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

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164 ROMANO-INDIAN ART
temple, with a great arched niche rising to the
full height of the facade, must have been
distinctly reminiscent of the iwans of such
structures as Ctesiphon and the grotto of
Taq-i-Bustan.
It can be stated in all fairness that the
kushans or Indo-Scythians themselves were
not an artistic people :
they had been nomadic
in origin, and when they came to India they
were exhausted by centuries of almost continuous
migration across the roof of Asia; if they
had any art at all, it may be assumed to have
consisted of the metal horse-trappings and
hunting gear that are generally the only and
necessary form of expression in such races. 10
All the art produced in the regions of India
conquered by the Kushans was made for them
in Gandhara, by foreign artisans and Indians
trained under Near Eastern supervision; at
Mathura, by Indian workshops that were a
continuation of the ancient native tradition of
sculpture and architecture. The chief contribution
of the Kushans to Indian and Asiatic art
history was the patronage which made possible
the flourishing of two of the most important
schools of Indian art: 11 the Gandhara school,
with its development of the iconography of the
Buddha image and the Buddha legend, and the
Mathura school, that marked the first really
Indian development of a mature language of
form dedicated to religious art. As we shall see,
these two contributions, iconographic and
stylistic, fuse in the magnificent Renaissance of
Gupta art.