The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c33.24.4

v1.c33.24.4

In these, occasional traces of mental abstraction, due to force of habit, are still visible, and they all show the same aversion to depth, but the individual figures are conceived and modelled in general conformity with nature, not in a gradation of separate planes or as mere silhouettes, and are presented, moreover, at various angles and in a variety of natural poses. This superior execution is shared, also, by some of the sculptured balusters between the architraves of the eastern gateway, and it is significant that these balusters are further distinguished by the un-Indian countenances of the figures carved upon them and by the presence of Kharoshṭhī letters engraved as masons' marks in contradistinction to the Brāhmī characters which appear on the railing. The only rational explanation of these phenomena is that some of the sculptors engaged on this railing came from the north-west of India, where, thanks to western teaching, the formative arts were then in a more advanced state, and that these sculptors were responsible for the better class of reliefs, the inferior work being done by the local artists of Central India. In this connexion a special interest attaches to a *Garuḍa* pillar (Pl.