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

ROMANO-INDIAN
172
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ART
method of construction is essentially the same.
In this case the individual folds of the Buddha's
robe were modelled on ropes attached to
wooden dowels driven into the stone core. This
technical expedient was doubtless intended to
reproduce on an enormous scale a late Gandhara
statue in which the Buddha's robe is reduced to
a series of strings clinging to the surface of the
body. It seems likely that if the smaller of the
two colossi is to be dated in the second or third
century a.d., the larger is at least two hundred
years later in execution.
These two statues present us with the first
appearance of the colossal cult image in
Buddhist art. There are a number of reasons,
both stylistic and iconographic, for these more
than life-size representations of the Great
Teacher. We have, of course, the precedent of
the famous colossi of the Greek world, and,
more nearly contemporary, the later Roman
fashion of erecting colossal images of the deified
Caesars. The purpose of a colossal image is twofold
:
to attract attention and command respect
by its gigantic dimensions and, by the same
token, to suggest the superhuman nature of the
personage portrayed. If the giant statues of
Constantine were intended to represent that
Emperor's role as Kosmokrator, the Bamiyan
statues, no less, were meant to indicate the
status of the Buddha as Mahdpurusa, or as
Brahma comprising all worlds within himself.
The iconography of the paintings decorating
the niches of the two colossi at Bamiyan leaves
no doubt that both were conceptions of
Sakyamuni as Lokattara or Lord of the World.
The influence of these first colossi of Mahayana
Buddhism on the Buddhist art of the entire Far
East is inestimable: one has only to think of the
rock-cut colossi at Yun Kang and Lung Men in
China; and even the great bronze Vairocana
dedicated at Nara in Japan of the Tempyo
Period (720-810) is an ultimate descendant of
the giants at Bamiyan.
The rock-cut architectural remains at
Bamiyan are interesting chiefly for the reproduction
of various domical forms that are
iconographically and stylistically derived from
Greco-Roman and Iranian sources. It may be
supposed that all these types existed in now
vanished free-standing buildings in Gandhara.
It is likely that these cupolas roofing the
sanctuaries and assembly halls at Bamiyan were,
in addition to their structural function, symbolical
embodiments of the sky. 16 In some of
the grottoes of Bamiyan there is a representation
of arched squinches making the transition
115. Bamiyan, Cave G
0123 7 FEET
2 METRES