The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c15.31

c15.31

It is a pity that the next panel (fig. 105), depicting the wrestling match, is marred by the exaggerated forms of the two combatants in the foreground, due to the superhuman stature of the Bodhisattva, on which the sculptor no doubt thought it necessary to insist. Apart from this blemish the relief affords another good example of the importance which, in this group of sculptures, was attached to the athletic development of the human form, coupled with a highly refined miniature-like treatment of the facial features. A comparison of the muscular figure on the left side of the panel with the yaksha hurling the thunderbolt in the top left corner of fig. 103 suggests that the two reliefs may have emanated from the same atelier.