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A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c10: Chapter IV. The Hellenistic Sculpture of Gandhāra

A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c10

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English

Contents

Chapter IV. The Hellenistic Sculpture of Gandhāra

Section I. Introductory Observations

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IF Indian art as a whole may complain of undeserved depreciation and neglect, one branch of it, the Hellenistic sculpture of the regions on the north-western frontier, anciently known as Gandhāra, has received its full share of attention in Europe and been the subject of voluminous discussion. The existence of an Indo-Hellenic school of sculpture was not recognized generally until 1870, when the late Dr. Leitner brought to England a considerable collection of specimens, to which he gave the name of Graeco-Buddhist. But so far back as 1833 Dr. Gerard had disinterred the first known example, a circular relief of Buddha, from the chamber of a ruined *stūpa* near Kābul.¹ In 1836 James Prinsep published his account of the so-called 'Silenus' discovered by Colonel Stacy at Mathurā, which will be discussed in the next chapter; and in 1848 Cunningham examined the ruins of Jamālgarai to the north-east of Peshāwar. His observations, however, were not published until many years later. The first description of a selection of the Jamālgarai sculptures was that printed by Sir E. C. Bayley in the *Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal* for 1852,² with illustrations so miserably rude that they gave little notion of the aesthetic value of the objects described. The sculptures thus imperfectly illustrated, having been subsequently brought to England, perished in the fire at the Crystal Palace which also destroyed Major Gill's copies of the Ajaṇṭā frescoes. Thus it happened that, as already observed, Dr. Leitner is entitled to the credit of having first convinced the learned world of the fact that during the early centuries of the Christian era North-Western India was the home of a school of Hellenistic sculpture of considerable artistic merit.

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¹ K. 1 of Indian Museum; Anderson, *Catal.*, Part I, p. 261.

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² Jamālgarai is the correct Pushto form (Vogel). The name is also written Jamālgiri or Jamālgaṛhi.

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The fact was so novel and surprising that one distinguished antiquary, Mr. W. Vaux, F.R.S., was bold enough to dispute it, and to declare his inability to perceive any manifest traces of Greek art on the sculptures procured by Dr. Leitner and other collectors in the neighbourhood of Peshāwar. In a short time, however, evidence accumulated so rapidly that no possibility of doubt remained, and Professor Curtius was able to announce that the discoveries opened 'a new page in the history of Greek art'. That is the explanation of the keen interest taken in them by European scholars, who are eager to follow out in its most minute details the story of Greek art, on which that of modern Europe is based, while they usually remain indifferent, or even contemptuous, towards manifestations of artistic power in the nations of the East developed independently of the Hellenic tradition.

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During the last forty years thousands of Indo-Hellenic sculptures have come to light, while considerable numbers, including most of the choicest specimens, have been catalogued, described, and photographed. The number, indeed, is so great that it is difficult to make a small selection thoroughly representative. Most of the examples chosen to illustrate this chapter have been selected in virtue of their conspicuous aesthetic merits, and may be regarded as evidence of the highest attainment of a school of artists working on Indian soil, and applying more or less modified Greek methods of composition and technique to Indian subjects. A few of the figures mark the gradual disappearance of the Hellenic tradition and the progressive Indianization of the treatment.

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The country from which comes this wonderful wealth of semi-foreign sculpture may be described in general terms as the North-Western Frontier. It includes the modern District of Peshāwar, the valley of the Kābul river, Swāt, Bunēr, and other tribal territories, as well as the western portion of the Panjāb between the Indus and the Jihlam (Jhelum). The kingdom of which Peshāwar (Purushapura) was the capital having been known in ancient times as Gandhāra, the sculptures are most conveniently described by that territorial name.

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The richest sites as yet explored are those crowded together in the Yūsufzai country to the north and north-east of Peshāwar, comprising Jamālgarai, Sahrī-Bahlol, Takht-i-Bahāī, and many more which it would be tedious to enumerate. Some of the best sculptures come from Suwāt (Swāt), but the hostility of the wild tribes prevents systematic exploration of the antiquities beyond the British frontier.

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Even within the frontier most of the exploration done until recently has been the work of amateurs, conducted in a haphazard fashion, without the formation or preservation of adequate detailed record.¹ Consequently, many buildings have been utterly destroyed, and the value of the large collections of sculptures found by many public institutions and private persons is seriously impaired by the lack of information concerning the provenance of the specimens. M. Foucher, the most learned and authoritative commentator on the sculptures, declares that it is impossible in the present state of knowledge to arrange them in chronological order. As a general rule, no doubt, the most Greek may be considered the oldest, and the most Indianized the latest, but the practical application of this principle presents many difficulties. Arrangement by localities is equally impracticable, because nobody knows where many of the best examples were found, and also because there is no distinct evidence of local variations in style. The general style over the whole region is fairly uniform. The result is that the only practicable arrangement is one by subjects. In this chapter it will not be possible to illustrate more than a few of the multifarious subjects treated by the artists, and students who wish to examine the whole field must be referred to special treatises. It is hoped, however, that the specimens reproduced will suffice to enable the reader to judge of the aesthetic qualities of the sculptures, and to place them in their due relation to Greek art on the one hand and to indigenous Indian art on the other, subject to a certain amount of vagueness in the chronology of the school.

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¹ Research is now conducted by Mr. Marshall and his assistants on scientific lines, with excellent results.

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Whenever the date of Kanishka, the celebrated king of Gandhāra, shall be determined, that of the best period of the Hellenistic sculpture will also be known. Many of them undoubtedly are contemporary with him, though some are earlier and others later. Without going into complicated antiquarian discussions, it may suffice to say here that none of the sculptures are later than A. D. 600, few, if any, later than A. D. 400, and that in all probability extremely few are earlier than the Christian era. The culmination of the art of the school may be dated from about A. D. 50 to A. D. 150 or 200. It is quite safe to affirm that the works of good quality belong to the first three centuries of the Christian era.¹ Thus the best productions of the Gandhāra Indo-Hellenistic school nearly synchronize with the art of the Flavian and Antonine periods in Western Asia and Europe, and in India with the reliefs on the great rail at Amarāvatī in the Deccan, as well as with many sculptures at Mathurā on the Jumna, both of which will be discussed in the next chapter.

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¹ Certain facts may be brought together which connect the sculptures at several localities with the Kushān kings: (1) coins of Kanishka in foundation deposit of Sanghāo monastery (Cole, *Second Report*, p. cxx); (2) coin of Huvishka with a panel of best style at Takht-i-Bahāī (*J. R. A. S.*, 1899, p. 422); (3) seven coins of Vāsudeva with Jamālgarai sculptures (Cunningham, *Reports*, v. 194); (4) coin of Huvishka in good condition at Ahīnposh *stūpa*, along with coins of Sabina, &c. (*Proc. A. S. B.*, 1879, p. 209); (5) some of the Mathurā sculptures in Gandhāra style bear Kushān inscriptions. For reasons to be stated in the next chapter, I now take the most probable date of the accession of Kanishka to be A. D. 78.

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Without exception, all the sculptures come from Buddhist sites and were executed in the service of the Buddhist religion, so far as is known. No trace of works dedicated to either Jainism or Brahmanical Hinduism has been discovered. Moreover, the subjects treated are not only Buddhist, but purely Indian. Buddha may appear in the guise of Apollo, the god Brahmā in that of St. Peter, or a door-keeper in that of Pallas Athēnē, but however Greek may be the form, the personages and incidents are all Indian, and centre round the person of Buddha, whose image dominates the compositions.

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Herein lies the most obvious, and at the same time, perhaps, the most important difference between the ancient schools of interior India at Sānchī, Bharhut, or Bodh-Gayā, and the school of Gandhāra, with the cognate branches at Mathurā and Amarāvatī. In Gandhāra art, as M. Foucher observes, Buddha is everywhere; and whatever be the form which he assumes, as Prince Charming, emaciated ascetic, or ideal monk, or by whatever name he may be called, whether it be Siddhārtha, Sramana Gautama, or Buddha Sakyamuni, he dominates almost every composition, so that the preparation of a full list of the sculptors' subjects is equivalent to writing an illustrated life of the Master. The early schools of Indian art, as we have seen, were content to indicate his supposed presence by mere symbols, and did not presume to imagine his bodily likeness.

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The material of the sculptures is usually a blue clay-slate, also described as 'horn-blende-schist'. The stone was frequently finished with fine plaster, like the rock sculptures of Ajantā and many other localities in India and Ceylon, and the effect was heightened by the free use of colour and gilding, traces of which are still occasionally discernible.

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Great numbers of detached heads, made sometimes of stucco and sometimes of terra-cotta, have been found, varying in dimensions from tiny objects two or three inches high to life size. These heads, as various in character as in dimensions, are often of high artistic merit. One mode of their use is explained by an observation of Masson, who noted that at Hidda, near Jalālābād, in the upper Kābul valley,

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'idols in great numbers are found. They are small, of one and the same kind, about six or eight inches in height, and consist of a strong cast head fixed on a body of earth, whence the heads only can be brought away. They are seated and clothed in folds of drapery, and the hair is woven into rows of curls. The bodies are sometimes painted with red lead, and rarely covered with leaf-gold; they appear to have been interred in apartments, of which fragments are also found.'¹

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¹ *Ariana Antiqua*, p. 113.

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FIG. 55. Head of Bodhisattva. (*The Gandhāra Sculptures*, Pl. XXV, 6.)

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FIG. 56. Head of old man. (*The Gandhāra Sculptures*, Pl. XXV, 14.)

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Buddhists consider the multiplication of sacred images an act of merit, and the practice of making the bodies cheaply with clay enabled the pious donor to accumulate a credit balance of numerous good works without undue expense. Mr. J. P. Rawlins, who was stationed for a considerable time in the Hazāra District, now in the North-Western Frontier Province, informs me that in that country he has seen numbers of perfect plaster casts, 'for the most part only of heads, of all sizes and descriptions, fastened to the walls in appropriate groupings or singly. Many of them seem to be portraits of living people at the time, full of expression, and with many and varied head-dresses.' My informant believed the practice to have 'come down from Greek times'. The age of the heads actually seen by Mr. Rawlins does not appear, but, whatever it may be, the practice referred to by him proves that the ancient stucco and terra-cotta heads might have been used to fix on walls as well as on clay images. When objects of this class were exhibited before the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Sir J. B. Phear remarked that similar heads from the neighbourhood of Peshāwar preserved in the Indian Museum, Calcutta,

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‘obviously had been attached to masonry, and no doubt formed part of a subject worked out in high relief upon the frieze of some building. It was also remarkable that every one of them was unsymmetrical, i. e. compressed or flattened either on the right side or on the left side. The purpose of this must have been to adapt them to being seen with the greater artistic effect from a particular point of view; and it indicated considerable advance in knowledge of the peculiar conditions necessary for the success of sculptural ornament.’¹

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¹ *Proc. A. S. B.*, 1870, p. 217.

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The British Museum possesses about forty such detached heads, mostly from the Peshāwar District, purchased in 1861, fifteen of which have been published by Dr. Burgess. Two of those are here reproduced (Figs. 55 and 56). Terra-cotta heads, more or less similar in character, but not quite so well executed, were found in excavations at Saheṭh-Maheṭh in Oudh, supposed to be the site of Srāvasti.² The late Dr. Leitner pointed out the resemblance between these Indian heads and those from Cyprus to be seen in various museums.

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² *J. A. S. B.*, Part I, vol. lxi (1892), extra No., Pl. XXVIII. For other Gandhāra stucco heads from Sahri Bahlol see *Ann. Rep. A. S., India*, 1906–7, p. 107, Fig. 2 and Pl. XXXV.

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No trace of the existence of Greek architecture in either India proper or the borderland has ever been found, that is to say, no building yet examined was designed on a Greek plan, or with an elevation exhibiting one or other of the Greek orders, Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian. But the Indo-Hellenic architects freely used certain Greek architectural forms—columns, pilasters, and capitals—for decorative purposes, much in the same way as English architects of a century ago often applied a Greek pediment to the front of an English dwelling-house. The Doric column is found only in the late Kashmīr style, if there, for the matter seems to be open to some doubt (*ante*, p. 48). The Ionic column has been found in two temples on the site of Taxila, associated in one case with coins of Azes I, who is supposed to have reigned between 90 and 40 b. c.³ Growse noted the occurrence of a ‘niche supported by columns with Ionic capitals’ on a fragment of sculpture at Mathurā,⁴ and Simpson found the plaster fragment of a capital with corner volutes of the Romano-Ionic kind in the Ahīnposh *stūpa* near Jalālābād in the valley of the Kābul river.⁵ Those four cases exhaust the list of undoubted Ionic forms known in India. More recently two more quasi-Ionic capitals have been discovered, one at Patna and the other at Sārnāth (Fig. 57), both of Asokan age, and said to resemble the capitals of the temple of Apollo Didymaeus at Miletus.⁶

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³ Cunningham, *A. S. Rep.*, vol. ii, p. 129; vol. v, pp. 69, 72, 190; vol. xiv, p. 9, Pl. VII: *Early Hist. of India*, 2nd ed., p. 227.

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⁴ *Mathurā, A District Memoir*, 3rd ed., p. 171.

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⁵ *Proc. A. S. B.*, 1879, p. 209, Pl. XI.

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⁶ *Hist. Ind. and E. Archit.*, 2nd ed. (1910), vol. i, p. 207, note and woodcut.

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The abundance of modified Corinthian columns, pilasters, and capitals in the art of Gandhāra contrasts strongly with the total lack of Doric and the extreme rarity of Ionic forms. Most of the Gandhāran friezes exhibit representations of columns or pilasters with capitals more or less related to those of the Corinthian order, and which may be fairly called Indo-Corinthian. The shafts, whether round or square, are never fluted, and resemble those of the second or third century after Christ at Palmyra and Baalbec. The bases of structural pillars have been found at Jamālgarai only, and show that the shaft might be either cylindrical or square. The conviction of the architects that the form of column used concerned merely the decoration of a façade is well illustrated by the often-published slab from Muhammad Nari, on which Persepolitan columns are mixed up with Indo-Corinthian pilasters (Plate XXIV).

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[Figure: FIG. 57. Perso-Ionic capital of Maurya age, Sārnāth. (Arch. S. photo., supplied by Prof. Macdonell; publ. in *J. R. A. S.*, 1907, Pl. III.)]

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The Indo-Corinthian capitals vary widely in detail, but all may be described as agreeing generally with the luxuriant cosmopolitan style in vogue throughout the Roman Empire during the early centuries of the Christian era. Six good specimens, believed to be from Jamālgarai, are grouped together in Plate XXV. The introduction of figures of Buddha in two cases may be illustrated from Graeco-Roman art of the time of Augustus, and again, two centuries later, at the Baths of Caracalla. The shell canopy is found in the art of both Alexandria and Asia Minor. Even the modillions of a cornice are sometimes made in the form of miniature Corinthian pilasters (Fig. 58). All capitals of the Indo-Corinthian class seem to be post-Christian, and their introduction appears to have been associated with the Kushān or Indo-Scythian conquest of Kābul and the Panjab during the first century of the Christian era.

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[Figure: FIG. 58. Modillions.

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The more purely decorative motives commonly used by the Gandhāra school, such as the long garland carried by Erotes, the vine pattern, the hippocamps and other monsters, and the Atlantes, will be noticed in Chapter XI, dealing with foreign influence on Indian art, and need not be described here.

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The figure sculptures, as distinguished from detached heads and from merely decorative motives, may be grouped in two classes, as detached statues or small groups, often completely or nearly completely in the round, and relief pictures illustrating sacred stories in successive scenes. The reliefs, commonly spoken of as 'bas-reliefs', are, as a matter of fact, more often in high relief.

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The statues and small groups represent Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, or saints on the way to become Buddhas, besides minor deities of the populous Buddhist pantheon. The stone pictures, like the later painted pictures at Ajaṇṭā, deal with the infinite variety of subjects presented by the scriptures, legends, and traditions of the developed system of Buddhism, known as the *Mahāyāna*, or 'Great Vehicle'. That system practically deified Gautama the Buddha, as well as other Buddhas, and surrounded them with a crowd of attendant deities, including Indra or Sakra, Brahmā, and other members of the Brahmanical heavenly host, besides a multitude of attendant sprites, male and female, of diverse kinds and varying rank, in addition to human worshippers.

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All the elements making up this motley retinue appear in the reliefs, and offer infinite opportunities for the exercise of fancy by the artists, who did not feel bound by strict rules, such as those of the *Silpa-śāstras*. Although the accessible sculptures amount to only a small fraction of those which once existed, or even of those known to exist, they are thousands in number, and so varied in subject and treatment that several bulky volumes would be required for their adequate description and illustration. In this work it is not possible to give more than a small selection, representative so far as practicable.

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The Gandhāra sculptures suggest problems and speculations of many kinds. Regarded as an authentic expression of early religious tradition, they control and illustrate the testimony of the Buddhist scriptures, throwing much fresh light upon the beliefs and practices of the early followers of the Great Vehicle. Viewed as a collection of sacred effigies they serve as a guide to the iconography of Buddhism, an aspect of the study specially attractive to Dr. Burgess and M. Foucher, which must be almost ignored in this volume.

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Considered as pictures of human life, they present as in a mirror a vivid image of almost every phase of the life of Northern India, lay and clerical, during several centuries. The artists cause to pass before our eyes landscapes, towns, domestic interiors, streets, fields, trees, and animals, with unlimited realistic detail. All the material objects of the civilization of the times—furniture, vehicles, arms, tools, and the rest, are depicted as they were used by the ancients, and numberless illustrations of the manners and customs of the times bring clearly before our imagination the way in which those ancients passed their days. Every class of the population from prince to pariah is represented, and, in short, no subject of human interest was regarded as material unsuitable for the sculptor's chisel. There can be no question concerning Plate XXV. Modified Corinthian capitals from Gandhāra.

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the high value of the Gandhāra sculptures as documents of religious and social history, but detailed discussion of them from that point of view is foreign to the purpose of this work, which is concerned only with their worth as expressions of artistic power and technical skill. General observations on the merits and demerits of the sculptures as fine art will be deferred more conveniently until a selection of representative specimens of the best statues and reliefs shall have been reviewed.

Section II. Description of the Sculptures

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Just as the sculptures and paintings of the Catacombs and the writings of the early Christian Fathers prove that no trustworthy tradition concerning the person of Jesus survived in the Church, and that artists for several centuries felt themselves at liberty to give free scope to their fancy in delineating His image, even so, during the first two or three centuries of the Christian era, Buddhist sculptors had not arrived at any settled convention as to the correct way of representing the effigy of Gautama the Buddha, whose real appearance in the flesh had been utterly forgotten. A long course of experiment was needed before Buddhist orthodoxy, guided by the later sculptors of the Gandhāra school, settled down to the monotonous and insipid conventionality of the figures of Buddha now manufactured by the thousand, and adopted, with rare exceptions, in all Buddhist lands. Ultimately the conception of the Indian *yogī* ascetic as worked out in Gandhāra became dominant, and passed through Khotan to the Far East.

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FIG. 59. Buddha attended by Vajrapāṇi, from Yusufzai, Dames Collection, Berlin. (Photo. 27844, V. and A. Museum.)

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A Buddha with long hair and moustaches, although not unknown even now in Japan, would seem strange and improper to most modern Buddhists. In Gandhāra such a presentation of the Master long continued to be legitimate, and the legend of the cutting of his locks when he dismissed the charioteer, although not absolutely unfamiliar, was usually ignored in sculpture.

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The relief panel from the Dames Collection, now in Berlin (Fig. 59), offers one of the most notable examples of the Buddha standing, with long hair and moustaches. His attitude is exceptional, and in his left hand he holds a palm-leaf book and gathers up his robe. The work, although evidently early, is not of the best artistic quality.

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The remarkable attendant figure in this sculpture, which recurs frequently the Master is depicted with flames issuing from his head and the water of life from his feet. A remarkable parallel occurs in the Catacombs of Rome, where we find similar representations of the water of life streaming from the feet of Christ.¹ Fig. B shows

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¹ Roller, *Les Catacombes de Rome* (1881), vol. ii, p. 291, Pl. LXXXVII, figs. 2, 3, 4.

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[Figure: FIG. 60. Visit of Indra to Buddha in Indraśaila Cave. (Photo. 1058, I. M. *List*.)]

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Buddha seated under a tree in a manner not usual. The features and drapery are of an early type. Fig. C is a good specimen of Buddha seated on the 'diamond throne', closely resembling the Berlin figure seated on a 'lion throne' (*ante*, Plate XXVI). The remaining figure D is interesting as a later and more Hinduized Buddha type, on a ‘lotus throne’, and with the soles of the feet turned up in *yogī* fashion. The right shoulder is bared. The suppliants at the foot of the throne may be the donors of the sculpture.

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It is impossible to omit notice of the remarkable sculpture, 2 feet 8½ inches high, representing the Emaciated Buddha, or, more accurately, Bodhisattva, in the Lahore

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[Figure: FIG. 61. Gautama as emaciated ascetic (Sikrī). (Photo. by Griggs.)]

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Museum, excavated from the ruins of a monastery at Sikrī in 1889, which is the most notable known example of the treatment of a repulsive subject. It depicts the Master as he sat at Bodh-Gayā making the vain attempt to attain by the severest austerity that supreme knowledge which did not come to him, according to the story, until he abandoned the practice of self-torture (Fig. 61).¹ The subject is sometimes treated by Chinese and Japanese artists in another fashion, as may be seen in the South Kensington Museum and the Musée Guimet. The Brahmanical parallel is Plate XXVIII. Kuvera in form of Zeus.

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¹ *Lahore Museum Guide*, Pl. V; Senart, ‘Notes d’Épigraphie Indienne,’ iii, Pl. II (*Journal As.*, 1890).

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distribution of his relics, as depicted in a long series of reliefs; but must pass on to another class of images, formerly described as 'kings' or 'royal personages', but now recognized as Bodhisattvas, or saints destined to become Buddhas. All considerable collections include specimens, and many have been published. The general character of the class is well illustrated by the fine statue in the Dames collection at Berlin (Fig. 63), which is one of the masterpieces of Gandhāran art, and appears to me to

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[Figure: FIG. 64. Kuvera and Hārītī; from Sahrī-Bahlol. (A. S. photo., No. 85 of 1906–7.)]

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be a worthy presentation of the ideal lay saint. All the details are exquisitely wrought, and the drapery is admirable.

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Another image in the Lahore Museum (No. 0239), in a different style and with finely sculptured drapery of another kind, is a beautiful work, of equal or possibly superior merit (Fig. 62). The small relief on the pedestal follows the tradition of the Early School in the interior by abstaining from all attempt to image the dead Master, his presence being symbolized by the empty seat. I should think that this charming sculpture must be of early date.

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A larger statuette found near Peshāwar, and generally regarded as the most striking piece in the large collection of sculptures in the Central Museum, Lahore, represents a royal personage seated in European fashion on a throne, with his left foot on a footstool and his left hand grasping a spear, his attitude being obviously reminiscent of that of the Zeus of Phidias (Plate XXVIII). This notable figure, at one time believed to be the portrait of an Indo-Scythian monarch, is now recognized as Kuvera or Vaisravana, god of riches and king of the Yakshas, who played a very

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FIG. 65. Hārītī; from Sikri. (Photo. by Griggs.)

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important part in Indian Buddhism, and will be met with again in mediaeval times. The image is free from the tinge of effeminacy which mars some of the best finished works of the school, and must always command admiration for its virility and dignity.¹

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¹ Found at Tahkal on the old road from Peshāwar to the Khyber Pass. A cast is in the Indian Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington. *J. A. S. B.*, Part I, vol. lviii (1889), p. 122, Pl. VIII; *Lahore Museum Guide*, Pl. III; Vogel, 'Note sur une Statue du Gandhāra conservée au Musée de Lahore' (*B. E. F. E. O.*, Avril-Juin, 1903).

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The recent excavations at Sahrī-Bahlol have yielded another figure of the throned Kuvera with the goddess Hārītī as his consort seated beside him (Fig. 64), which is one of the most delicately modelled works of the Gandhāra school, and is presumably of early date. Hārītī, in one of her aspects, was the protector of children from the dangers of epidemics. A standing figure from Sikri (Fig. 65) presents her in the same aspect of her character, but posed in quite another fashion. The clever and unusual treatment of the drapery may be noted.

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One of the most interesting statuettes is the well-known image of Pallas Athene in the Lahore Museum (Fig. 66). The goddess is represented standing, facing front, wearing Greek costume, chiton and himation, and holding a spear across her body. Both

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FIG. 66. Pallas Athene; Lahore Museum. (Photo. by Griggs.)

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FIG. 67. Woman and tree, from Yūsufzai (L. Dames, Berlin). (Photo. 27849, V. and A. Museum.)

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FIG. 68. Woman holding mirror, from Yūsufzai (L. Dames, Berlin). (Photo. 27843, V. and A. Museum.)

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hands have been lost. Probably the right hand grasping the spear was raised to her head, as was the right hand in the Pallas type of the coins of Azes I (? first century B.C.), while the left hand held the aegis. The late Dr. Bloch seems to have been right in interpreting the image as that of a foreign female guard set over the women's apartments of a palace, and forming part of a court scene. It is possible that the figure may be as old as the time of Azes, and so contemporary with the Ionic temple at Taxila, but it may be of later date. Although the type is clearly that of Pallas Athene, it has been completely Indianized.¹

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¹ A cast is in the Indian Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington. For the coin of Azes referred to see Gardner, *B. M. Catal., Coins of Greek and Scythic Kings*, Pl. XVIII, 4. The statuette has been published in *J. A. S. B.*, Part I, vol. lviii (1889), p. 121, Pl. VII; and *Lahore Museum Guide*, Pl. VI. For Bloch's remark see No. 1195 in *Indian Museum List of Negatives*.

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A panel from Mr. Dames's collection, now in Berlin (Fig. 67), is an uncommon variant of the 'Woman and Tree' motive, which will be discussed in Chapter XI. The panel seems to be part of a larger composition, and is apparently of tolerably early date, although the figure is very Indian.

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Another of Mr. Dames's sculptures, representing a woman arranging her hair with the help of a hand-mirror, and standing under a tree (Fig. 68), makes a very pretty picture. The drapery is treated with such freedom and skill that the work may be

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FIG. 69. Man playing lyre (*vīṇā*), from Yūsufzai (L. Dames, Berlin). (Photo. 27848, V. and A. Museum.) FIG. 70. Garuḍa and the Nāginī, from Sanghão. (Photo. by Griggs.) FIG. 70 *a*. (Photo. by Griggs.)

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assigned to an early date. It may be regarded as a companion picture to the last. Both panels have a reel and bead border.

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Fig. 69, also from Mr. Dames's collection, is not equal in merit to the two preceding, the drapery being treated in a more formal and commonplace manner. A man stands under a tree playing the *vīṇā*, or Indian lyre. These three figures apparently formed parts of larger compositions, but I cannot offer any explanation of their meaning. The trees, necessarily treated conventionally in order to bring them within the limits of the panels, have a fine decorative effect.

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One Hellenistic group, known from at least five or six specimens, is of special interest as being demonstrably adapted from a masterpiece of Leochares, a famous Attic artist of the fourth century before Christ (372–330 B. C.). His bronze work, praised by Pliny (d. A. D. 79), but long since lost, inspired many later copyists, who translated the theme into marble, with variations. One of the marble copies, or imitations, is in the British Museum, another at Thessalonica, a third at Venice, and the fourth and finest is in the Museo Pio Clementino at the Vatican. The subject is the carrying off of the beautiful boy Ganymede by an eagle, represented sometimes as the messenger of Zeus, and sometimes as the god himself transformed. In the

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[Figure: FIG. 71. Vatican Rape of Ganymede. (From a cast in the University Galleries, Oxford).]

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Vatican copy the eagle is shown as supported by the trunk of a tree in the background, with wings expanded and neck stretched upwards, grasping with tender firmness the nude youth, whose feet have just ceased to touch the receding earth. His robe, disclosing the nude figure, is so disposed as to protect his back from injury caused by the bird's talons. A dog, seated below, howls piteously for his vanishing master, as described by Vergil.¹ Nobody can look at Fig. 70, reproducing the best of the Buddhist adapta-

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'Puer . . . quem praepes ab Ida
Sublimem pedibus rapuit Iovis armiger uncis;
Longaevi palmas nequiquam ad sidera tendunt
Custodes, saevitque canum latratus in auras.'
(*Aen.* v. 252–7.)

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tions, obtained from the monastery at Sanghāo in the Yūsufzai country, and compare it with Fig. 71, representing the Vatican copy of the Attic artist’s composition, without perceiving that the composition is essentially the same as that of Leochares, made familiar to the Hellenistic world in marble replicas. A variant is shown in Fig. 70 *a*. All the Buddhist adaptations omit the dog, and so agree with the groups preserved at Venice, Thessalonica, and in the British Museum, while in the pose of the eagle

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[Figure: FIG. 72. Boys armed as soldiers. (Photo. by Griggs.)]

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[Figure: FIG. 73. Old man, ? Hindu ascetic. (Photo. by Griggs.)]

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and the introduction of the trunk of the tree they resemble the Vatican example. The subject, although retaining the essentials of the Greek myth, has been thoroughly Indianized, both in general treatment and by the substitution of a heavily draped female for the nude boy. The notion once held that the woman should be regarded as Māyā, the mother of Buddha, is erroneous. The better opinion is that the group was intended to represent to Indian minds the carrying off of a female Nāga, or snake sprite, by a monstrous Garuda, the implacable enemy of the snake tribe. As in all the Gandhāra sculptures, the subject is absolutely Indian, no matter how foreign the presentation of it may be in outward form.¹

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¹ Full references to the marble groups will be found in *J. A. S. B.*, Part I, vol. lviii (1889), p. 134. The Vatican group is reproduced in Visconti, *Museo Pio-Clementino*, vol. iii, p. 149, in the histories of sculpture by Winckelmann, Lübke, and Perry, and *Encycl. Brit.*, 11th ed. 'Greek Art', Pl. I, Fig. 53.

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Fig. 72 is a remarkable panel in the Lahore Museum (*Catal.*, Pl. VII, 3), probably of very early date, showing two boys of Greek appearance armed with the old Indian broadsword, as described by Megasthenes and represented in the Bharhut and Sānchī sculptures. The work is artistic and attractive, and, as Professor Gardner reminds me, recalls the Pergamene style. The old bearded man of Fig. 73 is, I think, unique. Grünwedel calls him a Brahman.

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I now proceed to illustrate a few representative relief scenic pictures of high quality, beginning with Mr. Dames's specimen of the Nativity, unpublished, and

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[Figure: FIG. 74. The Great Renunciation; Chandaka leading out the horse Kanthaka. (Photo. by Griggs.)]

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[Figure: FIG. 75. Gautama riding away; Lahore Museum. (Arch. S. photo., supplied by Prof. Macdonell.)]

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the finest example known to me of that favourite subject (Plate XXIX). According to the legend, Gautama Buddha was born in a pure fashion by springing from his mother's side as she stood under a tree in the Lumbinī Garden, the modern Rummindēī, to the east of Kapilavastu. The composition is arranged in a perfectly symmetrical manner. On the left of the picture the god Indra, or Sakra, with his characteristic high head-dress, receives the child, behind him stands Brahmā, and two other unnamed gods complete the divine party. The woman who supports the mother is her sister, and three attendants balance the gods on the other side. The [Figure: Plate XXIX. The Nativity of Buddha, from Yūsufzai (L. Dames, Berlin). (Photo. 27845, V. and A. Museum.)]

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figures are thoroughly naturalistic men and women, cleverly modelled, and ingeniously arranged so as not to interfere one with the other. The draperies are treated with freedom and variety. On the whole, I am disposed to regard this group as the finest of the more complex stone pictures produced by the school of Gandhāra.

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The story of the ‘Great Renunciation’ of domestic joys and the splendours of princely life by the young Gautama or Siddhārtha when he went forth from his father’s palace to take up the career of an ascetic, as told in both the books and the sculptures, comprises many incidents, which were treated in art with much freedom and variety of detail. Some aspects of the artistic presentation will be discussed in Chapter XI. Here I select for reproduction a rare representation of the groom Chandaka leading out the horse Kanthaka ready saddled for his master’s use (Fig. 74). The modelling of the horse is better than that of the animal in Indian sculpture generally, which often fails with the horse, while almost always successful with the elephant. This minor incident is intended to serve as a symbol of the whole story. Another rendering, a relief in the Lahore Museum (No. 122), is shown in Fig. 75. The earth-spirits holding up the feet of the horse, who often appear, are wanting in this case.

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FIG. 76. Worship of *trisūl* symbol by monks. (Photo. by Griggs.)

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Fig. 76 represents the worship, by shaven monks, of the *trisūl* symbol, signifying Buddha, the Law, and the Church. It closely resembles the representation of the adoration of the *labarum* in the Catacombs.¹

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¹ Roller, *Les Catacombes de Rome*, Pl. LXXXVII. The Christian work, assigned to the fifth century, is certainly much later than the Indian.

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The well-known unique relief representing a group of figures with demoniac faces attended by three soldiers (Plate XXX) has puzzled the interpreters, who usually assume the demons to be a part of the host by which Buddha was assailed in the Temptation. But that explanation takes no account of the soldiers. I do not believe that the picture has anything to do with the Temptation. I think it was Dr. Leitner who perceived that the so-called demons are simply monks wearing masks for a ‘devil dance’, such as those now worn by Tibetan Lamas. The soldiers are merely the escort of the performers’ procession. The equipment of the soldiers has been described sometimes as Greek and sometimes as Roman. But it is neither. The men evidently belong to the Himalayan region, and wear the dress and armour used in that region about the time of Kanishka, say A.D. 100. The arrangement of the scales of the armour, probably made of either leather or horn, with the curved ends uppermost, is explained by Dr. Stein’s discoveries of similar scales at Dandān-Uiliq in Khotan, and by a suit of Tibetan mail preserved in the British Museum.

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Plate XXX. Procession of maskers and soldiers.

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The scales found by Dr. Stein date from the seventh or eighth century, but there is no difficulty in believing that the fashion of armour may have remained unchanged for ages.¹

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¹ Stein, *Ancient Khotan*, pp. 252, 411, Pl. II, and Addenda, p. xvi. The stucco relief statue of a warrior in similar scale armour shown in Plate II may be as old as the second or third century, and approximately contemporary with the Gandhāra relief.

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An imperfect frieze in the British Museum, about 16 inches long by 6½ inches high (Fig. 77), which puzzled Dr. Burgess, has been convincingly interpreted by M. Foucher as a representation of marine deities in a quasi-Greek fashion. The character of the personages as tritons or marine deities of some kind is established by the paddles which they carry and their kilts of fins cut in the shape of vine-leaves. The object borne in the right hand of the figure the second from the right end appears to be a dolphin, indicating that the holder was intended for Poseidon. The

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[Figure: FIG. 77. Frieze of marine deities: B. M. (Burgess, *The Gandhāra Sculptures*, Pl. 15, Fig. 1.)]

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figure on the extreme left is in the familiar pose of Herakles. The Corinthian pillar on the right is in the style of Palmyrene work of the second or third century. The modelling of the forms would deserve praise but for the disfiguring exaggeration of the abdominal muscles. The bearded faces resemble that of an unmistakable triton, also in the British Museum, who has a fin and a curly tail (Foucher, Fig. 123).²

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² Foucher, *L'Art gréco-bouddhique du Gandhāra*, p. 244, *Fig.* 126.

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A striking, and at present unique, illustration of the progressive Indianization of the foreign types is afforded by the recent discovery, near Shabkadar on the Momand frontier, of a standing headless female figure, with four arms, executed more or less in Gandhāra style, with drapery described by Dr. Spooner as being especially Greek in character. The upper arms have been lost; the two lower ones hold respectively a spear and a wheel (Fig. 78).³ The drapery seems to me to be treated in an extremely formal manner, and I think the work is of late date.

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³ *Ann. Rep. A. S., Frontier Circle*, 1908–9, p. 4.

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The British Museum (Gem Room) possesses a deep silver bowl, about five inches in diameter, said to come from Sogdiana, to the north of the Oxus, adorned with the figure of a four-armed goddess. It is supposed to date from Sassanian times, subsequent to a.d. 226.¹ I am disposed to think that the stone sculpture is not earlier.

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¹ Described by Aspelin, *Antiquités du Nord Finno-Ougrien*, p. 147.

Section III. Criticism

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The productions of the Gandhāra school, good, bad, and indifferent, are so numerous that it would be easy to fill the whole of this volume with interesting illustrations of them, without exhausting the material available; but it is hoped that the reproductions in this chapter may be considered sufficient to give an adequate notion of the best work of the school, and to indicate the steps in the process of gradual Indianization of the style. Students who desire to follow out in detail the evolution of the Buddha type, or any of the many other fascinating problems suggested by these strangely composite works—so Greek or Graeco-Roman from one point of view, and so Indian from another—will find abundant material for reflection and discussion in the collections of numerous museums and the publications devoted to the exposition of different aspects of the many-sided subject.

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We now pass on from description to critical and historical comment, as brief as possible.

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[Figure: Fig. 78. Four-armed image, from Momand Frontier. (Arch. S. photo. No. 397.)]

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The general impression produced by study of the Gandhāra sculptures is that they form a class standing to a considerable extent apart from the main current of the evolution of art within the limits of India. M. Foucher has succeeded, I think, in demonstrating that the Gandhāra school has no direct filial relations with the earlier art of Maurya and Sunga times dealt with in Chapter III of this work, notwithstanding the appearance in both of certain elements common to the Hellenistic art of Western Asia. The artists of the north-west, who were masters of the technique of Asia Minor, had no need to copy tritons, centaurs, and so forth, from the works of their humbler predecessors in the interior. The true view seems to be that, whatever may be the sources and extent of foreign influence on the work of early Indian sculptors, the rapid development of the Gandhāra school during the first century of the Christian era was the direct result of a fresh importation into the frontier regions, by accomplished artists introduced from outside, of Hellenistic ideas expressed in the forms then current throughout the Roman Empire.

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Such importation of artists and ideas appears to have been closely associated with and dependent on the extension of the foreign Kushān or Indo-Scythian empire, as it gradually advanced its borders from the Oxus to the Ganges, and possibly as far as the Narbadā.¹ Unfortunately, as already observed, the chronology of those times is uncertain; and until the chronological question, summed up as the problem of the date of Kanishka, shall be definitely solved, the exact relations of the art of Gandhāra with that of the Graeco-Roman world and India proper cannot be elucidated with all the precision desirable.

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¹ This was the view taken by Sir A. Cunningham, which I hesitated to accept at one time, but now admit to be correct.

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It is, however, safe to affirm both that the Kushān kings had become lords of Kābul, with at all events part of the Panjāb, before A.D. 100, and that by that date the character of the Gandhāra style was already fixed. Much of the better sculpture of the Gandhāra school undoubtedly was produced during the reigns of Kanishka and his colleague and successor, Huvishka.

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No doubt, Hellenistic work adapted to Indian requirements had been done on the frontier in earlier times. The execution of such work during the reign of Azes I at some time in the first century B.C. is established by the Bīmarān casket (*post*, Chap. X, Sec. 4), the Ionic temples of Taxila (*ante*, p. 101), and the Pallas Athene statuette (*ante*, p. 116, Fig. 66). Although, so far as I know, it is not possible at present to refer any given work in the Gandhāra style to an earlier period, there is no apparent reason why Indo-Hellenistic sculpture should not have been produced from at least the age of Demetrius, 'King of the Indians', at the beginning of the second century B.C.,² and it is possible that certain extant examples may be as early. But the admission of the probable existence of Indo-Hellenistic sculpture from about 200 B.C. does not involve an admission that the origin of the Gandhāra school long preceded the Christian era. The earlier Hellenistic works differed from it in style. The Ionic temples of Taxila apparently had no successors, and the Bīmarān casket, while agreeing with the Gandhāra sculptures in the arrangement of the figures in compartments separated by pilasters with sunken panels, differs in the form of the arches and the absence of Corinthian capitals. The Pallas Athene, too, is more distinctly Greek than the true Gandhāra work. The characteristic of that work is the modified Corinthian capital, similar in style to the capitals fashionable throughout the Roman empire in the early centuries of the Christian era.

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² *Early Hist. of India*, 2nd ed., p. 210.

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The appearance in sculpture of that specially Graeco-Roman form coincides with the introduction of the Kushān gold coinage, agreeing in weight with the Roman *aureus*, though somewhat debased in standard.³ All the evidence, in my judgement, leads to the inference that the rapid development and extension of the distinct Gandhāra school, with its characteristic Indo-Corinthian capitals, were effected under the patronage of the great Kushān kings, who must have imported foreign artists, and through their agency have carried the application of Hellenistic technique to Indian subjects much farther than had ever been done before. Such foreign artists, accredited by royal authority and the fashion of the court, would have been readily accepted as teachers by the local Indian sculptors, who, after their accustomed manner, would have proceeded to adapt the new methods to their own purposes, sometimes, perhaps, bettering the instructions of their masters.

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³ For details see Cunningham, *Coins of Mediaeval India*, p. 16.

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The sudden introduction of the Persian style of painting into India by order of Akbar in the sixteenth century, and the immediate development of a prolific Indo-Persian school, surpassing its prototype in certain respects, while inferior in others, offer an almost exact parallel to the events which happened, as I believe, in the kingdom of Gandhāra during the first century of the Christian era. The parallel fails in so far that the Persian style of painting, being congenial to Indian taste, readily admitted of certain modifications which may be reasonably regarded as improvements, whereas the ultimate models of the Gandhāra sculptors having been the masterpieces of Attic and Ionic art, alien in spirit to the art of India, were usually susceptible of modification by Indian craftsmen only in the direction of degradation.

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It is obvious that the foreign elements in the art of Gandhāra tended to diminish as time went on, and that, generally speaking, the sculptures with most clearly marked Greek character should be considered early, and those most Indianized as comparatively late. But, as already pointed out (*ante*, p. 98), this criterion affords no infallible test of age. Some of the best finished works in Hellenistic style may have been executed by clever Indian imitators long after the introduction of the style, just as among the Mughal paintings we find close imitations of Persian models side by side and contemporary with paintings profoundly Indianized.

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Most European critics, rightly convinced of the unapproachable excellence of the highest type of Greek art, the model of the less excellent Hellenistic art, see in the process of gradual Indianization a decadence. But the critics of the new 'nationalist' school are persuaded that this view is erroneous, and that the process of Indianization is in itself an artistic improvement. Mr. Havell, in general agreement with Dr. Coomaraswamy, teaches that the earliest Gandhāra sculptors were no better than mechanical craftsmen, hirelings following more or less impure Hellenistic traditions, engaged by the frontier kings in the manufacture of inferior objects of handicraft, which are mere 'soulless puppets, debased types of the Greek and Roman pantheon posing uncomfortably in the attitudes of Indian asceticism', and tarred with the vices of commercialism, insincerity, and want of spirituality, most conspicuous in the earliest examples. The indictment continues:—

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'The insincerity and want of spirituality typical of nearly all the art of Gandhāra are, as I have said, most conspicuous in the earliest examples, or those which are attributed to the first century of our era, when the Roman influence was strongest. Two centuries later, in the sculptures of the Loriyān Tangai Monastery, which Professor Grünwedel

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describes as belonging to the best period of Gandhāra,¹ the art has become more Indian, more national, and more spiritual, but it has not yet achieved the true ideal of Indian art. Since, however, it is Indian influence, Indian thought, which has so far perfected the style, it is surely incorrect to say that the ideal of Indian Buddhist art has been created by foreigners. Foreign hands may have held the tools, but the influences which have dominated the art have been throughout Indian. . . . The perfected ideal of Indian art is as far in advance of the Gandhāran type as the art of the Parthenon surpasses the art of Gandhāra. Neither artistically nor technically is it possible to place the best Gandhāran sculpture in the same plane with that of Borobodūr, Elephanta, or Ellora, or even with the best modern Nepalese metal-work, such as the Buddha in Plate VI.’²

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