The Age of the Imperial Guptas c9.61

c9.61

It is in the treatment of the bas-reliefs that we notice for the first time another difference between the Gupta schools of the East and the Centre; the treatment of the female bust. Female figures of the Mathurā school, which can be definitely assigned to the Gupta period are very rare, but such figures are more abundant in Central India and in the Eastern countries. A comparison instituted between the busts of female figures discovered at Besnagar,¹ Pathari,² Benares,³ Rajgir,⁴ and Tezpur⁵ in Assam prove that the artists of Northwestern and West-central India depicted full over-developed busts of the aboriginal type, while those of the East followed the more slender development of the female torso in the North-eastern Provinces. The difference is perhaps much more accentuated in the bust of the *Apsarās*, an accessory figure in one of the images in the Gwalior museum.¹