The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c15.36

c15.36

In chapter 7 we have seen that the earliest known statues of the Buddha in the round, or virtually in the round, were the two illustrated in figs. 85 and 86, which like contemporary figures of the Buddha in relief were distinguished by wide-open prominent eyes, moustache, *ūrṇā*, large *uṣṇīṣa* and halo, and a monastic robe (*saṅghāṭī*) resembling the Greek *himation*. With figs. 109, 110 and 111 we again take up the story of the Buddha statue. The head and torso shown in fig. 110, which is now in the Lahore Museum, is 3 ft. 5 in. high and of grey micaceous schist, possibly chloritized. Its affinity to figs. 85 and 86 is manifest. It has the same kind of moustache, with *ūrṇā* and large flat *uṣṇīṣa*, the same treatment of the hair even to the thin cord confining it round the base of the *uṣṇīṣa*, the same outsize halo and the same draping of the *saṅghāṭī*. The main difference is in the eyes, which are now half-closed, giving them that far-away, other-worldly look which was eventually to become one of the standard traits of the Buddha type. But at the time this image was carved, there was still much vacillation among the Gandhāran sculptors about this particular feature. And so it happens that in this statue the eyelids are drawn close together, while in the two following examples they are left open. Indeed, it is true, I think, to say that throughout the first phase of the Maturity Period the treatment of the eyelids was a matter for the personal discretion of the artist, not one of canonical rule.