The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c16.7

c16.7

The school to which this sculpture belonged had reached its zenith during the first phase of the Maturity Period, and the decline which it had since suffered can be appreciated by comparing this slab with, for example, fig. 92 above. The earlier relief, as we have seen, impresses us with the creative artistry of its author. The grouping, though on traditional lines, is well thought out, the individual figures carefully executed, and a few of them remarkably graceful. In the later relief, the crowd of figures in the lowest tier, though modelled with much skill and charm, are of more conventional types and lose their individual significance by being so closely packed together—a feature which is probably due to increasing Indian influence. For the rest, the poor quality both of the design as a whole and of the figural modelling, seems to betray a marked lack of ability on the part of the sculptor.