Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/253

CHAP. VII. GANDHARA MONASTERIES. 219 recently, however, the solution of most of the questions relating to these sculptures has been taken out of our hands by the French mission to India to study the materials on the spot ; and M. Foucher has arranged and illustrated them with such acumen that his work becomes a standard one on the subject. 1 Among Indian antiquaries different views have been held as to the age of these sculptures, General Cunningham's opinion was that the Baktrian Greeks carried with them into Asia the principles of Grecian sculpture and the forms of Grecian architecture, and either during their supremacy or after their expulsion from Baktria established a school of classical art in the Peshawar valley. This view further assumed that, when Buddhism was established there under Kanishka and his successors, it bloomed into that rich and varied development we find exhibited in these Gandhara monasteries. He admitted, however, that, as all the sculptures are Buddhist, the earliest must be limited to the age of Kanishka, which he assumed to be about B.C. 4O, 2 and that they extend to A.D. 100, or thereabouts. Another theory equally admitted the presence of the classical element, derived from the previous existence of the Baktrian Greeks, but spread the development of the classical feeling through Buddhist art over the whole period during which it existed in the valley, or from the ist to the 7th or 8th century of our era, and ascribed its peculiar forms as much, if not more, to constant communication with the West, from the age of Augustus to that of Justinian, rather than to the original seed planted there by the Baktrians. 3 Neither view satisfactorily met the conditions, and, in 1890,* Monsieur Emile Senart reviewed the question afresh and argued that the priestly type of Buddha with the nimbus a veritable mark of the Grseco-Buddhist school first appearing on the coins of Kanishka, supplies one limit. And next, the regular appearance of this same type among the Amaravati sculptures, testifies that, when they were carved, the art of the north-west of India had a fixed type, and had extended its influence to the south-east of the peninsula ; and since the Andhra inscriptions engraved on them cannot be assigned to a later date than the 2nd century The English reader will find an | Mr. Fergusson, placing its epoch in A.D. account of these sculptures generally and of their origin in ' Buddhist Art in India,' with 154 illustrations (London, 1901). 'Archaeological Reports,' vol. v. , 78 ; and the other, ably supported by Dr. j. F, Fleet and already referred to, throw- ing it back to B.C. 57, ante, p. 29. 3 'Journal R. Institute Brit. Architects,' 3rd ser. vol. i., 1894, pp. 93ff. Introduction, p. vi., and Appendix pp. 4 'Journal Asiatique' VHIe serie, tome I 93" I 94- The date of Kanishka has long i xv. pp .139-163. See also the remarks of been a matter of controversy, the principal Count Goblet D'Alviella, ' Ce que 1'Inde views respecting his era, being that of doit a la Grece,' pp. 58, 630.