The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c15.6

c15.6

The next relief (fig. 88) also comes from Nathu, and is now in the Calcutta Museum. It illustrates the presentation to the Buddha of a mango grove by the courtesan Āmrapālī. To indicate the occasion, the Buddha is portrayed seated under a canopy of mango leaves and fruit. On his right is Āmrapālī with her lady companions; on his left, two of the Licchavi nobles, and beyond them the Vajrapāṇi and a *deva*. That Āmrapālī is in the act of making a gift is shown by the ceremonial water-vessel in her hands. The wreaths which she and her companions wear on their heads are survivals of the wreaths so fashionable among the upper classes of Graeco-Parthian society. All the figures in this panel, except the Buddha, have the same bulging eyes that we noticed in the preceding relief as well as in figs. 69-72. Evidently the sculptor made a special, though not very successful, effort to avoid this distortion in the case of the Buddha, but when he came to the subsidiary figures, old habit proved too strong for him, as it did also when he was carving the small standing Buddha on the face of the adjacent pilaster. Other noteworthy features of this panel are the heavy canopy of mango leaves, akin to the canopies in figs. 100 and 101 below, as well as to those on some of the Sikri slabs, e.g. fig. 77, and the modelling of the drapery folds, which shows a growing sense of line and substance, though the execution is still uncompromisingly hard. Observe, too, how the ubiquitous *śāla* trees are still introduced, as a cliché to mark the Buddha’s presence, though they have nothing to do with the episode of Āmrapālī’s gift.