The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c16.27

c16.27

Finally, as a tail-piece to this chapter, I have added fig. 130, as another example of the low level to which much Gandhāra sculpture had sunk by the early part of the third century A.D. The scene is one from the Viśvantara Jātaka, with which we have already made acquaintance in fig. 6. It shows the Bodhisattva in the royal chariot with his wife and two children in the act of giving away his purse to the Brāhman. There is a lively fancy in the half-comic figure of the fat, repulsive-looking Brāhman, and there is decorative value in the stylish design of the horses and chariot. But at best it is a crude and artificial piece of work, the very antithesis of the natural, picturesque portrayal of the same Jātaka by an artist of the Early Indian School at Sāñchī (fig. 6).