ABSTRACT
During the time when I was engaged in discovering, in procuring and in testing the general character of the literary monuments of Buddhism in Nepal, I was likewise employed in accumulating architectural and sculptural illustrations of the same creed in that country, where such things so abound that it is popularly said of it ‘there are more temples than houses, and more idols than human inhabitants’. I kept constantly at work for years two native artists, or Chitrakars as they call themselves, in copying whatever was forthcoming of architecture, of sculpture, or of picture[s] belonging to Buddhism, and as my artists were themselves of that creed, and were, moreover, superintended by a learned Pundit of the same faith, there was no danger of Brahmanical edifices or idols being taken for Saugata,1 whilst there was a certainty that all the numerous significant details would be accurately copied, whatever defects in point of taste these drawings might exhibit.
