A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.22

c15.22

The mention of King Śīla and the Pāla kings gives two clues to the chronology of that long interval. Śīla cannot well be the famous Harsha Śīlāditya of Thanēsar and Kanauj, who reigned from 606 to 647 and had no concern with Rājputāna. The reference to King Śīla in connexion with a school in Rājputāna almost necessarily implies that the sovereign referred to had local connexions with that country. Such a prince, exactly suitable, is found in Śīlāditya, one of the earliest Guhila Rāṉas of Mewār (Udaipur), who is known to have been alive in A. D. 646 (v. s. 703), and so to have been to some extent contemporary with Harsha Śīlāditya of Kanauj.¹ We know with sufficient precision the age of the schools Nos. III and IV, founded respectively by Dhīmān and his son, Bitpālo, and contemporary with the Pāla kings, Dharmapāla and Devapāla, who reigned from about A. D. 780 to 892.² If, then, we place School No. II, the 'Ancient West', in the middle of the seventh century, everything fits well together. We may, therefore, assume as a working hypothesis that King Śīla means Śīlāditya Guhila of Mewār, that the school of the 'Ancient West' originated in Rājputāna during the seventh century, and that it became the model of the earliest Buddhist art in Nepāl.