The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c33.52

v1.c33.52

It was during the Scytho-Parthian supremacy that the local school of Buddhist art, known as the Gandhāra School, must first have sprung into being. The story of this school belongs to a subsequent chapter; for it was under the rule of the Kushāṇa kings that it produced the majority of the sculptures which have made it famous. But that it had taken shape long before the Kushāṇas came upon the scene, is evident from the fact that the types of the Buddha peculiarly associated with it, and the evolution of which presupposes a long period for its achievement, were already fixed and standardised in the reign of Kaniskha, and that the influence of the school had penetrated by that time as far as the banks of the Jumna. Unhappily, among the many thousands of sculptures by which it is represented, there is not one which bears a date in any known era, nor do considerations of style enable us to determine their chronological sequence with any approach to accuracy. Nevertheless, it may be taken as a general maxim that the earlier they are, the more nearly they approximate in style to Hellenistic work, and, accepting the relic casket from the *stūpa* of Shāh-ji-ki-dherī as a criterion of age, it may safely be asserted that a number of them, distinguished by their less stereotyped or less rococo character, are anterior to the reign of Kanishka. One of the earliest of these, if we accept the judgment of Mons. Foucher, is the Buddha image reproduced in Pl. XXXIV, 89, which is certainly conspicuous among its fellows for its graceful and restrained simplicity. Yet, even of this image the type is demonstrably a well matured one, and, if we would seek for the beginnings of the school, we must look still further back and learn from the Bīmarān casket and other antiquities of that time the process by which Hellenistic art came into the service of Buddhism.