Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c5: Chapter II. Early History of Sculpture in Eastern India

Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c5

Language: English

Chapter II. Early History of Sculpture in Eastern India

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The earliest specimens of sculpture, found in the eastern provinces of northern India, belong, as is to be expected, to the Mauryan period. Specimens earlier in date, may exist, but, either their early date has not been recognised or is still a matter of controversy.¹ The earliest specimens of Indian sculpture, recognised as such by a consensus of opinion among scholars, are the specimens of Mauryan art e.g. the caves at Barabar in the Gaya District and the inscribed pillars of Aśoka in the northern districts of the modern province of Bihar. The single pillar discovered in the excavations of Pāṭaliputra with certain other fragments, which also are undoubtedly Mauryan in date may be slightly earlier than Aśoka, but in the absence of any corroborative evidence it is not possible to pronounce any opinion on them. In spite of the long controversy about them, the Pāṭaliputra images or statues in the Indian Museum at Calcutta have generally been accepted as specimens of Mauryan art, though it has not been decided whether they are images of Yakshas or statues of emperors of the Śaiśunāka dynasty. It may be stated without hesitation that in spite of the inscriptions of a later date incised on their backs, they are fine specimens of sculpture, slightly later in date than the period of Aśoka. The principal characteristics of Mauryan sculpture are its boldness, its naturalism and its fine polish.

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¹ Such is the case with the statues discovered at Patna and now in the Indian Museum, Calcutta. (Anderson's Catalogue and Hand-book of the Archæological Collections in the Indian Museum, Part I, pp. 151-57). According to Mr. K. P. Jayaswal they belong to the Śaiśunāka period; circa 6th century B.C. (Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, Vol. V, pp. 88-106 and Vol. VI, pp. 40-50), while according to others they belong to a later date—Ibid., Vol. VI, pp. 474-89. Indian Antiquary, Vol. XLVIII, pp. 25-36.

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Much has been written on this subject and the indebtedness of Indian art of the Mauryan period to old Persian art seems to be well established, though it is still doubtful to what extent early Persian art and Indian art and sculpture are indebted to Greek art.² So far as is known, sculptures or objects of art, the dates of which can be or have been determined accurately, belonging to the pre-Mauryan period have not been discovered yet. The Patna statues may be cited as specimens of pre-Mauryan sculpture, but it is really impossible to judge the artistic value of these statues even if they are recognised to be specimens of pre-Mauryan sculpture since they are the only specimens, earlier in date, than Mauryan sculpture, and thus insufficient as a basis on which to frame any reliable conclusions.

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² The theory advanced by Sir John Marshall on this subject deserves serious attention. Cf. Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, pp. 620-21.

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The same difficulty exists, to some extent, in the case of Mauryan sculpture. But though the material, at our disposal, is not very plentiful we have more authoritative data, viz. the pillars and capitals of the inscribed monoliths, images or sculptures in the round, those crowning the capitals e.g. the lions of Sarnath, the bull of Rampurva, etc. We have some specimens of architecture also i.e. the pillar and the fragments discovered by Dr. Spooner at Pāṭaliputra. Mauryan art, specimens of which have come down to us whatever be its origin and the influences, which caused its evolution, is the earliest known school of art of the Eastern Provinces of India and more particularly of Magadha. This is a fact which has been recognised by almost all authorities on the subject. The specimens of the Mauryan period which have come down to us, though limited in number, impress on us the vigour and the extreme naturalism of the carving. There is very little idealism in it. Witness for example the lion on the inscribed Aśoka pillar from Rampurva which was discovered by R. B. D. R. Sahni. Unfortunately part of the head of this magnificent lion is lost and the lower part has become slightly decayed, on account of the very long immersion in water;¹ but even so the natural pose and some of its anatomical details are very striking. The specimen shows the delineation of the muscles of the leg very realistically. There is a certain amount of convention in the portrayal of the mane, yet from a distance, or even at a closer view, there is nothing in it, which could strike one as being unnatural.

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¹ Ann. Rep. Archl. Survey of India, 1907-08, pp. 181-88, pl. LXV-LXVIII.

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The other capital from Rampurva, though smaller in size, and not so well preserved, is the bull capital. It represents a bull statant in the prime of life. Though immersion in sub-soil water, for centuries, has almost removed all the wonderful polish for which the sculptures of this particular period are well known, this specimen is one of the best representations of a bull in India. Figures or images of bulls are very common in mediæval and modern sculpture in all the different schools of India, with the exception of that of the Gandhāra; because the bull is the vehicle of Śiva and an image of it whether statant or couchant must necessarily be present in a temple of that deity. It will be difficult to find throughout India the figure of a bull, so vigorous in outline and at the same time so faithful to nature as that discovered at Rampurva. Attention may also be drawn to the magnificent capital of the inscribed pillar discovered at Sarnath in 1905. This specimen, though found outside the eastern provinces proper, as has been already stated, is really a specimen of Magadhan Art.² The preservation of its wonderful polish is due to its having been buried for centuries in drier soil.

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² It has been demonstrated recently that the Magadhan art of the Mauryan period is an exotic art, and that the sculptors of Aśoka were really trained by Iranian artists. Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, pp. 620-23.

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It has now been generally recognised that this wonderful polish is one of the principal characteristics of all sculptures of the Mauryan period. In well preserved specimens this polish is so very fine that it reflects the image of the spectator and in some cases has deceived some antiquarians into a belief that the Mauryan sculptors coated the surface of stone with a preparation of molten glass or something allied to it, which, in Sanskrit, would be represented by the term vajralepa (adamantine plaster). Not only do we see this polish on pillars capitals and images or statues; but we find it also on the walls of the cave-temples, which were excavated during the reign of the Mauryan Emperors. All the caves on the Barabar and Nagarjuni Hills have their walls so well polished, that at first sight they look like walls of plate glass and reflect light so very effectively that at the proper moment, there is little necessity of having a torch or other artificial light to guide the footsteps of visitors. Some of these caves are unfinished and the unfinished portions of their walls prove that this polish was produced by the simple processes of grinding and rubbing without the application of any kind of chemicals or other substances.

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The same polish has also been observed on some of the rocks, on which the Rock Edicts of Aśoka have been inscribed. In each and every case, where this great Emperor caused his edicts to be engraved on the living rock, the mason fashioned out a sunken panel of the requisite size, inside which the edict was incised. Before the actual incision of the letters this panel was very highly polished and in some cases, where the rock surface has been under shelter, it has preserved its polish quite intact, rendering the preparation of impressions a somewhat difficult task. Such is the case with the rock Edict at Jaugada and with parts of the Dhauli Edict. The best specimen of early Mauryan art is the Dedarganj image, now in the Patna Museum. In naturalism, symmetry and expression, this specimen is much better than any other image or statue discovered anywhere in India.¹

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¹ Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, Vol. V, pp. 107-13, with two plates.

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The degeneration of sculpture and art in general in Eastern India during the two centuries immediately preceding the birth of Christ, is undoubted. During this period the growing scarcity of specimens shows the general decline in plastic art, side by side with want of patronage due to the general decline of the Magadhan Empire and the degeneration of the people of Magadha. The causes of this degeneration are not difficult to find. The troubles following the decline of the Mauryan power, the inroads of the Greeks and the Scythians, contributed very largely to the degeneration of art in the Eastern countries. The successors of Aśoka found it difficult to keep intact the fabric of the great Empire built up by the earlier emperors of the dynasty. The chief characteristics of the post-Mauryan art are the continuance of the principal motifs borrowed from old Persian art and the gradual disappearance of that wonderful polish, which differentiates the art of the early Maurya from that of later periods.

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The best examples of the art products of the post-Mauryan period are the great stone railing around the temple at Bodh Gaya and the series of early Cave Temples at Khaṇḍagiri and Udaygiri in the Puri District of Orissa. An earlier generation of antiquarians was inclined to assign the railing around the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya to the Mauryan period, but the late Dr. Theodore Bloch found this view to be incorrect from engraved inscriptions on a portion of the railing, which he discovered in the Brahmanical Monastery at Bodh Gaya.² To judge from the inscriptions incised on them, the caves in the Khaṇḍagiri and Udaygiri Hills, near Bhuvaneśvara, may be divided into two distinct groups carved at two different periods. The first group belongs to the post- Mauryan period and was excavated sometime earlier or later than the great inscription of King Khāravela, on the roof of the Hathigumpha. There is a good deal of controversy about the date of this inscription. While scholars like Prof. Lüders¹ and the late Dr. Fleet² have declared that there is no date in this inscription, certain other scholars think that it does contain a date which is the year 164 of the Mauryan Era. Mr. K. P. Jayaswal at first agreed with the latter view,³ but later on gave another interpretation to the passage in dispute.⁴ There is no doubt about the fact, however, that the inscription of Khāravela is later than the inscriptions of Aśoka and earlier than the group of the early Kushan inscriptions, which Bühler calls ‘inscriptions in the Kshatrapa characters’.⁵ The earlier group of the caves at Khaṇḍagiri and Udaygiri are the latest examples in India of the influence of early Persian art on Indian sculpture. In this group the best examples are the Queen’s Cave, called locally Rāṇī Nūr or Rāṇī Navara Gumphā, which is one of the biggest cave temples in India and the Ananta Cave. The former was, perhaps, the residence of the Jaina ascetics referred to in the closing lines of Khāravela’s inscription. It consisted of three wings, one in the centre and one on either side. It is two-storied and on both storeys, the doors and windows are flanked by slender columns with Persepolitan capitals adorned with lions, elephants, bulls as well as other mythical winged creatures. Their execution is very feeble in comparison with that of the lions, etc., carved on Aśoka’s capitals.⁶ None of these caves bear any signs of having borne any polish like the caves on the Barābar and Nāgārjuni Hills. Both storeys of the main wing of the Queen’s Cave bear series of basreliefs which probably represent scenes from the lives of the Jaina Hierarchs, called Tīrthaṃkaras, and belong to the same period as the four main gateways of the Great Stūpa at Sanchi. The posture of all men and animals in them betrays distinct signs of becoming more and more formal. There is a gap of an entire millennium between the dates of this earlier group of caves at Khaṇḍagiri and the later one, which was excavated sometime in the 9th or 10th century A. D.

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² This portion of the railing has now been replaced around the great temple at Bodh Gaya. Cf. Annual Report, Archæological Survey of India, Part II, 1908-09, pp. 139-58.

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¹ *Epigraphia Indica*, Vol. X, App. p. 160, No. 1345.

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² *Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society*, 1910, pp. 242-44.

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³ *Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society*, Vol. III, pp. 425-72.

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⁴ *Ibid.*, Vol. IV, pp. 364-404.

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⁵ *Epigraphia Indica*, Vol. VII, p. 175.

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⁶ Sir John Marshall distinguishes two different styles of carving in the upper and the lower storeys of the Rāṇī Nur Cave—*Cambridge History of India*, Vol. I, pp. 640-41.

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Before the post-Mauryan school of sculpture came to an end in India, a new school of sculpture arose in Afghanistan and the Western Punjab, which directly or indirectly influenced all classes and schools of sculpture of later date, throughout India. Though this art had no direct contact with the Eastern School of Mediæval Sculpture, its influence on the evolution of images or bas-reliefs, representing particular incidents of the life of the Buddha, was undoubtedly very great and a few words about it would not be out of place here. This new school of sculpture known as the Indo-Greek or Gandhāra School came into being in the last two centuries before the birth of Christ and has left numerous specimens of its production scattered over the Northwestern districts of India. Its influence was so very great that it has left an indelible impress on the plastic art even of that desert country between Afghanistan and China, once thickly populated as well as irrigated, which was included within the zone of influence of Indian civilisation at that date. The productions of this school of sculpture are mainly Buddhistic and portray scenes from the life of the Buddha or the Jātakas. The motifs and styles of its artists continued to guide the later sculptors during the twelve or thirteen centuries after its disappearance, i.e., up to the period of the Muhammadan conquest of Northern India and the consequent cessation of all artistic activity. The date of the most flourishing period of this school depends upon the date of Kāṇishka. The late Dr. V. A. Smith wrote "whenever the date of Kāṇishka, the celebrated king of Gandhāra, shall be determined, that of the best period of the Hellenistic sculpture will also be known. Many of them undoubtedly are contemporary with him, though some are earlier and others later. Without going into complicated antiquarian discussions, it may suffice to say here that none of the sculptures are later than 600 A. D., few, if any, later than 400 A. D. and that in all probability extremely few are earlier than the Christian Era."¹ This date of the Gandhāra School has not been universally accepted. The Peshawar relic casket, inside which some bones of the Buddha were found, proves definitely that the great Northern School of Gāndhāra had certainly declined in Kāṇishka's time. The stūpa at Peshawar was not erected by a private person but the great Scythian Emperor himself, and an Indian Greek was in charge of the work.² The principal characteristics of the Gandhāra sculptures are :—

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¹ A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, p. 99.

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² Annual Report of Archæological Survey of India, 1908-09, pls. XII-XIII.

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(1) They are entirely Buddhist. "Without exception all the sculptures come from Buddhist sites and were executed in the service of the Buddhist religion . . . . Moreover, the subjects treated are not only Buddhist, but purely Indian . . . . But however Greek may be the form, the personages and incidents are all Indian, and centre round the person of Buddha, whose image dominates the compositions."³

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³ A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, p. 99. Later discoveries have proved that purely Greek subjects were also executed by the Indo-Greek artists of Gandhāra, e.g., the image of Harpocrates and the silver plaque representing Dionysus discovered at Taxila—A Guide to Taxila, pls. I and XV. Similar figures are found from time to time in the North-Western districts of India. A golden image of this period is in the Indian Museum, cf. Journ. and Proc. A. S. B. (N. S.), Vol. VIII, 1912, pp. 283-86, pl. VII.

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(2) The creation of the image of Buddha, "Herein lies the most obvious, and at the same time, perhaps, the most important difference between the ancient schools of interior India, at Sāñchī, Bharhut or Bodh Gayā, and the school of Gandhāra, with the cognate branches at Mathurā and Amarāvatī, etc. . . . . The early schools of Indian art, as we have seen, were content to indicate his supposed presence by mere symbols, and did not presume to imagine his bodily likeness.¹

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¹ *A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, p. 99.*

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(3) The introduction of a new style in basrelief representing a large number of incidents from the life of Gautama Buddha. The Gandhāra artists not only represented the principal scenes from the life of the Master, *i.e.*, the birth, the enlightenment, the first sermon and the death, but also those of his previous births. This school of sculpture has been very minutely studied and largely illustrated. The standard authorities on Indian Buddhist iconography and more specially on the Gandhāra School of sculpture are the works of M. A. Foucher, whose well-known work on the subject "L'Art Græco-Bouddhique du Gandhāra,"² is the latest pronouncement on the subject. This work contains the illustrations and identification of almost all the scenes from the master's life or *Jātakas*, which have as yet been discovered.

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² Published in three parts, Paris.

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Specimens of the Gandhāra School of Art have been discovered for the most part in Afghanistan and Western Punjab. Very few of them have been found in the Eastern Punjab, while stray specimens have been discovered so far east as Mathurā. The Gandhāra School does not seem to have directly influenced the other schools of sculpture of India proper, which Dr. Smith called the schools of Interior India; though it did make its influence felt through another great school of Indian sculpture, the Mathurā School, which came into direct contact with Benares and Amarāvatī.

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The existence of an earlier school of Indian sculpture at Mathurā has been definitely proved by the discovery of a large number of sculptures and basreliefs in which the majority of the human figures wear a peculiar head dress which has become so familiar to us from the basreliefs of Bharhut and Sanchi.³ In addition to the specimens of the Mathurā School published by Dr. V. A. Smith,⁴ a large number were found by the author in the Lucknow Provincial Museum in 1908. The exact period at which this older school of sculpture of Mathurā underwent a modification, on account of the influence of the Gandhāra School, can also be definitely determined with the aid of inscribed sculptures. The great red sandstone Bodhisattva of Sārnāth was dedicated in the third year of the reign of Kanishka⁵ and the Bodhisattva discovered by Cunningham at Sahet Mahet⁶ in the Gonda District, which was dedicated by the same persons and made from the same material and in which the first line of the inscription containing the date is broken, were carved by artists of the older and earlier school of Indian sculpture of Mathurā. The same donors, the monks Bala and Pushyavuddhi, dedicated another image at Mathurā in the year 33, during the reign of Huvishka, in which the influence of the Gāndhāra School on the Mathurā School of Sculpture can be clearly discerned. Besides this, the occurrence of the acanthus leaf ornament in the dated Jain images discovered at Mathurā, and belonging to the first half of the first century of the Kushān Era or the Era of Kanishka, proves definitely that the influence of the Northern School of Gāndhāra had permeated into the Mathurā School at that period, viz., during the last quarter of the first or the first decades of the second century A. D.

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³ *Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, pp. 632-33.*

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⁴ *A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, pls. XXXII and XXXIII.*

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⁵ *Epigraphia Indica, Vol. VIII, pp. 176-79.*

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⁶ *Ibid., pp. 179-81; pl. 22.*

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Different theories were at one time prevalent about the date of the Kushān Era, viz., the era used in the inscriptions of Kanishka and his successors. These are:—

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(1) Prof. Oldenberg's old theory that the Kushān Era began with the accession of Kanishka in 78 A. D.

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(2) Dr. Fleet's theory that the Kushān Era began with the accession of Kanishka in 57 B. C.¹

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¹ Dr. Fleet's incomprehensible ideas about the initial year of the Kushān Era are scattered in a number of papers written between 1903 and the date of his death in 1920 in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.

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(3) The theory of Dr. D. R. Bhandarkar that Kanishka came to the throne in 278 A. D., propounded in 1896,² but which has since found only a solitary supporter in Dr. R. C. Majumdar.

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² Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. XX, p. 297.

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The first theory identifies the Kushān Era with the Śaka Era, while the second identifies it with the Vikrama Era. Dr. D. R. Bhandarkar tried to establish the theory that the Kushān Era is the Śaka Era with two centuries omitted.

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Some of the most important features of the Mathurā School of Sculpture are borrowed from the Gandhāra School as for example, the representation of the scenes of the life of the Buddha. As would be expected, the basreliefs of this class so far discovered at Mathurā are less numerous and less vigorous in execution than those from Gandhāra itself. The following events of the life of Buddha have so far been recognized at Mathurā:—(1) Birth, (2) Illumination, (3) First sermon, (4) Death, (5) Visit of Indra to Buddha, (6) Buddha thinking of leaving his home, (7) Buddha leaving his home, (8) The first bath, (9) Descent from the Heaven of the thirty-three gods, (10) The gift of the Jetavana, (11) the Taming of the mad elephant, (12) The presentation of alms bowls, and (13) the change of garments. The Mathurā sculptures also include representations of many of the Jātakas.

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The principal characteristics of this school of sculpture have already been dealt with by Dr. J. Ph. Vogel who analysed the subject historically and scientifically for the first time.³ Sculptures carved by the artists of Mathurā have been found over a very large area, that is to say, as far south as Sanchi, in the Bhopal State; at Patna and Rajgir in Bihar, in the east; and Sahet-Mahet in the United Provinces, in the north. By far the largest number of sculptures of this school have been found at Mathurā itself and the majority of them are Jain, Buddhist sculptures being less numerous.

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³ Ann. Rep. of the Archæological Survey of India, 1906-07, pp. 136-60; and 1909-10, pp. 63-79.

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Very few specimens of the Mathurā style of sculpture have been found in the North-Eastern districts of India. The oldest example is no doubt the top slab of the diamond-throne (Vajrāsana) under the Bodhi Tree at Bodh Gaya which, judging from a mutilated inscription on it, belongs to the first or second century A. D.¹ Two other specimens were found at Rajgir in the Patna District during the excavations of 1905-06. One of these is the pedestal of an image of the 1st century A. D.² and the other a fragment from the back slab of a large image with a small basrelief representing Buddha seated in a rocky cave. Below this basrelief there is a small inscription which reads in Kushān characters “Śākyamuni.”³ The material of both specimens is that variety of spotted red sandstone, often called Agra or Karri red-sandstone, in which the majority of the Mathurā sculptures have been carved. Another, a torso of a Bodhisattva of the same material and undoubtedly belonging to the same school, appears to have been found at Bodh Gaya in the latter part of the 19th century. It was purchased from the heirs of the late Mr. J. D. M. Beglar for the Indian Museum. The excavations of Pāṭaliputra have also yielded some Mathurā sculptures the most noteworthy of which is a fine torso of a Bodhisattva.⁴

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¹ Cunningham's Mahabodhi, pls. XII and XIII.

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² Annual Report of the Archæological Survey of India, 1905-06, pp. 105-06.

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³ Ibid.

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⁴ Annual Report of the Archæological Survey, Eastern Circle, 1913-14, p. 74.

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The long series of excavations carried out by the Archæological Survey at Sarnath, near Benares, have established definitely the existence of a separate school of sculpture at Benares during the reign of the early Gupta Emperors in Northern India. The majority of the sculptures discovered at Sarnath are Buddhist and supply ample materials for an exhaustive study. It would be out of place here to discuss all the principal features of this school and it will suffice to notice only such of them, as have a definite bearing on the Eastern School of Mediæval Sculpture. One of these is the transformation of basreliefs representing scenes from the life of Buddha. The other important characteristic is a thorough assimilation of the Indo-Greek characteristics of basreliefs as we find them in the Gāndhāra School and their reproduction in a new form of images. For while the Mathurā sculptures present a mere repetition of Greek motifs and ideas and a stereotyped form of execution we find in the Benares sculptures a complete transformation of those elements into something new which is essentially Indian in character. This new class of Indian basreliefs is at the same time totally different from the older basreliefs of Sanchi and Bharhut.

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There was also a school of sculpture at Mathurā, during the period of domination of Northern India by the emperors of the early Gupta dynasty, but it did not evince any signs of rejuvenation. The sculptures of this period are merely degenerate imitations of the earlier productions of the Kushān period and continue to decrease in number until the close of the early Gupta period, when the Mathurā School may be supposed to have come to a sudden termination. It is therefore unnecessary to discuss the sculptures of the later or early Gupta period of the Mathurā School in this connection.

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Excavations have been so fruitful at Sarnath that it is quite possible to trace a history of its sculptural art from the Mauryan period up to the 10th century A. D. Specimens excavated prove that the earlier sculptures of Sarnath belong to the same class as the earlier sculptures of Eastern India and that the Sarnath style suffered the same degeneration as befell the plastic art of the latter region on the decline of the Maurya Empire. During the period which followed the Mathurā School of Sculpture succeeded in imposing its sway, at least partly, on Benares as is amply proved by the discovery of several sculptures, specially images, carved in the red or yellowish sandstone, the favourite material of the Mathurā sculptors, which were brought and set up at Benares, i.e., at Sarnath. This is not all. The researches of the Archæological Department have provided incontestable epigraphical proof of images having been carved at Mathurā and exported to other distant places for dedication. A Bodhisattva image of the Kushān period unearthed at Śrāvastī¹ bears an inscription stating that the image was carved by a sculptor of Mathurā named Śivamitra and installed at the Jētavana of Śrāvastī.

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¹ Annual Report of the Archæological Survey of India, 1908-99, pp. 133-38.

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More important specimens of the Benares School belong to the early Gupta period, i.e., to the 4th and 5th centuries A. D. It inherits, along with other specimens of early Gupta carving, that peculiarity, viz., the representation of scenes from Hindu classical literature in basreliefs, in a manner similar to the Buddha-charitras or the Jātakas in sculptures of Buddhist origin. Sarnath, however, being a Buddhist stronghold, Hindu sculptures and basreliefs are in a minority. The most important specimens of this school are Buddhist and they fall into two main divisions: (I) Images, (II) Basreliefs.

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The first division includes images of Bodhisattvas, Buddhas, Dhyāni-Buddhas and other minor deities. Among these Buddhist images we come across, for the first time, images of a new class. These are single images which partake of the characteristics of a basrelief. They are images of the Master, but at the same time, they represent particular incidents in the life of the Master. In the older schools we are familiar with such incidents in regular basreliefs, while there are also images of the Buddha or of the various Bodhisattvas. So far as our knowledge goes, no image has been discovered in India, belonging to the earlier schools, which represents a particular incident in the life of Buddha. These images are really a transformation of the basreliefs. In the Gāndhāra and Mathurā Schools there is a tendency to represent Buddha as being larger in size comparatively than other human or divine beings. This tendency is also noticeable in some basreliefs of the Benares School. In the latter, this particular tendency transforms the main figure into an image and makes the specimen lose the general characteristics of a basrelief. The adjuncts necessary to represent a particular incident of the Master's life are then depicted either on the pedestal or the backslab of the image. The introduction of this new class of images is, therefore, one of the peculiar characteristics of the Gupta sculpture. Two examples of images of this sort may be cited. One is a large image found by Mr. Oertel in 1904-05, representing the illumination of Buddha. The Master is seated in the posture of touching the earth (*bhūmisparśa* or *sākshi-mudrā*) while the Earth-spirit, invoked by him as a witness, rushes up from the earth in front of the adamantine throne, on which the Bodhisattva is seated.¹ In this particular image, we have an image of Buddha in a particular *mudrā*, but along with the image we have certain other details denoting the particular event of the illumination of the Bodhisattva, which are depicted in regular bassi relievi of the older schools of sculpture. Another image of this particular type was discovered at the same spot. This represents the incident of the first turning of the wheel of Law (*dharmmachakra-pravarttana*) or "the first sermon at Benares." Here we find the Master seated, with his legs crossed, and his hands in that conventional posture, to which later Buddhism has given the name of *dharmmachakra-mudrā*. In front of the pedestal there is a small basrelief representing a wheel, standing on a solid cube in the centre, with the *Bhadra-Vargīya* five and two lay devotees.² Such images are more common in the later schools and specially in the Eastern School of Mediæval Sculpture.

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¹ Ibid., 1904-05, pl. XXVIII a.

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² A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, p. 170, pl. XXXVIII.

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The more important basreliefs discovered at Benares have been found in the form of stelæ. Some stelæ were discovered by earlier excavators, such as Major Kittoe and Sir Alexander Cunningham, but the majority of them were discovered during the recent excavations begun by Sir John Marshall and continued by other officers up to the present day. The finds of the older excavations were partly transferred to the Indian Museum at Calcutta and were partly kept in the Library of the Queen's College at Benares, whence they were taken to the Lucknow Museum. They were then retransferred to the Museum at Sarnath. The small collection of Sarnath sculptures in the Calcutta Museum is, however, a representative one. It contains images of Buddha, Bodhisattvas, other minor deities and a number of basreliefs; some of which still form the best specimens discovered in Sarnath. Among the stelæ in this collection the most important ones are Nos. S. 1, S. 2, S. 3, and S. 4. Of these, S. 1 is the largest and by far the most important one.³ Unfortunately its upper part was broken off before its discovery and does not seem to have been recovered afterwards. The lower part of a rectangular slab of stone was covered with a single panel and the upper part, which is more than three quarters of the entire area, was divided into two vertical rows of rectangular panels, each containing a basrelief. Out of the latter only four panels over the bigger one are still intact. The basrelief in the lower part is a very important one for the history of Indian plastic art. Here we find a number of scenes from the life of Buddha, which have been found among basreliefs of the Gāndhāra School only and very rarely in the older Indian Schools. This single panel represents five different incidents of the Master's life:—(1) Buddha's mother, Māyā, dreaming that a white elephant is entering her womb. The subject is common in the Gāndhāra School.¹ Among products of the earlier Indian Schools, this scene is to be found on the railing of the stūpa of Bharhut.² In later schools this subject has been portrayed on the railing of the Amarāvatī Stūpa.³ The representation of the birth of Buddha is common in products of all schools but Māyā's dream has been represented very rarely. (2) The birth of Buddha, which, being one of the principal incidents of the Master's life, is common to all schools with variations of details. (3) The bath of the Bodhisattva, representing the new born Bodhisattva standing on a low seat by the side of his mother. This subject is to be found in the Gāndhāra and Mathurā Schools only and does not seem to have been represented by the artists of any other school.⁴ (4) The presentation of the alms-bowl (?)⁵ and (5) the Mahā-bhinishkramaṇa or Buddha leaving his home on horseback, which is to be found in all earlier schools.⁶ In the Mathurā school, the representation of this scene has been found on a solitary specimen which is the pillar dedicated by Vādhapāla Dhanabhūti and which was so long supposed to have been preserved at the Aligarh Institute.⁷ In reality it belonged to Cunningham's personal collection and he presented it to the Indian Museum, Calcutta, the day after his retirement from the Archæological Department.

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³ Anderson, Catalogue and Handbook of the Archæological collections in the Indian Museum, Part II, pp. 4-7.

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¹ Foucher, *L'Art Greco-Bouddhique du Gandhara*, p. 295, fig. 149, and p. 313, fig. 160.

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² Cunningham, *Stupa of Bharhut*, pl. XXVIII.

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³ Anderson, *Catalogue and Handbook*, Part I, p. 196.

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⁴ Foucher, *L'Art Greco-Bouddhique*, p. 309, fig. 156.

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⁵ Ibid., p. 417; fig. 210.

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⁶ Ibid., p. 387, fig. 182.

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⁷ Lüders, *List of Brāhmī Inscriptions, Epigraphia Indica*, Vol. X, Appendix, p. 22, No. 125.

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The four compartments above this chamber contain:—(a) the illumination at Mahābodhi, (b) the first sermon at Benares, (c) the descent from the heaven of the thirty-three gods and (d) the miracle of Śrāvastī.⁸ No other stele discovered at Sarnath represents so many scenes of the life of the Master. S. 2⁹ represents, what M. Foucher calls the four principal incidents from the life of Buddha: (1) the birth, (2) the illumination, (3) the first sermon and (4) the death. S. 3 seems to have formed part of a long series of basreliefs perhaps doing duty as a door jamb or the side of a niche¹⁰ as we find in the Gāndhāra School.¹¹

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⁸ Anderson's *Catalogue and Handbook*, Part II, pp. 4-5; *Journal Asiatique*, Dixieme Series, Tome XIII, 1909, pp. 1-77.

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⁹ Anderson's *Catalogue and Handbook*, Part II, p. 5.

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¹⁰ Ibid., p. 7.

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¹¹ *L'Art Greco-Bouddhique*, p. 189, fig. 74.

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Specimens of sculpture of the early Gupta period have not been found in large numbers in the Eastern provinces. We find that in Bengal proper the specimens of sculpture belonging to the early Gupta period are very few in number. The splendid basreliefs from Chandimau in the Patna District, originally found at Rajaona in the Munger District,¹² which most probably came from a Saiva temple, and represent scenes from the Kirātārjunīyam, may be cited as some of the best examples of this period.¹ The standing Buddha image of copper found by the engineers of the East Indian Railway near Sultanganj Station in the Bhagalpur District² of Bihar and Orissa forms another example of early Gupta art. Some of the best images discovered in Eastern India have been found at Bodh Gaya or Mahābodhi in the Gaya District and during the excavations at Nālandā in the Patna District. At Bodh Gaya many of them are worshipped inside the great Saiva monastery, which contains the most important images in this holy place of Buddhism. In Bengal images of the Gupta period have been occasionally discovered. A splendid image of Buddha was discovered at Biharoil in the Rajshahi District. This image is remarkably identical in type with the Buddha images discovered at Sarnath and the material is also Chunar Sandstone. Had the findspot not been correctly noted, one may have supposed easily that this specimen was found at Sarnath instead of Rajshahi. The second specimen is a copper image of Vishnu discovered at Kumārpur in the Rajshahi District. Both of them are now preserved in the Varendra Research Society’s Museum, Rajshahi.³

Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c5: Chapter II. Early History of Sculpture in Eastern India

Chapter II. Early History of Sculpture in Eastern India

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