidelity, can most readily be explained in fractal terms. The treatment of hair, cloud-forms, landscape and water in art would also be amenable to fractal analysis.

For this purpose the conventional distinction we make between two-and three-dimensional art would disappear. This is intuitively satisfying, since relief prints, for example, and relief sculpture (which is usually intended to be looked at only from the front) anyway fall in between the two categories. More than this, it is also consonant with our broad initial concept of a "frame".

Fractal analysis will leave unanswered the questions posed by Schapiro about the aesthetic aspects of composition, colour and texture, though unlike Euclidean geometry it does take into account the thickness or

thinness of lines. On the other hand, it unexpectedly suggests a macroscopic view of the relationship between "style" and human groups. If the fractal irregularities of nature are reflected in most representational art (and in

music), the fractal irregularities of human groups (whether or not we admit the term "race") may also be indirectly related to stylistic variation in art.From this perspective the difference between secular and sacred art may be expressed as the difference separating art created for an irregular, fractally constituted society, and that created for a society in which Euclidean

relationships prevail. The most extreme examples of the latter are what Erving Goffman called "total institutions" (34), including presumably Buddhist monasteries; and totalitarian states. In the latter, the art created at the

behest of the state may theoretically be jecular; but in practice it is sacred. Similarly, Chinese literati painting is theoretically secular; but,in that its audience constituted a closed, Euclidean group (like that for qin zither music), it may be construed as sacred. As we have insisted earlier,however, the distinction between what is religious and what is secular in art is fluid - in the same way as Mandelbrot's concept of "effective dimen-sion".

I have urged that it is also necessary to distinguish, from a biological point of view, between the works of inanimate nature and the works of man (and other sentient beings), even if the same mathematics can be applied to both, and even if the only criterion for a work of art is its conceptual "frame". If we maintain this epistemological distinction, then the humanistic objection to mathematical analysis disappears(its limitations being recognised). As students of human culture we are actually obliged to make the distinction, although Mandelbrot, looking at art with a

mathematician's eye, does not do so. Otherwise, we shall'be forced to admit that a mountain - any mountin - is in itself a work of art.

The combined result of our discussion may therefore be schematised as follows:

UNFRAMED FRAMED

INANIMATE UI FI

NATURE

ANIMATE NATURE UA FA

& ITS PRODUCTS

In this diagram, the distinction between Rows 1 and 2 is that of the biologist,who would group spiders' webs, steam engines, birds' nests and Buddhist sculptures together in Row 2. The right-hand column, on the other hand, distinguishes works of art according to the arbitrary imposition of a "frame", whether physical or merely symbolic. Category FI thus allows for the accidental

beauty of rocks and mountains and sunsets; but most works of art would come under category FA, including gardens and the excavations of contemporary "earth artists". The burrowings of moles and rabbits would be classified as FA rather

than UA only at the discretion of the critic. The model also covers events and objects in motion, so that category FA would include fireworks displays; mobile sculpture (and some Buddhist sculpture is mobile, being mounted on a turntable

or carried in procession); and dance performances. However, an accidental explosion-(UA), a volcanic eruption (UI) and a tiger in a cage (UA) would notcount as works of art unless we decided for particular purposes that they would be. None of this, of course, helps to determine whether the outcome will be successful qua art.

In the foregoing sections I have presented informally some new and doubtless heretical suggestions for the appreciation, description and analysis of art. In recommending a biological approach to the description of change in the arts, as well as to the classification of art, I have not, however, sought to revive the crude cultural evolutionism against which anthropologists from Durkheim and Boas to Levi-Strauss have rightly inveighed; and I am aware too

of the continuing heated debate concerning the shortcomings of evolutionary theory among biologists themselves.(35) I also reject as inherently absurd and unnecessary the attempt by sociobiologists to isolate genetic components in the evolution and transmission of culture.(36) Popper's more generalised model,on the other hand, is helpful, though it needs modification for our purposes. In urging the primacy for aesthetic appreciation of art for art's sake, I further allow for some pertinent remarks of Pablo Picasso:

I also often hear the word "evolution". Repeatedly I am asked to explain how my painting evolved. To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be con- sidered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was. Art does not evolve by itself, the ideas of people change and with them their mode of expression...

The several manners I have used in my art must not be considered as an evolution, or as steps towards an express, I have done it without thinking of the past or of the future. (37)

Picasso can be taken as speaking for the true artist anywhere in the world, and of any period. There is justified pride and impatience in his words;but for us the point he makes is above all epistemological, an indication that

questions about evolution are of no more concern to the artist than to the bat as he navigates his course by sonar through a darkened cave. Moreover, we do not set up the artist on a pedestal: from a biological perspective, the artist who finds "something to express" is no different from the giraffe who finds leaves at the top of a tree.

Picasso's point applies equally to the appreciation of art: so that implicitly he answers the question whether it is right for non-Asians, or non-Buddhist~ to look at Asian or Buddhist art from a purely aesthetic point of

view. It remains for us to determine what criteria of judgment are appropriate for Asian Buddhists, for Asian non-Buddhists for Western Buddhists, and for Western non-Buddhists respectively. (For the moment, we treat all Asians

indiscriminately.) Again, if we wish to make cross-cultural comparisons or value judgments (e.g. concerning the relative merits of Graeco-Roman, Christian and Buddhist sculpture; or of Indian and Chinese Buddhist sculpture), it is all too easy to arrive at conclusions which will sound absurd or patronising or worse (as in the racial or stylistic stereotyping which we have stigmatised). Should we therefore refrain altogether, in favour of an absolute cultural

relativism, as has been urged by such anthropologists as Melville,Herskovits? (38) What about such issues as the concept of beauty; the role of symbolism in the arts; semiotics; structuralism; deconstruction; diffusionism; the psychology of art and perception; or connoisseurship? Is any light shed on all these problems from Buddhist, Hindu or other non-Western philosophies, particularly those which

concern the arts? Clearly the subject has many ramifications; and our model,offered as the answer to some age-old questions, has many loose ends.

In practice, many of these diverse issues will be found to come together under a general theory of cultural evolution; and others need not arise at all. In that any philosophical abstraction relies on words, we can choose not to use those words, whether they be English in origin, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Chinese or Japanese. They may describe well enough the situation within a given culture; but that does not make them valid as universals, or allow us to equate them with the names for roughly similar concepts in other cultures. For example "form", a term which we have seen to be of central importance in Meyer Schapiro's definition of style, means different things to different writers in English; and is not necessarily the same in any of these senses as Sanskrit rupa, Chinese xing and Japanese kata.

On the other hand, we may want to compare such concepts with what we find elsewhere; and the alternative to absolute cultural relativism is to seek half-way methodological principles which can guide cross-cultural study.(39) These half-way principles are akin to the study of trends and situational logic in history, which Popper long ago proposed as an alternative goal to the seeking of historical laws,(40) and perhaps also to Mandelbrot's "effective dimension".

Popper has also more recently proposed an evolutionary theory of knowledge, an epistemology without a knowing subject (compare "art history without names"!), in which there are three worlds or universes:

... first, the world of physical objects or of physical states; secondly, the world of states of consciousness, or mental states, or perhaps of behavioural dispositions to act; and thirdly, the world of objective contents of thoughts, especially of scientific and poetic

thoughts and of works of art. (41)

For details of Popper's system, as conceived by him, the reader is referred to his book. Here we are concerned with various ways in which it has to be amended for our purposes. At first sight, it is tempting to draw parallels between his three worlds and the kamadhatu, rupadhatu and arupadhatu

of Buddhist cosmology: but there are many differences. The kamadhatu roughly corresponds to Popper's first world, though it also includes various divine and demonic beings whose existence he would certainly challenge; and only the

topmost of the four levels of the arg'padhStu, the realm-:. of "neither consciousness nor not-consciousness" (nalvasanjnari-asanj"nva), starts to resemble Popper's third world. Above all, the Buddhist scheme is ontological, where

Popper's is epistemological; and his third world, though objective, is man-made. On the other hand, the Buddhist philosophy of consciousness (vijnana) should offer at a middle level of generality many points of historical and

cultural comparison for Popper's second world, as well as for the third world of theories of consciousness (and causation). Here already is an example of a potentially fruitful topic for cross-cultural study.(42)

Works of art in themselves may belong to the first world (as in the case of pieces of sculpture) or the third world (as with an elegantly con-structed theory, or a piece of conceptual art); their content, considered abstractly, belongs to the third world; but their individual appreciation, which is sui generis, belongs to the second world. Even so, it may be influenced,and indeed usually is, by the products of the third world: including not merely

the inherited expectations of an artistic tradition, but also the whole gallimaufry of critical appraisal, some of it valid, much of it invalid; as well as the ideas which guide an artist in the creation of new art, and the connoisseur in his response to it. a Popper's theory emphasises contents and truth-values, rather than concepts and meaning; but it grants autonomy to that which is expressed through works of art, and as such is in line with the ideas proposed in the

present paper. However, while condemning a pre-occupation with concepts,Popper would have to recognise that philosophers in India, China and else-where in Asia have shared this pre-occupation with their Western confreres:

so that for historical purposes it is impossible to ignore it, even if it has been and remains a potent source of confusion.

On such concept, which in view of its central place in Western thinking about art, deserves to be considered not just historically but even

as a potential universal, is beauty (or, avoiding Platonist overtones, the beautiful). As with form, we cannot assume that its meaning, as expressed by Western writers since Plato,(44) corresponds with that of Indian writers from

Bharata and Abhinavagupta onwards; though,it happens that Sanskrit rasa, now usually translated "aesthetic experience" or sometimes "beauty", literally refers - to the taste of food, especially sap or the juice of fruit, (45) and so is curiously reminiscent of our parable from Genesis. That great polymath Ananda Coomaraswamy, by bringing together passages from Western as well as Indian sources, did attempt, if not a synthesis, at least a series of over-views of the subject(46):but his philosophical outlook was too strongly influenced by the idealism current in his day. More recently, J.L.Masson and M.V.Patwardhan have remarked:

Instead of vague generalisations(or reinterpretations such as are found in the special issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism On 0riental Aesthetics, Fall, 1965), we need detailed studies and especi-ally translations into modern English of the major works of Sanskrit aesthetics.(47)

Indian aesthetics, like other branches of Indian philosophy, offers a wealth of material for the historical and comparative study of particular problems, since the categories of Indian abstract thought are basically similar to those of European thought (reflecting their common roots in the depths of Indo-European linguistic structure )(48) From the standpoint of the theory presented in this paper, the most helpful feature of rasa theory is its stress on the primacy (and the selflessness) of aesthetic experience though we must interpret this for our purposes as a logical rather than a

mystical truth. Beyond this,rasa cannot easily be equated with beauty, a concept which in European languages is now heavily overlaid with emotive associations, as a result of the pronouncements of philosophers, poets and other arbiters of elegance since the eighteenth century.

Aesthetics, as a branch of European philosophy, dates from the middle eighteenth century, when Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, in his Aesthetica (1750-58), proposed this term (on quite proper etymological grounds)for the study of perception; but he went on to say:

The aesthetic end is the perfection of sensory cognition, as such; and this is beauty. (49)

His clumsy formulation caught on only after being watered down by Romantic writers and by acolytes of the Aesthetic Movement; and, despite various attempts to tighten it up (50), aesthetics has remained the least satisfactory

branch of modern philosophy. The philosophy of art, however, does not depend either on aesthetics (in the original narrow sense) or on the concept of beauty (in any of its ramified senses).

The truth of this becomes apparent when we move out of the Indo-European sphere. The editors of a recent anthology of traditional texts on Chinese painting observe:

In studying these translations, the reader will immediately notice that the concept of "beauty" does not figure in Chinese aesthetic con-cerns. Instead, is a vocabulary reflecting a Chinese system of natural philosophy.(51)

Any one who is familiar with the Chinese material will recognise the truth of this remark. The Chinese term for aesthetics, meixue ( ) , "the study of beauty", is a recent coinage, which I take to be borrowed from Japanese

bigaku (written with the same characters). In turn, bigaku (originally shimbigaku ) is an early Meiji word, invented as a translation of German Asthetik, and English aesthetics (52). Karlgren interpreted the original graph for the character meaning "beautiful" as "a man with a head adornment in the form of ram's horns".(53) More recent epigraphers regard it as a head-dres! adorned with beautiful feathers (54); but for our purposes the outcome is the same

- that which Eve (seeing it worn by Adam) would have called "pleasant to the sight". In contrast, the native Japanese word utsukushi, normally translated as "beautiful" or "Pretty", seems to have been used originally to characterise

the c1oseness of the feelings of affection in a nuclear family.(55)

Without pursuing further these excursions into etymology, we may note that in the cases mentioned an uncomplicated, immediate response is to be understood; one which is part of basic human experience. In terms of our

theory, this freshness and simplicity remains important when one is dealing with more sophisticated artifacts than feather headdresses, with religious rather than secular art, or with multi-dimensional rather than two-dimensional

art: but the reaction may be slower, and it will certainly be subject to cultural conditioning. Moreover, a clear distinction must be maintained between the quality (pleasure, etc.) which is observed, and the emotion which it may or may not engender. Japanese, with its emphasis on the predicate, and blurring of the subject, does not make the distinction; but Sanskrit rasa theory does: and only thus can we allow for situations where the observer recognises that an object is pleasurable, but is not moved by it, or declines to be moved by it.

Meanwhile, the shopworn epithet "beautiful", which we can safely identify as a European concept, describing certain qualities in Western art, may yet be applied informally, and objectively, to characterise a piece of Buddhist sculpture, for example, which exhibits the same or similar qualities; but it should be acknowledged that in using it we may be extending the meaning of the concept, and possibly creating further confusion about it. (Compare our

earlier remarks about "race".) Connoisseurship, on the other hand, is distinct from this, being related to the basic intuition of art for art's sake: but as an educated response it now consists partly in the ability to identify art which (in George Saintsbury's deadly phrase) is "good of its kind"; and so is no longer what Picasso had in mind. With him, we maintain that in principle the haecceitas of great art cannot be reduced to a formula.

Such a situation illustrates how Popper's "third world" impinges on the second; but the moral is not that we should abstain from talking about art, but rather that we should, like his Error Eliminators, seek ever better approximations in our attempts to describe and analyses the situation.

This means that, as applied to art, the tentative solutions (TS) are of two kinds: the works themselves, and theories of art. The latter may be judged according to canons of truth and progress. The former, on the other hand, are collectively subject to the constraints of cultural evolution, and they are amenable to both verbal and mathematical analysis: but individually they stand

apart from these things, in just the same way as the individual organism. This conclusion, however, is merely a consequence of our epistemological scheme: it applies as much to individual machines and individual ants, as to individual human beings and individual works of art; and it cannot be turned into a specious defence of freedom or free will.

In terms of Popper's theory art and music, like tool-making, have to be treated as exosomatic evolution.(56) The phrase sounds degrading at first, but one can get used to it. Moreover, it helps in the assimilation of physiognomic metaphors of the kind which are so frequently encountered in

social, political, religious and cosmological thought. Early in this essay we saw that the purely neutral concept of "frame" cannot easily be distinguished from the culturally conditioned idea of an enclosure, especially one which

demarcates the sacred from the profane. From this point of view, al1 art is potentially sacred. In one of his last essays, the late Mircea Eliade showed how the concept of a sacred space so often underlies traditional thinking about the house, the city and the cosmos: a space which is typically organised in particular directions. As he points out,

... everywhere we find the same fundamental conception of the necessity to live in an intelligible and meaningful world, and ... this conception emerges ultimately from the experience of a sacred space. Now one can ask in what sense such experiences of the sacred space of houses cities, and lands are still significant for the modern de-sacralized man. Certainly, we know that man never lived in the space conceived by mathe-maticians and physicists as being isotropic, that is space having the same properties in all directions. The space experienced by man is oriented,and thus anisotropic, for each dimension and direction has a specific value; for instance, along the vertical axis, "up" does not have the same value as "down"; along the horizontal axis, left and right may be differm-entiated in value. The question is whether the experience of oriented space, and other comparable experiences of intentionally structured spaces(for example, the different spaces of art and architecture) have something in common with the sacred space known by homo religiosus. (57)

Eliade gives apt examples; and we could elaborate his theme at length, by reference to Buddhist mandalas; city planning in East and West;

European, South Asian and East Asian systems of geomancy;(58)and so on. Here we can discuss it only in relation to the ideas which have already been intro-duced. Our definition of art in terms of an arbitrary "frame" was deliberately tailored to take account of the situation in twentieth-century art, art for "the modern de-sacralized man"; and from this point of view we can readily understand Eliade's final example, which concerns the refusal of New York Customs officials to admit that some of Brancusils sculptures were really works of art, rather than blocks of marble. It will be admitted, however, that most sculpture inhabits a frame which is mentally or physically sub-divided and oriented in complex ways (some of which may be fractal!): this provides re-assurance to the ordinary art-lover and to the religious believer, and it encourages the art critic to engage in cultural discourse of various kinds (including conventional art history). In that the space inhabited by a Buddhist sculpture is anisotropic, in Eliade's sense, we can at once see the necessity for special ways to conceptualise it; and I have suggested that

fractal geometry, with its flexible, naturalistic approach to dimensions, may for this purpose be the most practical method yet devised - even if it cannot answer all our questions. Certainly analysis of Buddhist sculpture

must take into account the intended orientation of the piece, both in relation to its surroundings, including associated other pieces, and in relation to the viewer.

More than this, both works of art and systems of thoughroccupy human space, both in their traditional conception and as members of Popper's "third worldn. Very often we find that they have a head, body, arms, legs and

even other organs. This is obvious in the case of Buddha images; but, as with

the body politic and the Body of Christ, more abstract structures such as the State or the Church can be thoughtof in these terms. They may-actually be visualised, like the frontispiece to Hobbes's Leviathan, or the monuments of

the devaraja cult in Java and Cambodia; or merely embodied (sic) in metaphor, as when we speak of the head of a firm, or the long arm of the law. Prof. John Hay has shown how Chinese calligraphy too has been and indeed should be thought of in physiological terms: he relates the language of Chinese art theory to terms and concepts used in traditional Chinese medicine, including qi (which,

following Dubs, he renders as "matter-energy"), and the relation of "inner" and."outer". Prof. Hay further alludes to Chinese landscape painting, and the traditional Chinese attitude to landscape, talk about which is permeated with

the same physiological imagery;-though in this case it is theriomorphic (the dragon and tiger) rather than anthropomorphic. I find suggestive his remark that "In figure painting.... it was clothes rather than flesh which proved the most suitable medium for representing patterns of energy", (59)since this can readily be applied to the description of sculptured clothes too, and raises the possibility of a new interpretation of the relation between drapery folds and the body beneath in Chinese Buddhist sculpture. In the Tang period, the theory of qi had not been fully developed; but figure painting certainly existed, and

physiological metaphors had been used at least since the time of Me He (early sixth century) to describe the ideals of the artist. Early Chinese anecdotes concerning Buddha images stress their radiance and their supernatural powers. (6O).It may be, therefore, that the increasing physicality of Chinese Buddha images from Tang times onwards reflects an attempt by the sculptors to supplement these qualities by appealing to non-Buddhist, native concepts of an inner store

and its outward manifestations. However, an explanation in terms of this last

contrast would also be compatible with the MahSy3na concept of the Tathygata-garbha.

Beyond this, the range of attitudes towards image-worship in early Buddhist China shows parallels with contemporary Christianity; and these attitudes, both superstitious and sceptical, seem to have persisted for many

centuries, not only in China but throughout the Buddhist world. (61) Since ancient times, in both East and West, it has been easy for educated people to scoff at idolatry, or to campaign actively against it. The Council of Trent, in the sixteenth century, tried to draw a distinction between the honour and veneration which may legitimately be shown to holy images, and the adoration,which is to be directd towards the person or persons whom they represent. This recommend-ation encapsulated the lessons of centuries of theological controversy; and, though it is less well documented, the early aniconic period of Buddhist art

in India suggests that a similar, though much less intense, debate occurred there. In Buddhism, however, there was no actual prohibition of images, despite the Buddhist doctrine of non-substantiality or not-self (anatman); and the

strength of popular devotiQn (bhakti) to the memory of the Buddha, together with the artistic and other tendencies of Indian religion, made the develop-ment of a Buddha image almost inevitable.(62)The earliest such images, from

Mathura and Gandfrara, belong to the first century A.D.; and happened to coincide with various new philosophical and religious teachings within Buddhism, teaching which we have come to call Mahayana: though the Buddha image is not a product of Mahayana, nor of the Bodhisattva cult.

In terms of our theory, the Buddha image therefore relates organ-ically to mankind in several ways. It may be explained functionally as occupying

a sacred space which is defined not only by its frame, but also by its effective dimension vis-a-vis the observer. It further constitutes an exosomatic extension for that observer, whether he be the carver, a Buddhist monk, a worshipper, a naive viewer, a connoisseur or a critic. The image type is also a "tentative solution" to the problem of sculptural representation of Buddhas, a temporary stage in the continuing evolution of art; and individually it may be judged both relatively (according to the varying criteria of different "classes of hearer", as the Lotus Sutra calls them), and absolutely (according to the intuition of Eve). In all these respects, the Buddha image scarcely differs

from Christian or any other sculpture (including those which are not prima facie religious): but the Buddha image may also be a bridge to the peculiar views of reality which are offered by Buddhist philosophy and practice.

In the same way, for Christians "Image-worship in the eighth century did mean a vivid thought of the great company of those who had passed into the unseen as still in effective solidarity with the Church on earth".(63) For Buddhists and for Christians, image-worship does not mean bowing down to sticks and stones, so much as to what they represent; and of course Buddha images are used in complicated ways as objects for meditation, as well as for

ritual. The evolutionary and analytic theory we have presented by no means precludes these uses; but to accommodate them, we have to move onto other epistemological levels. Thus, in so far as techniques of meditation have a

history, can be classified, (64) and are the work of human minds, they too should be subject to evolutionary criteria: but we need not assume that evolutionary theory can provide a complete explanation of them! The introduction of this

topic, however, would take us far beyond the epistemology of the--Buddha image itself.