The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c8.10

c8.10

In the mature reliefs of the Sāñchī gateways the four great events described above, as well as other episodes connected with the Buddha’s last life or previous births, are sometimes depicted with a great wealth of imaginative and picturesque detail. A notable example is the Viśvantara Jātaka on the Northern Gateway, the second half of which is illustrated in fig. 6. In point of both style and technique it falls short of the best reliefs on these gateways, but it tells its story in simple, realistic language, like the language of some old tapestry, and succeeds in giving us a convincing glimpse of Indian jungle life. I have included it among my illustrations because it helps to demonstrate the width of the gulf which separates these sculptures of the Early Indian School from those of Gandhāra, and at the same time emphasizes the wholly different approach of the two Schools towards this kind of narrative relief-work. To appreciate my meaning, the reader has but to turn to fig. 130, to see how an artist of the Gandhāra School in its declining years set about illustrating this same Viśvantara Jātaka. Truly, it would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast!