The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c9.13

c9.13

Whether the above figure is to be identified with Māyā or not, there is no question about the Buddhist character of a group of small stūpa-brackets emanating from the Sirkap site as well as from some of the Buddhist *saṅghārāmas* at Taxila. Though insignificant objects in themselves, these brackets are instructive. In the second and first centuries B.C. the Buddhists of Hindustān and Central India made a practice of providing their stūpas with brackets on which swags and garlands could be hung. These brackets, which went by the name of *nāgadanta*, were set at regular intervals round the dome of the edifice, a few feet above the base. If the reader will turn back to fig. 5, he will see them clearly delineated. In the Buddhist architecture of Gandhāra brackets were employed for the same purpose, but in Gandhāra they assume a much more elaborate form, being enriched generally with the figures of winged *devas* who, as in fig. 5, are supposed to be bringing offerings to the stūpa. A stūpa with brackets of this kind still in position was unearthed at Chakpat in Swāt and is illustrated in Foucher, *A.G.-B.G.* vol. I, figs. 10-12, pp. 56-9. The specimens from Sirkap are all of chloritic micaceous schist and date from about the beginning of the Christian era or a little later, when the Graeco-Śaka art was in a degenerate state. The modelling is clumsy, the chiselling coarse and careless, and the figures display the same prominent eyes and the same rough delineation of the drapery folds that are to be seen in other contemporary carvings. From the Indian dress and ornaments which the *devas* are wearing it is clear that they are copied from Indian prototypes. Let it be noted, too, that in the early examples there is nothing Hellenistic in the design of the bracket, but in the later ones a touch of Western influence can be seen in the acanthus base from which the figures spring as well as in the volute-like form of the bracket itself.