The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c33.44.4

v1.c33.44.4

but examined more closely they betray traces here and there of comparatively mature art, which suggest that their defects are due rather to the clumsiness and inexperience of the particular sculptors responsible for them than to the primitive character of plastic art at the time when they were produced. Accordingly, it seems probable that in this cave, as in the Manchapurī, the upper of the two floors was the first to be excavated, though the interval of time between the two was not necessarily a long one; and there is good reason, also, to suppose that the marked stylistic difference between the sculptures of the two storeys was the result of influence exercised directly or indirectly by the contemporary schools of Central and North-Western India. In this connexion a special significance attaches to the presence in the upper storey of a doorkeeper garbed in the dress of a Yavana warrior, and of a lion and rider near by treated in a distinctively Western-Asiatic manner, while the guardian door-keepers of the lower storey are as characteristically Indian as their workmanship is immature. It is significant, too, that various points of resemblance are to be traced between the sculptures of the upper floor and the Jain reliefs of Mathurā, where, as we have already seen, the artistic traditions of the North-West were at this time obtaining a strong foothold.