The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c11.14

c11.14

Fig. 49 is in the Musée Guimet in Paris. The scene on it comprises five figures, namely, an elderly couple, a younger couple, and a small child, presumably a family group of three generations. The older man is holding a wine-bowl in his hands; the woman by his side carries an amphora in her left arm, while with her right hand she holds out a bunch of grapes to the child. The younger man is playing on what appears to be a tambourine, and keeping time with his left foot. His wife, beside him, is playing on a two-stringed mandoline. The older man wears a himation only, falling from the left shoulder and leaving the body bare. The younger one has a short, sleeved tunic tied with a girdle round the hips. The dress of the women consists of a long, sleeved chiton reaching from the neck to the feet, and over it a himation draped from the left shoulder and across the legs. The wine-bowl held by the elder man is distinguished by a scalloped turn-over rim and two vertical handles. The treatment of the men's hair in small, well-defined but rather rough masses is noteworthy. It calls to mind the hair of the two figures on a triangular slab of chloritic schist in the Calcutta Museum, which depicts a Gigantomachia and is of about the same age as the relief from Haḍḍa (cf. Foucher, A.G.-B.G. vol. I, p. 245, fig. 125). It should also be remarked that none of the figures, on this or the following panel, from Haḍḍa is wearing a garland.