The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c9.34

c9.34

valents. To the mallet of the one corresponds well enough the long sceptre of the other, with its end rounded in the form of a mace (pl. XVIII, 1). As for the beardless god of pl. XVII, 2, he, we are told, « holds in his left hand a lance, and in the other an object scarcely recognizable, perhaps a purse » : these are precisely the insignia of the corresponding person in pl. XVIII, 2. Last but not least, the women have the same pose, the same attributes, the same draperies, even the same headdress in the form of a « bushel », or « basket » : between them a quasi-identity asserts itself, and there would be no exaggeration in saying that, from the banks of the Indus to those of the Seine, it would have cheated even the eyes of the donors.