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

ROMANO-INDIAN
134
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ART
figures emerging from the depths of the shadowed
background are obviously carved in such
a way as to provide a very rich and dramatic
contrast in light and shade. The relief is a perfect
illustration of the strangely unhappy stylistic
mixture resulting from the combination of the
technically advanced and realistic methods of
Roman craftsmanship and the essentially archaic
and conceptual point of view of the native Indian
tradition. The whole is a strange combination
of the illusionistic depth and dramatized
chiaroscuro of Roman relief combined with the
old intuitive method of indicating spatial perspective
by placing the consecutive rows of figures
one above the other that we have already
seen at Sanchi and elsewhere. Another distinctly
non-Indian feature is the violent expression of
emotion, not only the gestures, but the facial
contortions of many of the figures emphasizing
their grief at the Lord's demise. This concern
with the expression of pathos and inner feeling,
suggestive of the so-called barbarian sarcophagi
of third-century Roman art, comes to be exploited
to an even greater extent in the final or
'Gothic' phase of sculpture in Gandhara. A final
illustration of the irreconcilable mixture of Classical
humanism and the iconographical demands
of Buddhism may be discerned in the figure of
the dying Buddha himself. According to the
ancient principle of hieratic scaling, the figure
is enormously larger than the forms of the
mourning disciples. This dualism becomes the
more apparent when we realize that the form is
not really conceived of as a reclining body at all,
but, like Western medieval tomb effigies, is
simply a standing Buddha type placed on its
side. This panel is probably to be dated in the
heyday of foreign workmanship in Gandhara,
in the late second or early third century a.d. 20
We are probably safe in concluding that,
whereas in the early centuries of Gandhara
sculpture the favourite medium for carving was
the blue schist and green phyllite of the region,
stucco or lime-plaster was employed for sculpture
as early as the first century a.d., and by the
third century a.d. had largely replaced stone as
the material for the decoration of stupas and
viharas. The malleable nature of this medium
made for a freedom of expression that eluded
the carvers of the intractable slate. Both stone
and stucco images were originally embellished
with polychromy and gold leaf. The use ofstucco
for architectural decoration had its origin in
Iran, and it may well be that the Sasanian
invasion of a.d. 241 was responsible for the late,
almost universal employment of stucco in all
Gandhara. Although the
famous Afghan site
of Hadda has become world-renowned as a
centre of late Gandhara sculpture, it should not
be overlooked that there are many fine specimens
in stucco from such north-west Indian sites as
Taxila, Sahri-Bahlol, and Takht-i-Bahi near
Peshawar. In the last centuries of the Gandhara
school it is difficult to make any distinction in
either style or technique between the sculptures
of the Kabul Valley, the Peshawar region, and
the religious establishments of Taxila in the
Punjab.
The sculpture of Gandhara seems to confirm
the testimony ofthe Chinese pilgrims on the pre-
.dominance of the Hinayana sect of Buddhism. 21
The subject-matter of the single statues is for
the most part restricted to representations of
the mortal Sakyamuni and the Buddha of the
Future, Maitreya. The reliefs, with the exception
of Bacchanalian scenes and other subjects
of Hellenistic origin, are devoted entirely to
illustrations of the life of Buddha and the
legends of his earlier incarnations. A number of
statues identifiable as the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara
and reliefs with multiple Buddha
images may be taken as the earliest examples of
Mahayana Buddhist sculpture.
Undoubtedly there was at one time a great
corpus of Gandhara sculpture in metal, of which
only a few small statuettes survive. There are,
however, even more interesting survivals in
this medium : from the early decades of the nine-