Art of India. Vincent Arthur Smith

final incident of the Buddha walking on the waters is told and the sequent visit to Rajagriha, King Bimbisara being depicted as arriving at the gate of the city in his two-horsed chariot. In the top panels of the pillars is the bodhi tree Shrine already discussed.

      Surveying the work of the Early Period (second century B. C. E.-early first century C. E.) one recognizes certain distinctive common elements: the absence of the Buddha figure; its replacement by certain simple symbols; and the popular quality of the work, the living oral tradition of which is indicated by the predominance of Jataka scenes even over the scriptural; the naive technique which treats each story as a pictorial entity contained in a single panel or medallion, the figures of the protagonist being repeated twice and three times according to the demand of the drama to be unfolded. At Sanchi, while the method of exposition and the bulk of the decorative motives are the same as at Bharhut, the canonical is very definitely to the fore, and the technique has advanced considerably. At Mathura and many other sites in India sculptures have been found which belong to the Early Period. With regard to these it is advisable to take Bharhut and Sanchi as types of sub-periods and so arrive at the classification Early Period I and Early Period II.