The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c17.5

c17.5

Only in one particular, namely in the facial features, does this image display any real individuality. There is nothing, of course, exceptional in the half-closed eyes, with their suggestion of other-worldliness, which convention now required, but there is something definitely exceptional in the half-sulky and very undistinguished expression on the face, very different from the calm and placid look which usually characterizes the Buddha’s images of this period and which is strikingly exemplified in the figures that follow (figs. 132-5). Of these, fig. 132 has been much publicized. Foucher, who in my view exaggerated its merits, wrote of it as ‘the most beautiful, and probably also the most ancient of the Buddhas, which it has ever been granted to me to encounter’,¹ and he assigned it to the first century B.C., that is, to a date some two centuries earlier than the actual one. Unquestionably the shapely, graceful head of this image, with its firmly modelled features and subtle smile, is a fine bit of work. But it cannot be pretended that there is anything particularly spiritual in its expression, nor, as regards the rest of the statue, does it show any superiority over many other images of this period, either in the general proportions of the figure or in the technical skill displayed in the draping and finishing of the monk’s robe. Indeed, the modelling of the ankles and feet is more than usually clumsy, though this is a blemish shared by many otherwise commendable statues both of this and earlier periods.