The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c4: Preface
The Buddhist Art of Gandhāra: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c4
- Language
- English
Preface
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When Alfred Foucher wrote his masterly work on the Graeco-Buddhist art of Gandhāra, he laboured under one disadvantage: he had little external evidence to assist him in reconstructing the School's history and, though he was remarkably shrewd in his surmises, they sometimes went wide of the mark. Witness for instance his dating of the well-known statue of the Buddha in the Guides' Mess at Mardān (fig. 132 below), which he placed in the first century B.C.—two centuries before its actual date. Since Foucher's book was published, this dearth of chronological data has been in a large measure remedied by discoveries made in the course of my excavations at Taxila, which revealed many significant facts relating to the history of the School. Among the most important of these were the following: first, they established the fact that there were two distinct schools of art in Gandhāra, the earlier of which was flourishing in the first and second centuries of our era, the later in the latter part of the fourth and fifth centuries; and they also showed that these two schools were sharply distinguished, not only by the widely different character of their art but by the different materials which their sculptors employed, namely, stone in the case of the earlier school, lime-stucco in that of the later. It is with the earlier only of these two schools that we are here concerned.
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Secondly, my discoveries showed that in the late Śaka period, to which the oldest examples of Buddhist carvings are referable, the old Hellenistic art in Gandhāra had sunk to a lamentably low level, though better work appears to have been done by sculptors of the Early Indian School imported from down country.
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Thirdly, the new evidence from Taxila proves that a strong revival of Hellenistic art took place under the philhellene Parthians, who succeeded the Śakas in the North-West in the first century A.D., and that this Partho-Hellenistic art played an all-important part in the subsequent evolution of the Gandhāra School.
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Fourthly, it is now abundantly clear that the Gandhāra School passed through its adolescence and maturity under the Kushāns, who overthrew the Parthians in *circa* A.D. 64, and that it came to an abrupt end in the
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reign of Vāsudeva I, when the Buddhist monasteries throughout the North-West were overrun and reduced to ruin.
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Fifthly, it has also been made clear that different varieties of stone were in use at different periods in the School's history, and that the nature of their stones can help materially in determining the age of the sculptures.
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With these leading facts established, the story of the School's development automatically resolved itself into three main chapters: its infancy under the Śakas; its childhood and early adolescence under the Parthians; and its later adolescence and maturity under the Kushāns. And when to this external evidence was further added the internal evidence of the sculptures themselves, the order of their sequence and the changing character of their successive styles at once became apparent.
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This is the story that is unfolded in the following pages, and I am confident that in all essentials it will prove a reliable one. Let me make it plain, however, that I regard this little book as no more than a pioneer effort. I have laid the foundations and I believe them to be truly laid, but there is much to be done before the structure can be completed. Among other tasks, the stones used for these sculptures need to be examined and identified far more systematically than I have found possible. The quarries where the stones were hewn must also be located. Then the decorative patterns and other architectural features, as well as the fashions prevailing among celestials and mortals, need to be set out period by period. And these things cannot be done until the sculptures in the museums have been classified and catalogued afresh, and photographs in much larger numbers made available for study.
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As to the scheme of the chapters, it should be noted (and I wish to emphasize this point) that the lines of demarcation between them are not to be regarded as clear-cut and precise. The process of evolution was continuous, and there are many sculptures which stand on the border-lines between two chapters and might justifiably be relegated to one side or the other. The problem, too, is complicated by the fact that the School of Gandhāra comprised several groups of ateliers at varying stages of development and with distinctive traditions and styles of their own. Nevertheless, taking Gandhāra art as a whole, I believe that the chapters into which I have divided its history will be found to be sufficiently accurate to fulfil their purpose.
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For long I was hopeful that I should, myself, be able to carry out some of the tasks enumerated above, and I looked forward most of all to writing a companion volume which would deal with the Later School of Gandhāra on the same lines as this one deals with the Earlier. Declining health, however, coupled with rapidly failing eyesight have compelled me abruptly to desist from my labours and I must console myself with the hope that others may some time take up the threads of this research where I have had to drop them.
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One other point. The main theme of this book is the history of Buddhist art in Gandhāra from a chronological and aesthetic, not from an iconographic, point of view. It was not, therefore, essential that I should explain the meaning of the many Jātaka and Life stories which occur among the reliefs and which occupy a substantial part of the text. I have done so, because I am well aware that relatively few readers are likely to be familiar with these stories and I believe that for the rest it will enhance the value of the illustrations if their meaning is explained. In this connexion I have made free use of the descriptions given in Alfred Foucher’s work quoted above and in Harold Hargreaves’s two catalogues of the sculptures in the Peshāwar and Taxila Museums; and I welcome this opportunity of acknowledging my indebtedness to these two distinguished authorities on Buddhist iconography.
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It is also my pleasant duty to record my thanks to the Musée Guimet in Paris and to the museums of Lahore, Peshāwar, Simla and Calcutta for their generous gifts of photographs and for according me permission to publish them. And, finally, I have the rare privilege of thanking both the former Government of India and the Government of Pakistan for the generous help they have given in the production of this book—the former by enabling me to continue my archaeological work several years longer than would otherwise have been possible; the latter by making itself responsible for its publication.
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J. M.