The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c11.3

c11.3

The artists of the Early Indian School in Mālwā who were commissioned to carve the gateways of the Great Stūpa at Sāñchī, did not hesitate to include among their reliefs scenes of a sensuous and erotic character which were flagrantly opposed to the first principles of Buddhist teaching. With such a well-established precedent to guide them, it is not surprising that, after the revival of Hellenism under the Parthians, the sculptors of Gandhāra followed a like course. At that time a favourite theme of Graeco-Parthian secular art was the drinking-scene, and incongruous as it may seem, this was one of the earliest themes to be adopted for the decoration of Buddhist stūpas. At the outset such themes were incorporated, just as they were and without any modification, among the stūpa-reliefs, though no doubt appropriate labels, based on one or other of the life-stories of the Buddha, were readily invented for them. But it was evidently not long before doubts began to arise as to the propriety of these drinking-scenes on the walls of sacred edifices, and so we find the sculptors giving them a more sober and holier air by putting lotuses instead of wine-cups in the hands of the revellers. The change was a simple and effective one, but it is worth remarking that the drinking-scene was much too popular to be so easily suppressed or camouflaged. We find it recurring time and again in later reliefs of the Gandhāra School.