Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c6.22

c6.22

While extension can be judged by the number of specimens found in any particular district, the date of the products of any particular school can only be judged from two different bases:—(a) inscriptions and (b) other criteria established by means of extraneous corroborative evidence. Up to the present time, no other school of sculpture in India, except the Mathurā School, can claim to have produced even a fair number of specimens, which are dated. In other schools, for example, the northern School of Gāndhāra, the date of sculptures has been judged on the basis of their proximity to pure Hellenic sculpture. In other schools, so far as present knowledge goes, no attempt seems to have been made to judge the dates of individual specimens. In the Eastern School of Bengal and Bihar about seventy per cent. of the known specimens bear inscriptions of some sort, which are a sure guide for the indication of their approximate date. These inscriptions fall into three different classes :—