The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

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124 ROMANO-INDIAN ART
Although coins arc generally regarded as
minor art, for periods like that of the Kushan
Scythians they furnish evidence invaluable for
the interpretation of the major arts. They provide
us with the complete evidence ofthe strangely
syncretic character of Kushan art and religion
Just as postage stamps to-day furnish the philatelist
with symbolical commentaries on the
economic and cultural environment of the countries
of issue, the Kushan coins provide an
advertisement of the religious and cultural relationships
of this dynasty. Kujula Kadphises
imitates the coins of Augustus [65 g]; deified
Rome has her place on the money of Huvishka
[65 k]. Judging from the array of deities to be
found on the coins of Kanishka and his successors,
the pantheon of the Kushans included not
only the Buddha [65 h], but, in addition to
Siva [65 j], representatives of the divinities of
Iran and Greece [65 E, f, i, and l], all identified
by inscriptions in corrupt Greek letters.
Under the Kushan emperors Gandhara enjoyed
its period of greatest prosperity, and it is
to this era that the finest Gandhara sculpture is
to be assigned. The dates of Kanishka's reign
have been the subject of considerable dispute
among scholars. Although the years a.d. 1 28 and
144 4 have been suggested for the beginning of
his reign, recent evidence favours a date from
78 to no as the year of his accession. Such a
date conforms very well with the development
of the Buddhist art of Gandhara, for which he
may well have been largely responsible. The
dynasty of Kanishka lasted about a hundred and
fifty years, since in a.d. 241 an invasion by
Shapur I of Iran brought to an end the rule of
the last sovereign of Kanishka's line, Vasudeva. 5
In c. 390 a lesser Kushan dynasty established
itself in north-western India until the fifth century
a.d. For the later history of Gandhara we
are dependent almost entirely on the accounts of
Chinese pilgrims who, as early as the fifth century,
undertook the long journey to the holy
land of Buddhism. Fa Hsien, who travelled
through the Peshawar Valley shortly after a.d.
400, describes the foundations of Kanishka and
his successors as flourishing and well cared for.
When his successor, Sung Yiin, visited the
region in 520, the country had already been overrun
by Mihiragula and the White Huns. It was
indeed only a few years after Sung Yiin's visit
that this ferocious barbarian virtually extirpated
Buddhism in Gandhara by his destruction
of the monasteries and butchery of the population.
When the last of the Chinese pilgrims,
Hsiian-tsang, came to north-west India a century
later, he found the country in a ruinous,
depopulated state, with most of the Buddhist
establishments in a state of complete decay.
Although all Buddhist art in Gandhara proper
came to an end with the invasion of the Huns,
the style survived in Kashmir and in isolated
Buddhist establishments in Afghanistan as late
as the seventh or eighth century a.d.
Although the period of its florescence follows
after the early Indian schools of the Maurya,
Sunga, and Andhra Dynasties, the art of Gandhara
is not in any way a continuation of this
indigenous tradition. Its geographical position
and the contacts between the Kushan rulers and
the West made for the development of a style
quite apart from the main stream of Indian tradition,
and in certain aspects almost entirely
Western in form. The subject-matter is, however,
Indian. The repertory of motifs already
known to the early Indian schools and the technique
of archaic Indian sculpture are to a limited
extent carried on in this outlying province of
Indian culture. There never was any real fusion
of Indian and Western ideals in Gandhara. The
arts of India and Gandhara advanced along
separate paths in different directions. Inevitably,
the inappropriateness of the humanistic
Classic forms of Western art for the expression
of the mystical and symbolic beliefs of Indian
Buddhism led to the disappearance of this
imported style with the development of the
truly Indian ideals of the Gupta Period.