The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c11.12

c11.12

Linked with the foregoing relief are two triangular panels made, like it, of greenish chloritic stone and carved in precisely the same style with winged Tritons of the traditional Hellenistic type. One of these panels (fig. 48) is in the British Museum, the other in the Peshāwar Museum, to which it was presented by the Church Missionary Society. That all three pieces belonged to the same monument can hardly be doubted; that they came from the hand of the same sculptor seems from their technique and style more than probable. The position occupied by the two triangular panels was no doubt under a raking cornice at the side of the steps leading up to a small stūpa-base. Note that, in fig. 48, the hair of the Triton is treated in exactly the same way as in the preceding relief, with a tufted V-shaped device over the forehead and long tresses behind falling down the back of the neck. Note also the same high cheek-bones, the same shaped nose and the same highly arched eye-brow.