A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c11.s2.5

c11.s2.5

The motive is of great antiquity, going back to Assyrian art, which represented Gistubar, the 'Assyrian Hercules', clubbing and strangling a lion in the same way. India, however, probably borrowed the idea from some Hellenistic work of Asia Minor. The Mathurā group was believed by Sir A. Cunningham, whose skilled judgement on the point may be accepted, to date from the time of either Kanishka or Huvishka. But his notion that the sculpture might have been executed on behalf of a hypothetical Greek colony at Mathurā may be dismissed as fanciful, although at present it is not possible to explain the meaning of the group from an Indian point of view. The popular Buddhism of Mathurā indulged in some queer manifestations, and most likely the composition should be classed as Buddhist. The Indian version of the story called by the Greeks the struggle of Herakles with the Nemean lion may turn up somewhere.¹