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

ROMANO-INDIAN
142
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ART
from the miniature stupas of tower-like proportions
found at Taxila and elsewhere [82].
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Although, as we have already seen, the Ionic
order was used in buildings during the Parthian
period at Taxila, Corinthian is almost universally
employed in the structures erected during
the Kushan era. The Corinthian capitals of
Gandhara have their nearest prototypes in Roman
provincial examples in Syria and Palestine.
There is nothing organic about the arrangement
of leaves and helices ; even the calyx cups from
which the spiralling fronds emerge in Classic
Corinthian have disappeared. In certain examples
[83] such an application of acanthus leaves
to a form recalling the ancient Indian bracket
type of capital results in a complete loss of the
basket-like shape of the Corinthian. In many
examples of Gandhara Corinthian capitals figures
of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are introduced
into the foliage, a combination ofelements
suggestive of the Composite form of Roman
order. Indeed, the predominance of the Corinthian
order, together with an almost total
absence of the Doric and Ionic in Gandhara
architecture of the Buddhist period, is one of
the strongest arguments in favour of the
entirely Roman origin of the whole school.
Sir John Marshall has attempted to establish
a chronology for Gandhara architecture on the
basis of the types of masonry found in buildings
of consecutive strata at Taxila. The buildings of
the Parthian Period, like the temple at Jandial
prior to the Kushan occupation in the first century
A.D., have their walls constructed of rubble,
a heterogeneous mixture of large and small
stones [78]. This type was replaced in the earliest
Buddhist structures by a variety of diaperpatterned
rubble with the interstices filled with
small stones or snecks [84]. In the latest types of
82. Model stupa from Jaulian.
Taxila, Archaeological Museum
Gandhara buildings at Taxila, dating from the
third century and later, this method was improved
by introducing courses of precisely cut
ashlar masonry alternating with layers ofrubble.