The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c9.22

c9.22

In concluding this chapter on the art of the late Śaka period, it remains to notice two other pieces which, though unconnected with the Gandhāra School, have a definite bearing on the history of the Buddha image—a subject on which we shall have much to say later. Both sculptures (figs. 27 and 28) are made of a fine-grained sandstone from Tarakī in the neighbourhood of Taxila, which is the same stone as that used in the building of the Greek temple at Jaṇḍiāl and in the Śaka-Parthian palace in Sirkap, and since the very few sculptures made of this stone are in a distinctive style of their own, it is natural to conclude that they were the work of a small local School at Taxila. One of the statues (fig. 27) was found in Sirkap. It is a male figure wearing a tunic tied by a cord at the waist and reaching to the knees, a long shawl or chlamys, and high boots. The hair is dressed in the wig-like fashion that is characteristic of some of the statuettes and toilet-trays of late Śaka date described above. The heavy, uncouth modelling of the limbs must be largely due to the nature of the sandstone, which does not lend itself to fine work. Although free-standing, the statue is treated in the flattened manner of an alto-rilievo. The right forearm, which was attached by means of a tenon and socket, is missing and the face is completely mutilated. In the treatment of the shawl, which falls loosely round the shoulders and arms and stands out on either side of the hips, the statue bears a close resemblance to the so-called Hermes on a coin of Azes II (B.M. Cat. pl. xix, 1). The high boots which the figure is wearing suggest that it may represent Sūrya, the sun-god, whose temple is said by Philostratus (Life of Apollonius, ii, 24) to have stood in the city of Sirkap.