The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c15.18

c15.18

The light and sketchy treatment of the women's dress which distinguishes fig. 93 is to be seen in a panel of phyllite depicting Māyā's dream, which was found in the Kālawān monastery at Taxila (fig. 94). Occupying the centre of the picture is the queen's bedchamber, flanked by vaulted corridors supported on Persepolitan pillars. In the middle of the chamber Māyā is lying asleep on a draped couch, her head raised on a high pillow. Beside her, at the head of the couch, stands a female attendant, while another, spear in hand, keeps guard at the foot and two more wait in the vaulted corridors. To the right, above the queen’s head, is a gallery, from which two seated figures, presumably *devas*, are looking down, and to the left of it the defaced stone shows the outline of the haloed Bodhisattva descending in the form of an elephant. The legs of the queen’s couch are carved to represent the stylized fronts of horned animals. The pillars supporting the roof are of the Persepolitan order but, strange to say, they were never provided with shafts. This is evident from the fact that the base of the pillar on the right is not vertically in line with the bell capital above. The style of the relief is unusual. In the architectural setting and disposition of the figures the sculptor has followed an established tradition; and in the modelling of the well-developed forms and comely faces of the women and even in depicting one of the attendants with her back to the spectator he has done only what other artists at this period were doing; but in other essential factors of the design—in the unusually open spacing of the figures and the simplified refinement of the details, which combine to give a quiet dignity and charm to this relief—he has drawn on his own originality and good taste. For further particulars, cf. *Taxila*, vol. II, p. 712, no. 92, and vol. III, pl. 218, no. 92.