The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c14.5

c14.5

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.