The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c10.11

c10.11

The remaining three heads are less successful. The bearded head (fig. 35) is very sketchily drawn, with deep-set eyes, overhanging brows and long, oval face. It was intended to be seen three-quarter face and its left side was carelessly modelled. The top of the head and ears are missing. In the following example (fig. 36)—a female head with highly arched brows and slightly smiling lips—it is the right side of the head which was turned away from the spectator and is hence carelessly modelled. In contrast with these two heads, the next one (fig. 37) was all but full-face and there is little difference in the modelling of the two sides. This head and figs. 34 and 36 illustrate, though not as clearly as some other terracotta and stucco heads from Taxila,¹ the form of indoor head-dress in vogue among the Parthian nobility, namely, a chaplet (of Hellenistic origin) with the long hair dressed as a top-knot inside it. Both of these features—the top-knot and the chaplet—seem to have been recognized as symbols of aristocratic birth and this no doubt explains why from this time onwards images of the Buddha were habitually provided with such a top-knot, under the name of uṣṇīṣa.²