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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JUNE, 1909:
Buddhist monuments. The Buddha himself is not, however, represented. It is only when a new school of art had been started under the influence of Greek artists on the North-Western Frontier, that we meet with statues of the founder of the religion. I think M. Foncher is right in maintaining (1. c. pp. 333 and ff.) that the Buddhist art of Gandhara was not, at least originally, the work of Indian artists. It would, however, be unwise to infer that the Indian learnt to worship images from the Greeks or that the practice of adoring images of the Buddha was inaugurated by the semi-Greek population of the Panjab, as maintained by Fergusson and Cunningham (see Foucher, 1. c. p. 326). I do not intend to take up the question where and when the practice of making images of the Buddha was first started. My intention is only to remind of a few facts which show that the Indians had been making images before the rise of the Buddhist art of the Gandhåra school. It is probable that Professor Macdonell is mainly right when he says, "In the pre-Buddhistic phase of Indian religion from which Hinduism is directly descended, carved images of the gods and temples for worship were equally unknown. It is hardly to be expected that the very rudimentary art of that early age should have attempted to represent in an anthropomorphic form gods which were still felt to be the deifications of natural phenomena, such as sun, fire, sky, wind. And in the absence of images, structural places of worship would not be wanted." I do not, however, think that this characterisation applies to the time immediately preceding the rise of Buddhism. The gods who repeatedly play a role in the career of the Buddha are very far remote from being "felt as the deifications of natural phenomena," and there are no a priori reasons to show that they were not represented in images. On the contrary, it is a well-known fact that we find representations of Hindu gods on Buddhist monuments from a time previous to the rise of the Gandhåra school, which, so far as we know, first introduced images of the Buddha, It is, for my present purposes, sufficient to mention the representations of the goddess Sri in Udayagiri, Bharhut and Sanchi. The stereotype way in which she is everywhere represented points back to a long development and shows that there is no real objection against the theory that there existed images of Hindu gods at a comparatively early period.
The oldest Indian statues cannot, with any certainty, be ascribed either to Buddhism or to the Hindû Pantheon. They are the female statue found at Besnagar and the Parkham image, which is now in the Mathura Museum. The former is described as follows by Cunningham:3 "Close by... there is a colossal female statue, 6 feet 7 inches in height. The figure was broken in two pieces, and half buried in the ground. The arms are unfortunately gone, and, as there is no trace of either of the hands resting on the figure, the action is extremely doubtful. There is a small fracture above the right hip, where the right hand may have rested, but the fracture seems too small for such a purpose. But the statue is otherwise interesting on account of its curious and novel costume. The head-dress is a kind of turban of ornamented cloth twined with the hair in the shape of a bowl, which completely covers the top and back of the head from the brows to the neck. At the back two long broad plaits of hair hang down to the loins. In the ears are large massive ear-rings, like those of the Bharbut sculptures. There are several garlands and necklaces round the neck, the former hanging low down in front between the breasts. The body is covered by a jacket rounded in front, and it is ornamented with a broad border. Below this, there is the usual female sári, or sheet petticoat, with the gathers over the stomach, and hanging down in formal folds in front. But this petticoat reaches only to the mid-leg, and beneath it there appears a second, reaching down to the massive anklets on the feet. A broad sash or girdle passes round the body above the hips, and is tied in above in front of the stomach. Below it is the usual row of five strings of ornament resting on the loins. It is possible that this may be a portrait statue of Mâyâ Devi, for the profusion of ornament shows that it is not a religious figure. The similarity of the costume to that of many of the females in the Bharhut sculptures seems to point to the age of Asoka as the date of this statue, and this is
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Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. LVII., 1909, p. 317.
Report X., p. 44.
