The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c13.s1.8

c13.s1.8

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.