The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c33.26

v1.c33.26

As at Bhārhut, many of these sculptures are relatively crude and coarse—the handiwork, no doubt, of inferior local craftsmen; but it needs no very critical eye to perceive that, taken as a whole, their style is considerably more developed than that of the Bhārhut reliefs and, at the same time, more pronouncedly affected by the influence of western art. Witness, for instance, in the matter of technical treatment, the freer movement of planes leading to more convincing spatial effect, the more organic modelling of the figures, the relative freedom of their pose and composition, and the effort to bring them into closer relationship one with the other; and witness, again, in the matter of motifs, the centaurs, winged monsters, and tritons, the schematic treatment of the animal friezes, and the scene of Sūrya in his four-horse chariot copied directly from a Hellenistic prototype (Pl. XIX, 51). These and many other features of the Buddh Gayā railing prove incontestably that at the time of its erection Indian sculptors were borrowing freely from the hybrid cosmopolitan art of Western Asia, in which Greek and Scythic, Persian and Mesopotamian cultures were blended and fused together, and that, partly under this alien inspiration, partly through their own initiative, they had made important progress since the time when the Bhārhut reliefs were executed. On the other hand, in point of development the reliefs of Buddh Gayā fall short of those on the *toraṇas* at Sānchī, which, as we shall see below, are to be assigned to the latter half of the first century B.C., and accordingly we shall probably not be far wrong if we assign the Buddh Gayā monuments to the earlier years of the same century. This date, let it be added, is substantiated by inscriptions on two of the rail pillars recording that they were presented by the Queens of King Indramitra and King Brahmamitra, respectively. These two kings have been plausibly identified with the two rulers of the same names, whose coins have been found in considerable numbers in Northern India, and who, whether they were connected with the Çuṅga dynasty or not, appear from the script of their coin legends to have flourished not earlier than the first century B.C. (pp. 525–6; Pl. V, 4, 6).