The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c12.23

c12.23

The companion panel, fig. 67, shows a precisely similar Buddha seated on his grass-strewn throne beneath a canopy of leaves. He is in the Earth-touching attitude (bhūmi-sparśa-mudrā). On his left is Māra, sword in hand, being held in check by Indra; on his right, one of Māra’s warriors, similarly held by Brahmā. In front of the throne are two more fallen warriors, and above, two pairs of angels bringing offerings to the Buddha. The figure of Brahmā resembles the youthful Brahmā in fig. 58 and bears a striking likeness to the Vajrapāṇi in fig. 66, but is not wearing the short Greek chiton which distinguished the Vajrapāṇi figures at this period. His long-sleeved coat seems to be of the same pattern as that worn by Indra. In our examination of these panels we must not forget that at the time they were executed Gandhāra Buddhist sculpture was still in the making, and we must not be surprised to find occasional anomalies and inconsistencies. For example, in fig. 66 the artist did not stop to ask himself whether it was before or after his Enlightenment that the Buddha visited the hermit. Whatever the occasion, it was enough for him to repeat the accepted type of the Teacher, complete with ūrṇā, uṣṇīṣa and halo. Similarly, in regard to 67, it is fruitless to argue that the tree canopying the Buddha ought to be a pipal, or that Indra is wearing the wrong sort of head-dress. In the eyes of the artist the *śāla* tree, invariably present in the familiar Nirvāṇa scenes, was the tree *par excellence* associated with the Buddha and he used this tree as a convenient cliché, whether he was telling the story of the Buddha’s Enlightenment or his Death, or of his meetings with the hermit or the grass-cutter. As to Indra’s dress the artist has evidently indulged his imagination in clothing the god in the local kind of pyjama-like trousers. For his head-dress there is some authority, since the lower part of it at least is paralleled in the Indra of fig. 84. But we must not be too punctilious about such details. After all, artists who could make edifying pictures for the Buddhists out of Graeco-Parthian drinking-parties were not likely to bother their heads overmuch about the difference between a *ficus religiosa* and a *shorea robusta* tree or about the particular fashion in toques favoured by Indra.