The Age of the Imperial Guptas c9.6

c9.6

A.D., does not differ in the least from early Kuṣāṇa Buddhist images of the 1st and the 2nd century A.D. The Mankuwar image, therefore, serves as a typical example of a great conservative force in the Mathurā School of sculpture even in the middle of the 5th century A.D. Codrington is distinctly wrong in stating that “this figure, the standing Buddha in the Mathurā Museum, and the Sarnath Buddha, are the most perfect examples of Gupta sculpture. This (the Mankuwar image) is probably the earliest of the three, the Sarnath Buddha being the latest¹”. Among dated specimens of the Mathurā school, belonging to the Gupta period, there is another which is sixteen years earlier in date than the Mankuwar image. This is the Mathurā Jaina image of G.E. 113 dedicated during the reign of Kumāragupta I.² The generic resemblance between these two specimens is so very striking that it is difficult to determine for what reasons Codrington classifies the Mankuwar image with regular Gupta figures from Mathurā and Sarnath. With the exception of a very slight Uṣṇīṣa there is no indication in the Mankuwar image about its late date. The existence of a Jaina image from Mathurā of A.D. 432 was perhaps unknown to Messrs. Rothenstein and Codrington. This Jaina image is headless. The modelling of the torso is typically early Kuṣāṇa in both images. The legs are shapeless and out of proportion in the Jaina image but the method in modelling is the same in this figure and the Mankuwar figure, which is absolutely different in the Sarnath seated Buddha (B (b) 181 of the Sarnath Museum.) The lions of the throne, the wheel, and its base and even the modelling of the Buddhas on the Mankuwar image and the kneeling worshippers on the Jaina specimen are typically Kuṣāṇa and do not show the regularity of proportion and equipoise of the regular Gupta type of images of the Benares school. These two images prove that there is marked differentia between the products of the Mathurā school and those of the Benares and Paṭaliputra School of the Gupta period; the marked features of the Kuṣāṇa School lingered on right up to the middle of the 5th century A.D., when they were modified by certain influences which were simultaneously at work all over the country.