The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c11.16

c11.16

The last of the drinking-scenes that I have chosen for illustration (fig. 51) is carved on a lion-footed pedestal of dark micaceous schist now in the Lahore Museum. The distinctive pose of the two women, with their exposed backs and buttocks, resembles that of the women on the toilet-trays, figs. 16 to 18, and leaves no room for doubt that the pedestal belongs to the same period. We should observe, however, that in this case the women have been easternized to the extent of being provided with anklets and cross-straps on their backs. Round his forehead the elder man wears an ornamental band or *taenia* (the younger man’s head is damaged).