The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c12.21

c12.21

From another stūpa of slightly later date come the two reliefs 66 and 67, each about 15 in. high and adorned with the same running pattern along its lower edge. Fig. 66 depicts the Buddha visiting a Brāhman ascetic in his hut; fig. 67 the attack of Māra. In the former panel the Buddha accompanied by his Vajrapāṇi, is standing at the entrance to the hut, within which the hermit is seated on his rolled-up mat. The Buddha here is almost an exact replica of the Buddha in fig. 61, with the same moustache, the same wide-open eyes, the same over-sized uṣṇīṣa, the same rimmed halo, and the same monk’s dress, the only slight difference being that his outer robe (the Greek himation) is draped less stiffly over his left arm. The Vajrapāṇi, too, is wearing the same short tunic with the same scalloped border as in the other relief, but in this panel he is no longer a bearded man but a young Brahmacārin with the characteristic locks of the Brahmā in fig. 58. As to the Brāhman ascetic, the modelling of his features is rather more sensitive than that of the other figures, and we are reminded that the motif of a Brāhman ascetic seated at the entrance of his hut was sufficiently topical in the first century to be engraved on a copper seal as a canting badge of a certain Brahmadatta.¹ It may be, therefore, that the sculptor of this panel was more at home with this particular figure than with the others.