The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c15.7

c15.7

Most of the sculptures from the Sanghao-Nathu area are in the style illustrated by the two foregoing reliefs, but there are not a few from the same area which display a noticeably different style. Two of these are reproduced in figs. 89 and 90. The former, which is of greyish-white micaceous schist, comes from the Upper Monastery at Nathu and is now in the Calcutta Museum. It represents a *yakṣī* standing beneath a *śāla* tree. Such *yakṣī* figures were common enough in Gandhāra art, but it was only in the Sanghao-Nathu area that they acquired the ultra-smart and fashionable appearance of this figure. The pose under the *śāla* tree is much the same as that of Māyā in the Birth scene. The wreath on her head was, as already noticed, of Graeco-Parthian origin, but in other respects her dress and ornaments are Indian. The former consist of a dhoti, long-sleeved jacket or coatee and scarf; the latter of a forehead medallion, ear-rings, two necklaces, crossed breast-chain (of which only the top is visible), hip-girdle, wrist bangles and anklets. But the most striking feature of this *yakṣī* is her long, slanting eyes, all the more striking because they are so completely different from the bulging eyes which normally distinguished the sculptures of this group. What, one wonders, was the artist’s reason for introducing this strange new feature? Was it simply because of the difficulty he and his fellow artists had to model the natural Indian eye? Or was it because he aimed at giving his *yakṣī* a look that was not quite human, as her nature might seem to demand? Probably the latter is the true answer; for it is not long after this that a somewhat similar though less accentuated treatment is found in images of the Buddha, and in their case it can hardly be doubted that the sculptors fully appreciated the value of these weird un-Indian eyes in giving the Buddha a far-away, unearthly and superhuman look without unduly conflicting with his otherwise formal features. Nor can we doubt that it was this suggestion of other-worldliness in the half-closed eyes that caused its almost universal adoption for the Buddha’s images throughout the Buddhist world, though the expansion of Buddhism to the Middle and Far East, where Mongolian eyes are the rule rather than the exception, has doubtless been an important factor in perpetuating this characteristic feature until the present day.