The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c15.12

c15.12

From the foregoing sculptures of the provincial Sanghao-Nathu group we turn to those which are more in the main current of Gandhāra art. These comprise several distinct styles, which anyone familiar with the subject will easily recognize, but there is little or no evidence to show to which particular localities they appertained. That one important centre was located at Pushkalāvatī (modern Chārsada), the ancient capital of Gandhāra, is, on the face of it, highly probable and is borne out by the exceptionally good quality of some of the reliefs found on that spot. It has long been recognized, too, that other important centres of activity were situated in the Swāt Valley and in the neighbourhood of Haḍḍa in Southern Afghānistān; and it may safely be assumed that, after the transfer of the capital from Pushkalāvatī to Purushapura (modern Peshāwar), yet another centre was developed at the latter city. But we are still very much in the dark about these different local groups, and about others also that must have existed in the remoter parts of the Peshāwar Valley and adjacent hill tracts, wherever stone suitable for this kind of sculpture was procurable and enough Buddhist settlements existed to maintain a steady demand for the sculpture. For the present, therefore, and until more information on the subject is available, we must be content to differentiate where we can between the several styles, and leave it to others to determine where each of them was evolved.