History of Indian and Indonesian Art c8.s2.99

c8.s2.99

The exact date at which the type with curly hair appears is uncertain; Sahni⁸, restricts it to the Gupta and subsequent periods, but it certainly appears, both in Gandhāra and Mathurā before the end of the third and probably before the end of the second century. The source of the type is probably to be found in the tradition which first appears in the *Nidānakathā* to the effect that when the Bodhisattva shore his locks, becoming a hermit, his hair “was reduced to two inches in length, and curling from the right, lay close to his head, and so remained as long as he lived”¹. The spiral form of the early Kuṣāna *uṣṇīṣa* must have a like meaning, the later type merely covering the whole head with short curls in place of the original single lock. This later type becomes the universal rule, alike in India and the Far East, only one figure with shaven head (the Māṅkuwār image fig. 62) being known of early Gupta date.