The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c13.s2.12

c13.s2.12

The next piece, fig. 81, is another fragment of a frieze, enriched with pure Greek ornament. Although it shows no trace of Indianization I have included it here, because it comes from the same find-spot and is made of the same chloritic micaceous schist as the last two specimens, and because the ornament is of a peculiarly distinctive pattern. On the face of the frieze are two intertwined vine-stems forming a nodus herculeus, with four-petalled flowers in the spaces between; and above this, at the dividing line between frieze and cornice, is a band of the tongue-and-dart pattern surmounted by a narrower bead-and-reel moulding.