The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c9.15

c9.15

In the following example (fig. 22) the *deva* is shown emerging at the hips from an acanthus leaf base, and wearing a sleeved tunic, shawl and native turban, with cylindrical ear-ornaments of local pattern. His two hands are raised in adoration in front of his breast. On the back and on the tenon at the base of the bracket is a Kharoṣṭhī inscription: *savatrateṇa niyatito vihare matapitu puyae devadato* (‘Presented by Sarvatrāta in the Vihāra, in honour of his mother and father, Devadatta’). On palaeographical grounds the lettering is referable to the first half of the first century A.D. This volute shape and the acanthus motif at the base are Hellenistic features which mark a somewhat later date than the preceding example, and taken as a whole the design is good, but the execution is disfigured by the same clumsy modelling and careless, unsteady chiselling that characterize other sculptures of this period. The bracket was found in Stratum II, Block J, of Sirkap.