The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c11.5

c11.5

Now let us go on to the next relief (fig. 41), which is in the British Museum. It is labelled ‘Presentation of the bride to Siddhārtha’, and that may well have been the label attached to it by the sculptor for the edification of the Buddhists. But, whatever the label, the scene portrayed is essentially the same as the drinking-scene of the previous panel, and the style, too, is identical. Indeed, so similar are the figures and faces of the men and women, their dress, ornaments, etc., even down to the scalloped borders of the men’s tunics, that it is virtually certain they must have come from the same atelier. The only material difference between them is that in this relief two of the men are carrying bunches of lotuses in their hands and the three women nothing at all. What the men at the right and left ends have in their hands it is difficult to say, owing to mutilation of the stone. That at the left end looks suspiciously like a drinking vessel, but perhaps it is no more than a silver bowl with some ‘wedding-cake’ in it! But however this may be, it is clear that this slab marks a very early effort on the part of the Buddhists to give a religious complexion to a very mundane subject. Like the majority of sculptures of this period, the relief is made of chloritic mica-schist.