The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c17.13

c17.13

Of the melancholy process of decline through which this group of images passed towards the close of this period dozens of examples might be cited. We must content ourselves with one (fig. 140). In this example, the essential traits are virtually the same: the half-closed eyes, the turbanless head, the ostentatious jewellery, the *kamaṇḍalu*, and the drapery; but the face is flabby and undistinguished, the torso fat and heavy, the legs and arms wooden, the drapery less graceful than it had been. And observe that the halo is now rimmed with triangular rays, that there is a second underskirt beneath the normal one, and that the relief on the pedestal (the worship of the Buddha’s bowl) also gives the measure of decaying art.