The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c14: Chapter 8. Period of Maturity
The Buddhist Art of Gandhāra: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c14
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Chapter 8. Period of Maturity
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What is meant by ‘maturity’ in art? The question is one on which views may easily differ. They do so in regard to the art of most countries, ancient and modern; and in the case of Gandhāra art the question is complicated by the fact that the two widely differing types of art, the Indian and the Hellenistic, out of the union of which it was evolved, had long since passed their zenith when it came into being. In consequence of this it happens that some of the earliest reliefs carved for the Buddhists in Gandhāra are, from a plastic and technical point of view, also some of the most perfect. Consider, for example, the group of water deities in fig. 47. There is no later sculpture that can boast of finer workmanship than this; and at one time, indeed, it was regarded as the high-water mark of the Gandhāra School. But the truth is that it is not an example of Gandhāra art at all. Notwithstanding that it was produced on the soil of Gandhāra and carved out of a local stone, it was essentially a work of provincial Greek art, and might properly find a place in any history of that art. This and other reliefs like it are admittedly of great value for the light they shed on the beginnings of Gandhāra art, but only on its beginnings. Gandhāra art is, first and foremost, a Buddhist art, and must be judged by its success in fulfilling its purpose as a sacred art, designed to illustrate the history and legends of the Buddhist faith and to glorify the memory of its Founder. It reached its maturity only when it had evolved a distinctive style and character of its own, and when its sculptors had developed their technical skill and powers of imagination sufficiently to give worthy expression to the traditions and ideals of Buddhism. But the dividing line between adolescence and maturity is, at best, a very hazy one, and arguments might easily be found for shifting it further back or further forward than I have done. Take, for instance, figs. 54 and 55, which come from the same monument and doubtless from the same atelier. Both these reliefs fulfil the requirements of mature art. In both, the workmanship is highly refined and, though they manifestly owe much to Hellenistic teaching, they are already steeped in the spirit of Buddhism and able to tell their stories in a simple, dignified language that well becomes a sacred art. But these reliefs are quite exceptional. They are the work of a school of which we have no other contemporary examples. Had I included them in the present chapter, I should logically have felt constrained to include in it a large number of reliefs of a later date which fall far short of the standard of maturity.
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A further complication arises from the fact that the Gandhara School comprised various groups of ateliers, located in different parts of the country, each with its own traditions and its own individual style. Manifestly these different groups are not likely to have developed on precisely the same lines or at the same rate of progress, and we must be careful, therefore, not to assume that what was true of sculpture in, say, the Chārsada area, was true also of the sculpture of Swāt or Southern Afghānistān. And while making allowance for these local distinctions, we must also take account of the tendency, which is as marked in the case of Gandhara art as in that of all other sacred art, to perpetuate and even to resuscitate archaic features. Such conservatism may add not a little to the dignity and stability of art, but it has its drawbacks as well as its advantages. Under its influence sculpture is apt to lose its freshness and vitality, to become unimaginative, dull and stereotyped, its beauty giving place to prettiness and its originality to stylishness. This was the fate that overtook Gandhara sculpture towards the middle of the second century A.D.—only a few decades after reaching maturity—and the effects of it can be seen in the vast mass of uninspired work turned out in Gandhara during the latter half of that century.
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But it would be a mistake to suppose that religious conservatism was the only or, indeed, the chief cause of the nerveless, conventional character of most Gandhara art dating from this period. Another and perhaps more potent cause was the rapidly growing demand for this sculpture which followed the expansion of Buddhism under Kushān patronage and the ever increasing number of stūpas and chapels which then came into being. In such conditions, when quantity is more important than quality, art of any kind, and particularly religious art, is bound to become repetitive and mechanical. Hence it is that in the later work of this mature period we miss almost entirely the signs of individual genius and of that fresh spontaneous artistry that charmed us in the earlier.
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And here we must take note of another significant change which happened about this time and which furnishes an instructive landmark in the history of the School. I refer to the widespread adoption of another variety of stone called phyllite in place of the several schists which had previously been in use. Up to the present I have found no example of phyllite among the sculptures of the early and adolescent periods; none, that is to say, that can be referred to an earlier date than the second century A.D. Phyllite appears to have come into use in the opening years of that century and for a few decades to have been employed side by side with other varieties of schists, but thereafter it almost completely ousted every other kind of stone. And, parenthetically, let me make it clear that I am not a geologist and that in the matter of these stones I rely entirely on the identifications furnished by geological experts, who sometimes differ in the matter of nomenclature. It is for this reason that, except in the case of the sculptures from Taxila, I have refrained from specifying the particular variety of stone used, since I deemed it all-important at this stage to avoid any possibility of confusion in this matter. As far as the Taxila collection is concerned, the identification of the stones was done by an eminent specialist of the old Geological Survey of India, Dr Cotter, and I suggest that his nomenclature might well be adopted in any further work that may be done in this field. Notwithstanding that Taxila lies outside the limits of Gandhāra proper, the sculptures recovered there are more representative of the Gandhāra School as a whole than those from any other known site, and the information they supply as to the different kinds of stone in use at different periods is specially enlightening. Of the 199 sculptures examined by Dr Cotter and described by Mr Hargreaves in the second volume of my Taxila, 149 are of phyllite, sixteen of chloritized micaceous schist, eighteen of pale grey micaceous schist, two of talcose chloritic schist, two of hornblende-schist, three of quartz-schist, three of pot-stone (impure talc or steatite), two of slate, three of local Tarakī sandstone, one of red Mathurā sandstone.
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For what reason phyllite became so popular can only be surmised. From the sculptor's point of view phyllite has no advantage over the other stones. On the contrary, it is more coarsely grained and more fissile, and thus more liable to fracture under the blows of chisel and mallet. It may be inferred, then, that phyllite owed its popularity simply to the fact that it could be obtained more easily and in greater quantities than any of the other stones mentioned above; for the question of supply must have been of primary importance at a time when so many new monasteries and stūpas were being erected. This is a matter on which some further light may be thrown when we have discovered the whereabouts of the quarries from which these various stones were obtained. Meanwhile, the conjecture may be hazarded that the widespread adoption of phyllite was closely connected with the active support given by the Kushān emperor Kanishka to the Buddhist Church. For assuming that there was a shortage, as there may well have been, of suitable stone for the new building programme, the emperor would naturally have made it his business to ensure an adequate supply by developing the most convenient quarries which were then in operation and by providing for the transport of the stone, thus repeating what his predecessor Aśoka had done four centuries earlier, in the case of the Chunar quarries.
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However this may have been, it is significant that the general adoption of phyllite in preference to other stones coincided not only with the decline in the style of this sculpture noticed above, but with other notable changes in its history. One of the most outstanding of these was connected with the development of the Buddha and Bodhisattva images. As far as their attitudes, dress and other canonical features are concerned, the types of these images had been largely standardized before the middle of the second century, but it was left to the latter part of that century to produce the highly refined and delicately wrought images for which Gandhāra art is famous. The beauty of these images is rarely a spiritual one. We look in vain for any expression of the deep, thoughtful compassion which distinguishes, for example, the superb fifth-century head of the Bodhisattva from Kālāwān (fig. 152).¹ Their beauty is a purely physical one, resulting in the main from their exquisite finish and the meticulous care lavished on the elaboration of their detail. But we must not underestimate the value of this material beauty. It marks an immense advance on the Buddha and Bodhisattva statues of an earlier period, and to those who were as yet unaware of what the skill of the sculptor would one day achieve in the expression of the spiritual, it must have seemed very near to perfection. So striking, indeed, is it that some of these images were referred by that great authority on Buddhist art, the late Alfred Foucher, to the first century B.C.—two hundred years before their actual date—on the ground that they closely approximated in style to the Greek and must
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¹ Cf. Taxila, vol. II, frontispiece and pp. 338–9, 470.
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have been carved at a time when Greek art was still a vital force in the North-West.
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In connexion with these sacred images another noteworthy feature that first made its appearance at this time was the small figural relief, illustrative of some familiar Buddhist scene, which was now used to adorn the base of an image in place of the geometric or floral design that had previously served that purpose. Once introduced, the new figural relief soon came into general vogue, and often constitutes a valuable index to the date of the image to which it belongs.
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Other minor developments of a decorative or stylistic kind that distinguish the work of this period will be noticed in the descriptions of the individual sculptures. Meanwhile I have, I think, said enough to make it clear that the sculpture of the Mature period falls naturally into two groups or phases, namely, an earlier phase in which the sculptor's work unmistakably reflects his personal taste and imagination, and a later phase in which the sculptor makes perfection of technique his principal aim, and is content, at the cost of his own creative artistry, to ring the changes on stock themes and stock modes of handling them. According to my calculations, the first of these phases lasted for a few decades only, from the close of the first century until about A.D. 140: the second from that date until the break-up of the Kushān Empire three generations later.