The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c13.s1.10

c13.s1.10

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.