The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c12.10

c12.10

Closely linked in age and style with the foregoing are the two reliefs illustrated in figs. 54 and 55, the one depicting the ‘Interpretation of Māyā’s dream’, the other the ‘Seven Steps of the Infant Buddha’. The two panels came from the same monument in Swāt, where these two small but excellent photographs were taken by Mr Caddy sometime before the panels passed into the possession of the Guides. By the side of fig. 54, fig. 56 makes it all too clear that the first of the two panels has suffered from blacking and polishing before this later photo (fig. 56) was taken. In the same way fig. 57 shows how much the other panel had suffered from mutilation, particularly to the infant Buddha’s legs.