The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c10.17

c10.17

It remains to add that the stucco of which all these figures were made is composed of lime mixed freely with small broken stone (bajri) and other foreign matter. It is coarser than the stucco used on the later monuments of the fourth and fifth centuries; nor is there any trace of the fine finishing coat which was used to embellish some of the later stuccos. At Taxila there is no evidence of stucco of any kind having been used for figural work before the Parthian period. I purposely use the word ‘figural’, because there is one small stūpa in Sirkap dating from pre-Parthian times which is decorated with a design of acanthus foliage worked out in a thick coat of stucco, This is the stūpa brought to light in Court a of Block E, and described and illustrated in Taxila, vol. I, p. 158 and vol. III, pls. 27 a and 120 A. From the level at which it stood, this stūpa would appear to have been contemporary with the small Śaka stūpas at the Dharmarājikā referable to the latter part of the first century B.C.; but in this case it is more than likely that the stucco decoration was added after the Parthian occupation of Taxila, but before the great earthquake of *circa* A.D. 30, when the stūpa was lifted bodily from its base and turned almost upside down before being buried in the ruins of the surrounding buildings.