The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c16.9

c16.9

The second episode, to the right of the foregoing, took place when the Buddha was staying with the Kāśyapa brothers in their hermitage at Uruvilvā. In a corner of the hermitage was a fire-temple in which there dwelt at the time of the Buddha's visit a particularly fierce and venomous snake, a terror to all around. With the reluctant consent of the Kāśyapas, the Buddha took up his abode in the temple, and the snake, cowed into submission by the mere effulgence of his being, crept meekly into his begging-bowl. In our relief the Buddha is shown holding up the begging-bowl and the snake inside it for the Kāśyapas to see. Beside him is the Vajrapāṇi, here a naked figure, and in front the three Kāśyapas, recognizable at once by the cut of their garments falling in a V-shape below the knees. Above, between the Buddha and the Kāśyapas appears the upper part of a youthful deva with long hair and the pretty type of girlish face which is so characteristic of this period. At the right end of the slab is part of a third group illustrating another episode, which owing to the mutilation of the stone cannot now be identified. In order to make it clear that he was depicting three separate scenes the artist has resorted to the usual device of repeating the figure of the Buddha and his attendant Vajrapāṇi in each one of them. But for this it might have been hard to distinguish between the scenes, since the figures are disposed in an unbroken line across the face of the panel. This was, of course, the Greek method which we have already encountered in a number of earlier reliefs (figs. 40-50), and besides this feature there is much else in this relief to remind us of Hellenistic work. But we have only to compare it with, for example, fig. 41, to realize what a very artificial and mimetic thing the Hellenism of Gandhāra art had become in the intervening century. In the earlier relief, the figures, though strung out in semi-isolation and looking in consequence a little self-conscious, are nevertheless natural and unaffected, each with a convincing personality of its own. Their charm lies in their very simplicity and moderation. By contrast, the later relief appears over-stylized and conventional, Greek in form but not in feeling. Indeed, the sculptor seems bent on showing off his cleverness (which is exceptional) in the modelling of the nude and in the effective display of drapery. It is all very praiseworthy, but all rather over-done. Despite their elegance and vitality, his figures lack altogether the engaging charm of the earlier ones.