The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c16.16

c16.16

The foregoing relief is referable to the close of the Later Maturity Period, in the early part of the third century A.D. Of about the same age, but entirely different in style, is fig. 120, a relief of phyllite stone from Mamāne-Dherī, near Chārsada, which, like fig. 118, features Indra’s visit to the Buddha in the Indraśaila cave. If we compare the two panels, we see at once how widely they differ in detail and in the quality of their artistry. Thus we note that the walls of the cave, which in fig. 118 were flaming with the effulgence of the Buddha’s person, present a hard, almost bare outline in fig. 120; that the Buddha himself is seated on a throne in the former, on the ground in the latter; that the wild animals beneath the front of the cave in the former are replaced by a line of figures in the latter; that Indra is represented in person in the former, by his elephant Airāvata in the latter; and that, whereas in the former the wild and rocky jungle round the cave, with its birds and animals, and adoring *devas* and *devis* and tree-spirits, is shown in one unbroken array, in the latter the scene is parcelled out by narrow ledges into a number of compartments with a small group of figures in each. We note, too, that the *devas* and *devis* in fig. 120 are not distinguished by the stereotype prettiness of feature that characterizes them in fig. 118; and that the execution, particularly of the draperies, in fig. 120 falls far short of that in fig. 118. That these points of difference are not attributable to the personal idiosyncrasies of the artist of the later sculpture, but to the traditions of his school, is proved by another and earlier relief from the Dharmarājikā at Taxila¹ which displays the same traditional features but a livelier and more naturalistic way of handling them. In choosing fig. 120 for illustration in preference to this earlier and more attractive piece from the Dharmarājikā I was influenced by the fact that it bears on its base a Kharoṣṭhī inscription dated in the year 87 of the Kanishka era. According to the now generally accepted chronology of this period, this date falls within a few years of A.D. 224 and it thus confirms the date of this sculpture arrived at on stylistic grounds (cf. *C.I.I.* vol. II, p. 171, and pl. 34).