The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c13.s1: (a) The Sanghao-Nathu Group
The Buddhist Art of Gandhāra: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c13.s1
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(a) The Sanghao-Nathu Group
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The sculptures of the Mardān group described in the preceding chapter represent the main stream of Gandhāra art during its adolescence. Besides these there are other contemporary groups which, though of a more provincial character, nevertheless contributed materially to the development of that art. One such group was centred in the hilly country around Sanghao, Nathu, and Miyān Khān on the north-west border of Buner. Another is known to us chiefly from the reliefs of the well-known stūpa at Sikri some ten miles north of Shāhbāz-Garhī; others from miscellaneous sculptures whose provenance is often uncertain. These various groups came into being in different places and at different times, and each had its own traditions, its own style, its own technique. We must be careful, therefore, how we make use of particular features, whether stylistic, technical or iconographic, as criteria of date, since it is manifest that such features could seldom have made their appearance simultaneously in different groups.
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Of the minor groups named above, the Sanghao-Nathu group is represented by a variety of sculptures, some belonging to the adolescent stage, others to the periods of maturity or decline. Of the adolescent ones I have chosen four typical examples for illustration (figs. 69-72). The stone of which they are made is said to be greyish-white micaceous schist, but my information on this point needs verification. Each of the four slabs seems to have come from a different structure, though there is a close affinity in style and workmanship between figs. 69 and 70 on the one hand and figs. 71 and 72 on the other.
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Fig. 69, which is in the Bombay Museum, depicts the submission of the Nāga Apalāla. Though the workmanship is rough, the story is told simply and effectively—more effectively, I think, than in some of the later and more sophisticated versions. To the left, in the foreground, are the Nāga-rāja and his wife, emerging from the waters of a tank. Above them, among the rocks, is a dwarf-like yaksha, smiting the mountain with a vajra and making the earth tremble. On the right is the figure of the Buddha in a protective pose, and behind him the Vajrapāṇi, here clad in a monk’s robe like the Master himself, while above him, in the background, appear the head and shoulders of another monk. On the forehead of the Vajrapāṇi is a curious mark, which appears to be a third eye, suggesting an Indian origin. This Vajrapāṇi beside the Buddha is quite distinct from the yaksha engaged in smiting the mountain side. The fact that the latter has a vajra in his hand does not make a Vajrapāṇi of him. Primarily the vajra or thunderbolt was an attribute of Indra, as, from time immemorial, it had been of the Greek Zeus. But, as the weapon par excellence of irresistible force, it was put into the hands of other deities or superhuman beings, of Athene and Poseidon, for example, among the Greeks; of the Vajrapāṇi and of this earth-shaking yaksha among the Buddhists.
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A feature of the Sanghao-Nathu reliefs is the obvious difficulty which the artists experienced over the modelling of the eyes. The common practice, well illustrated in figs. 69 and 70, was to make the eye-balls unnaturally large and protruding, like those of people afflicted with exophthalmic goitre. But in some cases, as in the Buddha of fig. 71, the sculptor hardly attempted to carve the eye-balls at all. Doubtless this very amateurish use of the chisel was due to the same lack of technical experience as the wide-open staring eyes which characterized the Graeco-Śaka sculptures of an earlier date, but the resulting treatment of the eyes differed in the two cases and there is no reason to assume any direct connexion between them.
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Another notable feature of these reliefs, well exemplified in fig. 69, is the treatment of the drapery. Admittedly the workmanship is rough and perfunctory, and the standard is incomparably below that of the Partho-Hellenistic work of an older generation, but the artist does not content himself, except very rarely, with merely indicating the folds by a series of incised lines such as we have observed in some of the other groups. He models them boldly and not ungracefully, in such a way as to bring out their substance and depth or, in technical phraseology, their tri-dimensional effect.
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Fig. 70, representing the Worship of the Three Jewels, or, possibly, the First Sermon, is a very dull and uninspired composition compared with fig. 59. The design of the triratna and the grouping of the adoring monks exhibit none of the imagination or inventive effort visible in the Loriyān Tangai fragment. Indeed, the only feature in which this relief shows to advantage is the treatment of the monks’ robes, which, though rough and summary, shows a more realistic and correct sense for plastic form.
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Fig. 71 depicts Gautama with two Brāhman ascetics. The subject recalls fig. 66, but in this panel, in spite of obvious shortcomings, the scene is altogether more developed and expressive. Here the aged Brāhman, a spare, emaciated figure, is sitting at the side of a hut, which faces front instead of the usual sideways, and inside of which his companion is seated in deep thought, in an attitude which reminds us of Rodin’s ‘Le penseur’. Though the execution is rough and sketchy, I regard this figure as exceptionally telling. The other figures, on the right of the panel, are less successful. Gautama himself is facing front, without any apparent concern in the Brāhman by his side; and his attendant Vajrapāṇi, who here takes the form of a Brahmacārin, is hardly less detached. Apart from the general character of this relief there are a few minor details worth noting. One is the unusually youthful appearance of the Buddha, which would be wholly appropriate to him at the time when this particular episode took place. And, indeed, it is possible that the artist had this fact in mind. On the other hand, it is noteworthy that the Buddha is just as youthful on his death-bed in fig. 72, and it looks therefore as if this may have been a stock type of the Buddha in the particular atelier from which this relief emanated.
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Another point worth noting is that, in contrast with the Buddha of fig. 69, the Buddha here is devoid of his usual halo. It is the same in the Nirvāṇa scene of fig. 72, but in the latter the omission might conceivably be due to the awkwardness of a halo when the head is resting on a pillow. Here, no such explanation is possible and we can only infer that the artist responsible for these reliefs did not regard the halo as indispensable.
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Yet another small point is that the deva, if deva he is, at the right-hand top corner is provided with an uṣṇīṣa (or with a top-knot exactly resembling an uṣṇīṣa) on the crown of his head. I mention this detail only because a theory, quite unsubstantiated, has been advanced that figures with the uṣṇīṣa must be either the Buddha himself or a sort of spiritual double of the Buddha, which this adoring figure clearly is not.
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Finally, it should be observed that the Corinthian pilaster on the right of this panel has a flat shaft instead of the rounded one more familiar at this time, and that the face of the shaft is relieved with the roughly drawn figure of a monk. From remains unearthed in the city of Sirkap at Taxila we know that as far back as the reign of Azes II, that is, the beginning of the Christian era, the same stūpas were adorned with both types of Corinthian pilasters—the rounded and the flat, and there was no reason why one more than another of these types should subsequently have been preferred by the sculptors of Gandhāra. It is a fact, however, and a rather surprising one, that the rounded type is commonly found in the earlier reliefs, the flat one in the later. I say surprising, because a rounded shaft is so much more difficult to carve than a flat one. In the case of the Sanghao-Nathu group, however, the flat type seems to have been preferred from the outset, or at least as far back as we can trace the history of this group. Possibly it was to the influence of this group that the flat type subsequently owed its widespread popularity.
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The death of the Buddha (fig. 72) was one of the earliest and most familiar subjects of Gandhāra art. One version of it we have already discussed (fig. 68); others we shall discuss in later chapters (figs. 87, 127-9). In all of them the essential elements were well established by tradition and unalterable, namely, the Buddha stretched at full length on his couch, the Vajrapāṇi, the sorrowing monks, the devas, the śāla trees in the background, and frequently but not invariably the Malla chiefs. But in the treatment of the individual figures and their grouping there was plenty of scope for the imagination and skill of the artist. Thus, if we compare this relief from the Lower monastery at Nathu with fig. 68, we observe several significant differences. Here, the form of the Buddha is somewhat more rigid, though not so rigid and statuesque as in later versions; the Vajrapāṇi here is standing at the further side of the couch instead of at its head, with three devas (?) on his right, three monks on his left, while Ananda, who has collapsed in front of the couch, is being helped to his feet by a brother bhikshu at the head of the couch. In this relief, too, the Malla chiefs are omitted; and so, also, are the dryads of the śāla trees. Of the three figures on the right of the Vajrapāṇi, Brahmā is recognizable in the figure with flowing locks at the edge of the panel, and the one next to him is presumably Indra though there is nothing special by which to identify him. But what of the charming young figure between the latter and the Vajrapāṇi? His strange head-covering looks in the photo like a canopy of snake hoods, but I must leave it to someone else to examine the original and decide whether he is a Nāga-rāja or not. For other figures in this relief, the reader may consult Foucher, *A.G.-B.G.*, vol. 1, p. 565 and fig. 281.
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From what has been said above it will be apparent that there is something strangely anomalous about the art of this Sanghao-Nathu School. On the one hand, the workmanship, that is, the actual carving of the stone, is for the most part coarse and unskilful—so much so that one might conclude from it that the School had but recently come into being when these sculptures were executed. On the other hand, the technique of the relief-work, the modelling of individual figures and the handling of the group compositions—all demonstrate a stage of development far removed from the primitive. And the orthodox way in which the sacred legends are set forth also goes to show that the School already had well-established traditions behind it. Although, therefore, these sculptures happen to be the earliest examples of this group known to us, it is clear that they must have been preceded by many still earlier efforts going back to the early part of the first century A.D.
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All things considered, I incline to assign these panels to the latter part of the Adolescent Period, i.e. to the last quarter of the first century A.D. In the next chapter we shall encounter some further examples of the Sanghao-Nathu School, which illustrate its art in a more mature form (figs. 87-89 and 91).