The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c15.15

c15.15

Yaśodharā asleep on a cushioned couch, her hand under her cheek and a garland still on her head. Beside her, sitting on the side of the couch, is her husband the Bodhisattva, haloed and in princely attire. At the side of the couch, in the foreground, the ladies of the palace have fallen asleep over their drums. At the back, on the right, are a female guard and attendant; on the left, presumably the groom Chandaka carrying his master's head-dress and leading the horse Kaṇṭhaka by the bridle, but these two figures are too damaged to be identified with certainty. Framing the scene on either side are two Corinthian pilasters with rounded shafts in countersunk panels, like those in figs. 43-7, 54, 55, etc., but of later form. In design and workmanship the panel leaves much to be desired, but it is not without considerable charm, and in spite of its shortcomings—the stilted pose, for example, of the Bodhisattva with his feet dangling over the side of the bed, and the careless, unsteady chiselling of the drapery folds—it is evident that the artist has made a genuine effort to bring his imagination into play and to express in his own way the overpowering effect of the heaven-sent slumber which took possession of the womenfolk on the night the Bodhisattva fled from the palace. Stylistically the relief has much in common with fig. 58, and more remotely with figs. 54 and 55, but its date is later and the influence of the Early Indian School is more apparent in the decorative, tapestry-like grouping of the figures. The sleepers' smooth and pretty faces, too, like those already noticed in fig. 87, are a foretaste of what, a generation later, was to become one of the most familiar features of Gandhāra art. But for these traits, the relief might well have been referred to the preceding period. As it is, I think we must give it a place at the outset of the Maturity period. Another and later relief in the British Museum illustrating the same theme is reproduced in *A.G.-B.G.* vol. II, fig. 447, but the design is much inferior and the postures of the sleeping women could hardly be more uncomely.