The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c10.3

c10.3

The Śakas and Parthians were alike in being philhellenes, admirers of Greek institutions and of Greek material culture. But the Śakas in the North-West had the misfortune of being cut off by the Parthian Empire from intercourse with the centres of living Hellenism in Western Asia, and in their isolation were unable to sustain the relatively high quality of the art which they had inherited from their Greek predecessors. The Parthians, on the other hand, not only had vast numbers of Asiatic Greeks within the borders of their own Empire, but were able to enjoy at least in times of peace both commercial and cultural contacts with the Graeco-Roman world. Thanks to this, Hellenistic art, as the Parthians knew it in the first century of our era, was still a living and progressive art, far superior to the lifeless and decadent kind of art then in vogue among the Śakas. Parthian art was in fact part and parcel of the Hellenistic art then prevailing in the West of Asia. Of this the Parthian remains at Taxila have furnished many proofs, including objects of stone, terracotta, metal, gold and silver jewellery, silver and bronze vessels, engraved gems and seals. Many of the smaller articles may have been imported from the West, but others were undoubtedly made on the spot. Of the former I shall content myself with giving three examples, figures 29, 30 and 31. The first of these is a head of Dionysus or Silenus in silver repoussé (fig. 29). The head of the god is bald on top and wreathed with a grape-vine. His ears are pointed. In his right hand he holds a two-handled wine-cup (kantharos). Behind his head passes the curved staff (thyrsos), with a bell suspended at its end. The relief once stood on a small stand, which was found separately. It closely resembles the handle of a kylix and was probably made for that purpose. The relief-work is very deep (1.35 in.) and the style and workmanship first-class. The kantharos is of a type which was in vogue about 300 B.C., and it is possible that the relief was an antique of that date. On the other hand, it may be a copy of earlier work. In favour of the former hypothesis is the fact that among the jewellery with which it was found was a gold and lapis-lazuli finger-ring of an earlier period, though not so early as 300 B.C.