The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c14.6

c14.6

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.