The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c14.3

c14.3

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.