Studies in Indian Art c12.s1.4

c12.s1.4

But the great age of the Kushāṇas, though veritably the golden age for the Mathura School of sculpture, does by no means represent its beginning. They were not novices in the art of stone-cutting who fashioned the Katra Bodhisattva (Mathura Museum, A 1), portraits of Wema, Kanishka and Chashtana and a vast gallery of most beautiful and perfectly carved railing pillars with figures of Yakṣiṇīs and Vṛkṣakās engraved on one side and Jātaka and life-scenes of the Buddha on the other. The traditions of the Mathura School were already of respectable antiquity when the revival of art took place under the Tigra-khaudas. The early Indian school of Sanchi, Bharhut and Bodh-Gayā had an important outpost at Mathura, where remarkable parallels of the Yakṣīs and Vṛkṣakās, dwarfs and fantastic animals, toraṇas and railings were being constantly wrought in considerable numbers. Dr. Coomaraswamy remarks that ‘the school of Mathura is more nearly related to Bharhut than to Sanchi, and is represented by some fragmentary sculptures which must go back to the middle of the second century B.C.’. It is proposed in this article to give an account of the pre-Kushāṇa specimens found at Mathura and now preserved in the local Archæological Museum, and we shall naturally devote our attention to the elucidation of certain points connected with the famous group of the colossal Yakṣa images which are said to be the most conspicuous specimens of the old national and indigenous school of art in India.