The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c9.5

c9.5

The tray following (fig. 14) came from the fifth (Greek) stratum, but was doubtless a stray from above and referable to the latter part of the last century B.C. It is made of grey schist. The scene is a familiar Greek one, but the figures are very stiff and wooden by comparison with the preceding specimen. In the upper register is a man reclining on a couch with a wine-cup in his hand. At the head of the couch is a woman seated on a stool also holding a wine-cup; and behind the couch another woman standing up with a garland in her hand. The figures are clad in the Greek chiton and himation. In the lower register are seven palmette rays. Around the rim runs a beaded border in relief. Two features of the figures on this tray which merit special notice are the wig-like treatment of their hair and their wide-open, staring eyes. These features are found in several other trays dating from the late Śaka-Parthian period and they are peculiarly characteristic, as we shall see presently, of the earliest sculpture of Gandhāra.