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Sidelights on the Life Time Sandalwood Image of Mahâvîra
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controversy and we need not repeat all the arguments advanced by supporters of the Gandhara and the Mathura schools. True it is that, in the words of Dr. Nihar Ranjan Ray, the "Hellenistic inspiration of the Gandhara art is undeniable, even though transformed by SakaKusana and Indian tastes and perceptions. Figures of the Buddhist pantheon, in uding that of the Buddha himself, with iconographic marks and attributes of Indian tradition, are rendered in terms of identical characters of the Graeco-Roman pantheon."20 The Bimaran reliquary, acknowledged as the earliest known product of this school, cannot be placed earlier than C.30 B.C. Dr. A. Foucher, an eminent supporter of the Gandhara origin, writes: "Buddhist Iconography was developed in North-Western India by the Indo-Greeks converted to Buddhism."21 The Indo- Greeks who read or heard from Buddhist works could also have heard of the Indian conception of a Great Man, that is about the maha-puruso-lasyana which formed Indian standards for a Buddha or a Jina Image. And the Jina image did exist in India as is evidenced by the find of the Mauryan torso of a Jina image from Lohanipur near Patna and from some of the Jaina specimens from Mathura assignable to the first century B.C. We must also remember that the 'Yaksa Bhagavan was already in worship and the existence of a temple of Vasudeva is inferred from Besnagar inscriptions.22 The Buddha is not represented in iconic form in the second century B.C. at Buddha Gaya, Bharhut, Sanchi or Amaravati. But it stands to reason if the origin of the Buddha image in India is synchronised with the rise of the Mahayana school of thought in the first century B.C. By Buddha Image we understand here the image of Buddha used as an object of worship in Buddhist shrines and the possibility of a rare (later) memorial statue or a contemporary sandalwood image of Buddha carved under royal patronage need not be discarded.23
Foucher writes: "Once the idea of Buddha's image had established itself idea description of the Indian Saviour helped in. the growth of this abstraction in visual form, which had been first painted and finally sculptured by some unknown artist who had evidently received training in the Greek ateliers ...We have reason to believe that the first images were produced before the downfall of the Yavanas on the initiative of the Greek governors of Puskaravati....the realisation of the Gandhara art dates perhaps from the first century B.C."24
