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

130 ROMANO-INDIAN ART
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Japan. 16 Iconographically, this relief is interesting
because it reveals the development of a new
tendency whereby the enormously enlarged
figure of the Buddha with appropriate gestures
and attributes stands for the event illustrated
and replaces the earlier narrative treatment of
such scenes.
Much more of a real invention than the standing
image of Buddha was the representation of
Sakyamuni seated with his legs locked in the
characteristic yoga posture. There was no Classical
precedent for such a representation, so that,
perforce, the conception had to be based on the
observation of actual models, combined with
the Eurasian sculptor's repertory of late Classical
types and techniques. 17
A typical example of the seated Buddha of the
Classical type is the relief from the monastery of
Takht-i-Bahi, now in the Dahlem Museum,
West Berlin [69]. The word 'relief here is advisedly
used, because, even though they suggest
the full round when viewed frontally, neither
this nor any other Gandhara Buddha is executed
in the round. Probably for the reason that they
were meant for installation in the niches of Buddhist
chapels, Gandhara images are generally
left entirely flat and unfinished at the back. The
present seated figure is stylistically the exact
counterpart of the image at Mardan. Here is the
same Apollonian facial type, and the deeply
pleated drapery reminiscent of Roman workmanship
of the first century a.d. Although in
the present instance there is some suggestion of
the presence of an actual body beneath the
mantle, the seated Buddha type in Gandhara
quickly degenerates into a completely inorganic
formula in which the head and trunk of the figure
are placed on top of a bolster-like shape
intended to represent the folded legs.
Since even the best of the seated Gandhara
69. Seated Buddha from Takht-i-Bahi.
Berlin-Dahlem, Staatliche Museen
Buddhas are no more than a representation of a
draped Greco-Roman adolescent in an unusual
pose, it is easy to see that the humanistic Classical
formula was entirely inadequate to the
task of portraying a personage imbued with the
ecstatic inner serenity of yogic trance. The Gandhara
sculptor has only established the type and
form of the anthropomorphic Buddha. It remained
for later generations of Indian sculptors
to suggest by appropriately abstract and ideal
means the pent-up, dynamic force and selfcontained
power of the Enlightened One.
In addition to the origin of the Buddha image,
the Gandhara school is probably to be credited
with the invention of the Bodhisattva type [70].
The portrait-like character of these figures suggests
that they may have been representations of
noble donors divinized as the Bodhisattvas
Siddhartha or Maitreya in the same way that
the Khmer rulers of Cambodia were shown in
the guise of Hindu or Buddhist deities. The
type of royal figure arrayed in all the finery of a
contemporary Indian Rakah is essentially the