Much the same story of Buddhist influence is told by Chinese art, especially painting and sculpture.  Here too Taoism is by no means excluded:  it may be said to represent the artistic side of the Chinese mind, as Confucianism represents the political.  But it is impossible to mistake the significance of chronology.  As soon as Buddhism was well established in China, art entered on a new phase which culminated in the masterpieces of the T’ang and Sung.[587] Buddhism did not introduce painting into China or even perfect a rudimentary art.  The celebrated roll of Ku K’ai-chih[588] shows no trace of Indian influence and presupposes a long artistic tradition.  But Mahayanist Buddhism brought across Central Asia new shapes and motives.  Some of its imports were of doubtful artistic value, such as figures with many limbs and eyes, but with them came ideas which enriched Chinese art with new dramatic power, passion and solemnity.  Taoism dealt with other worlds but they were gardens of the Hesperides, inhabited by immortal wizards and fairy queens, not those disquieting regions where the soul receives the reward of its deeds.  But now the art of Central Asia showed Chinese painters something new; saints preaching the law with a gesture of authority and deities of infinite compassion inviting suppliants to approach their thrones.  And with them came the dramatic story of Gotama’s life and all the legends of the Jatakas.

This clearly is not Taoism, but when the era of great art and literature begins, any distinction between the two creeds, except for theological purposes, becomes artificial, for Taoism borrowed many externals of Buddhism, and Buddhism, while not abandoning its austere and emaciated saints, also accepted the Taoist ideal of the careless wandering hermit, friend of mountain pines and deer.  Wei Hsieh[589] who lived under the Chin dynasty, when the strength of Buddhism was beginning to be felt, is considered by Chinese critics as the earliest of the great painters and is said to have excelled in both Buddhist and Taoist subjects.  The same may be said of the most eminent names, such as Ku K’ai-chih and Wu Tao-tzu,[590] and we may also remember that Italian artists painted the birth of Venus and the origin of the milky way as well as Annunciations and Assumptions, without any hint that one incident was less true than another.  Buddhism not only provided subjects like the death of the Buddha and Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, which hold in Chinese art the same place as the Crucifixion and the Madonna in Europe, and generation after generation have stimulated the noblest efforts of the best painters.  It also offered a creed and ideals suited to the artistic temperament:  peace and beauty reigned in its monasteries:  its doctrine that life is one and continuous is reflected in that love of nature, that sympathetic understanding of plants and animals, that intimate union of sentiment with landscape which marks the best Chinese pictures.