A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c10.s1: Section I. Introductory Observations
A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c10.s1
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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.