The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c15.4

c15.4

Fig. 87,¹ a slab of greyish-white micaceous schist, came from the Upper Monastery at Nathu, and is now in the Calcutta Museum. Like fig. 72, from the Lower Monastery at the same spot, it depicts the death of the Buddha, but is of later date. A comparison of the two panels is instructive. In both the faulty modelling of the eyes is conspicuous, and in both the drapery folds are coarse and rough. These defects are characteristic of the majority of the sculptures belonging to this group and persisted throughout most of its history. On the other hand, there are marked differences between these two panels. In the late one, the limbs of the Buddha have lost all trace of suppleness; he is now like a stiffly frontal statue laid on its side. Moreover, he is provided with a rimmed halo behind his head, and his hands and feet are enveloped in the folds of his robe. As to the group of mourners round the couch, their number has been reduced from twelve to nine by omitting three of the monks, including the prostrate Ānanda; and the Vajrapāṇi, transformed from a robed and bearded man into a half-naked youth (a type we have already encountered among the Sikri sculptures), now takes his place at the head of the couch. But the most significant change is in the faces of the mourners. In fig. 68, the earliest version of the Parinirvāṇa known to us in Gandhāra, the artist was at great pains to show the signs of grief and weeping on their faces. And in fig. 72 the sorrow is still apparent, though there are no actual tears to be seen. But in fig. 87 all trace of sorrow has gone. Every one of the actors—*devas*, monk, chiefs, the Vajrapāṇi, even the dying Buddha himself—wear the same pleasant and fatuous smile. For all that their expressions mean, they might just as well be assisting at a marriage as at a death. We must not, however, deny all merit to the author of this relief. Granted that it possesses no spiritual or emotional significance, yet there is undoubted charm of a decorative kind in the grouping of the figures and in their winsome countenances. I know of no other sculpture in which this particular cast of countenance occurs, and the credit for it, such as it is, must therefore go to the sculptor's personal inventiveness. The pity is that his example pointed the way to that facile duplication of pleasing faces which was to become one of the hall-marks of later Gandhāra art. Yet another noticeable feature of this relief is the exaggerated size of the figures in the back row compared with those in front. This artificial defiance of the laws of perspective can be seen also in fig. 90.