The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c18.10

c18.10

But, though the new clay or stucco technique was productive of a vast amount of indifferent, careless and unimaginative work, it also lent itself, in the hands of the more gifted artists, to work of a higher order than anything of which the Earlier School had shown itself capable—work which was remarkable for its command of form and vitality of expression, coupled in some cases with a spirituality which anticipated the best efforts of the Gupta Age in India. Here I can give no more than a single example of the striking differences which in this respect distinguish the sculpture of the Earlier and Later Schools. It concerns the Bodhisattva images. Among the finest known specimens of such images belonging to the Earlier School are those illustrated in figs. 137 and 138. The outstanding characteristics of these two figures are, on the one hand, their superb execution with its clean, clear-cut chiselling and elaborate decoration; on the other, their air of foppishness and swagger, eminently suited to a royal prince, but less so to a Bodhisattva, whatever his royal parentage. Of any expression of spirituality in these statues there is not a trace. But now turn to the last illustration in this book—a Bodhisattva head of the Later School from a group at the Kālawān Monastery at Taxila, and mark the look of dignified composure, peace and compassion. In the whole realm of Buddhist art there is surely no image of a Bodhisattva in which the artist has succeeded so well in ‘incarnating spirit in matter’.