Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c14.28

c14.28

In the Autonomous Karakalpakia Republic of Khwaresm, one of the most impressive monuments has been found at Toprak Kala showing a palace with a "Hall of Kings" containing many groups of sculptures, some of them very well preserved, representing, according to Tolstov, the kings of ancient Khwaresm surrounded by their women and court dignitaries. The statues are made of unbaked clay and are painted; the faces are very realistic and are, undoubtedly portraits. In two niches in the "hall of kings" (lit. *Devakula*) were found big (almost double the natural size) statues of men in sitting posture with three to five other statues of men, women and children standing around them. In the centre of the palace is the "alabaster hall", not far from two other festival halls, with walls covered with moulded and carved alabaster. Near this were found the "hall of victory" whose walls were adorned with sculptural representations of sitting kings and portrayals of 'Goddesses of Victory', and the "hall of Warriors" with images of the heroes of Khwaresm in coats of iron scale mail with reed shields. In addition to the sculptures of considerable artistic and historical value, there are pictures of monumental character, with ornamental and figurative decorations, veritable genre pictures, women gathering grapes and peaches into their aprons, musicians, tigers, horses, birds, etc. These wall paintings were made with mineral paints on clay plastering. This part of Khwaresm was under the rule of Kanishka in the 1st cent. A. D. and many fortresses were built here for Kushāṇa garrison which kept watch over the northern borders of the kingdom. In one of such buildings at the frontier fortress of Gyaur-Kala in a big square hall were found the remains of wall paintings. Each wall having a niche in the middle and ceiling supported by columns with excellently profiled stone-bases. This architectural feature at once recalls the similar stone pillar-bases (*kumbhaka*), a number of which were found in the Huvishka monastery at Mathura and are now preserved in the Museum there (M. M. P 21—P 53). Near this hall was found a sculpture giving firm links with Mathura art. It is a clay sculpture of man's head, somewhat bigger than natural size, being one of the best specimens of portrait sculpture from Khwaresm showing a young man wearing a peaked hat known as *Tigra-khauda*, which was popular amongst the Scythians and of which half a dozen specimens have been found at Mathura. This art belonged to the Tochari, an ancient people who first lived along the Oxus and subsequently moved in to Bactria, overthrowing the Macedonian rule there in the 2nd cent. B. C. They formed a kingdom on the basis of which Bactria came to be known as Tocharistan, i. e. the kingdom of the Tushāras or the Kushāṇas.