The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c13.s1.4

c13.s1.4

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.