The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c8.3

c8.3

We have seen that the earliest examples of Buddhist sculpture in stone date from the reign of the Maurya emperor Aśoka (274-232 B.C.), and that they were the handiwork of Greek or Perso-Greek sculptors assisted by local craftsmen. It should be emphasized, however, that it was not until a century later that stone came to be employed on at all a large scale in place of wood by the Buddhist sculptors of Central India and the Jumnā Valley; and it is reasonable, therefore, to suppose that the idea of using the less perishable material was borrowed from the Bactrian Greeks who were then established in the neighbouring kingdom of the Eastern Panjāb. Most important of the Buddhist monuments adorned in the new way were the early groups at Bhārhut, Sāñchī and Bodh-Gayā. Oldest among these are the balustrade and gateway of the Bhārhut Stūpa, which are assignable to the middle of the second century B.C. Then follow, in chronological order, the original carvings on the Second Stūpa at Sāñchī (c. 125 B.C.) and on the balustrade at Bodh-Gayā (c. 75 B.C.), the carvings on the four gateways of the Great Stūpa at Sāñchī (c. 50 B.C.), and, lastly, those on the gateway of the Third Stūpa at the same site, together with the later additions on the balustrade of the Second Stūpa, both of which are referable to the opening years of the Christian era. Thus, the age of this Early Indian School was comprised within the two centuries between 150 B.C. and A.D. 50, and it is important to note that it preserved its essentially Indian character unimpaired until the end.