The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c13.s2.6

c13.s2.6

Compared with the preceding panel fig. 76 makes but a poor showing. It portrays the Bodhisattva in the act of receiving from the grass-cutter, Svastika, a bundle of grass wherewith to strew his seat beneath the bodhi tree. In point of composition the group is much the same as its neighbours; the Vajrapāṇi behind the Buddha is of a similar type to the one in fig. 75, and the celestial *devas* also resemble those in other panels though, as already noted, they are disposed more convincingly. But the workmanship here is decidedly inferior, particularly in the handling of the draperies. Whereas in figs. 74 and 75, for example, the form and substance of the drapery folds are modelled realistically in the stone, here the modelling has been scamped, and the folds, for the most part, merely sketched in with the point of the chisel. Notice, too, the faulty drawing of the Bodhisattva’s right hand and the perfunctory, wig-like treatment of the *deva*’s hair in the right-hand top corner, which calls to mind the decadent carving in some of the later Graeco-Śaka toilet-trays. In fairness to the sculptor of this relief, however, it should be added that the photograph of it reproduced in fig. 76 makes the workmanship appear worse than it really is.