A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c10.s1.20

c10.s1.20

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,