Studies in Indian Art c12.s12.2

c12.s12.2

The question of the subjects represented by these two heads is also of some significance. The head in the Budapest Museum seems to depict a secular figure, probably a portrait figure of an Indo-Scythian personage or dignitary of high rank whose foreign origin is emphatically conveyed by means of the gorgeous cap fitting it. This face no doubt conforms more to a standardised style matured during the Kushāṇa period so frequently seen on the male figures from Mathurā. The same thing could also be said with regard to the two portrait heads bearing monograms, viz., Nāyasa (No. 1252) and Lavaṇa (No. 1566) now in the Mathura Museum, illustrated in Dr. Vogel's *La Sculpture de Mathura* (Pl. IV, figs. a-b and c-d). The artists even while executing portraits from life, as undoubtedly they did in the Kushāṇa period, unconsciously succumbed to conventionalised types.