Boddhisatvas Note of Ghandara

Bodhisattvas or Deified Kings: A Note on Gandhara SculptureAuthor(s): Benjamin Rowland Jr.Reviewed work(s):Source: Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America, Vol. 15 (1961), pp. 6-12Published by: University of Hawai'i Press for the Asia SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20067027 .

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Bodhisattvas or Deified Kings: A Note on Gandhara Sculpture

Benjamin Rowland, Jr.

Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Nearly every collection of Gandhara sculpture has its statues with figures in

princely dress, turbaned and bejewelled, and generally labeled "Bodhisattva."

Sometimes, these figures are designated as Siddh?rtha, Maitreya, or even as

other members of the Buddhist pantheon. There has always been a question in the

writer's mind on the validity of these identifications. The present study is not directed

towards establishing the identity of the various Bodhisattvas portrayed, a question that

requires a separate and intensive iconographical investigation.

This article, in other words, is not an attempt to explore the problem of which Bodhisattvas these figures represent but an examination of

the justification for describing them as Bodhi sattvas at all, an aspect of the subject that is

obviously intimately related to the stylistic char

acter of these images as well. In this later con

nection, it is proposed to analyze the style of

the Gandhara Bodhisattvas with special regard for their affiliations with Indian and Western

prototypes.

The first impression which the beholder has of these statues is of Apollo-like youths, weighted down by an elaborate and sumptuous dress com

posed of a variety of Indian, northern Asiatic,

and classical articles of dress. The way in which

these figures are enveloped in their heavy and

voluminous costumes even carries a faint remi

niscence of the famous statue of King Mausolus

of Caria. Their ponderous dignity, which in

part derives from these opulent accoutrements,

makes us feel in the presence of royal person

ages. Although not even the best of these images are anatomically perfect in proportion, they have none of the rigidity of Parthian and Kushan

effigies but are strikingly reminiscent of Graeco

Roman precedent both in the suggestion of a

kind of physical suppleness and in many indi vidual details.

When they were first discovered in the 19 th

century by General Cunningham these images were identified as portraits of rulers. They were later recognized as Bodhisattvas by Gr?n

wedel, and subsequent to this Coomaraswamy reverted to the original identification as Rajahs,

perhaps, like the later royal portraits of Cam

bodia, shown in the guise of divine beings.1

A number of particularly beautiful Bodhi sattvas in the Royal Ontario Museum present us with a variety of problems regarding the

real identity and stylistic evolution of these

images. The first of these is the usual portrayal of a youthful personage in royal costume, con

sisting of dhoti, overmantle, and a variety of

torques and necklaces ornamenting the nude

torso (Fig. 1 ). The figure holds a kundik? in the left hand and for this reason is perhaps to be identified as Maitreya; in the plinth are rep resentations of two Buddhas seated in medita

tion to right and left of what appears to be an

alms bowl surmounted by a royal umbrella. The

Buddhas are attended by two figures in monastic

dress. The two Buddhas are probably representa tions of S?kyamuni and Maitreya, and the bowl

is probably the patra of Buddha, which, accord

ing to legend, rose magically to the Tushita

Heaven where it was reverently received by the

Bodhisattva Maitreya. As Fa Hsien reported, "The Thousand Buddhas of this Bhadra Kalpa

will all of them use this same alms dish."2

An esthetically even more attractive statue

is a black schist image of a royal personage (Fig. 2). The figure wears an undergarment or an

taravasarka, which falls in the usual archaistic

swallowtail pleats. Over this the personage wears

a voluminous shawl or cloak, which passes over

6



Fig. 1. Standing bod hisattva, Maitreya (?) Gandhara, 2nd-3rd century A.D. Black schist.

Height: 34l/i inches. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.

the left shoulder and is rolled around the left arm. These garments are evidently the "two

white robes" which, according to the Kadam

bari, the king puts on after his bath, or the two

articles of royal costume mentioned by the

Buddhacarita.' The hair falls in long ringlets to

the shoulders, and on the top of the head it is

gathered together by a network of jewels termi

nating below the krobilos in a half-length female

figure who holds two of the strands in her

hands. The face of this princely figure with its

arched eyebrows is bilaterally symmetrical, and in spite of a rather masklike dryness of

execution is still peculiarly classical in feeling (Fig. 3). The prototype, even to the cutting of

the eyes and mouth, is to be found in models

like the Capitoline Venus1 or the Apollo Belve

dere (Fig. 4). Around the neck is a wide torque

Fig. 2. Royal Portrait or Bodbisattva, Gandhara, 2nd-3rd century. Black schist. Height: 49

inches. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.

decorated with coinlike medallions, and in the

center a completely classical bust of a bearded

deity, perhaps Herakles, draped and holding a

club in his left hand. This object is strikingly similar to a number of objects of Alexandrian

manufacture including a copper bangle from

Taxila (Fig. 5).n In addition to this torque the

figure wears a necklace terminating in two

dragon heads holding a cabuch?n in their

mouths.

The technique of the drapery of this figure with its multiple ridge-like folds has many paral

lels in Gandhara reliefs and Roman portrait statues of the 1st century A.D., as, for example, the two statues of Livia, one from the Villa dei

Misteri at Pompeii, the other in the Bardo Palace

in Tunis.0

7



Fig. 3. Detail of head, of Fig. 2.

%& ' 3*1'

Fig. 5. Copper bangle. Archaeo

logical Museum, Taxila.

Fig. 4. Head of the Apollo Belvedere. Late Hellenistic. Rome, Vatican Museum.

Fig. 6. Head of a Royal Personage, or the Bodhisattva Siddh?rtha. Gandhara. Slate. Philadelphia Museum of Art.

g



The Graeco-Roman stylistic ancestry of this

and other portrait statues is not hard to find.

The refined, somewhat effeminate facial type of the young noble is a derivation from the late

Hellenistic ideal of the Apollo Belvedere, and even the fashion of wearing the hair in a braided

topknot or krobilos in examples like the head in the Philadelphia Museum follows the fashion of the Greek sun god (Fig. 6). The modelling of the body in a rather smooth generalized fashion with an almost complete suppression of

the muscular structure is somewhat reminiscent

of the Graeco-Roman tradition, but, as will be

explained below, is essentially even more formal

ized. Closest of all to Western precedents is the

manner of representing the skirt in a series of

stiff, swallow-tail shapes, with the folds repre sented by hard, schematized lines. This is a style that closely copies the Neo-Attic archaistic

fashion for imitating the drapery of the earliest

styles of Greek sculpture.7 Although as portraits these donor figures may appear extremely ideal

ized, they are at the same time extraordinarily realistic in the representation of details of cos

tumes. The sculptor has been at pains to repro duce with considerable fidelity the form of the turban pins, the earrings, and jewelled torques,

which correspond closely to actual specimens of

jewelry that have been found at Taxila and elsewhere. With similar fidelity the carver has

represented the golden armlet and the amulet

boxes strung across the chest (Fig. I).8

There is not a single example of these bejewelled

portrait statues known to me that reveals the

remotest comprehension of the organic articu

lation of the body in the Graeco-Roman sense.

The actual anatomy has something of the archaic

combination linear definition and modelling that

marks the early Indian images but lacks any

suggestion of vitality and breathing life. There

is more pattern than form or suggestion of

growth in structure or pose, so that the impres sion is very much the same sort of ornamental

patternization that we discern in the treatment

of drapery. The figures appear like the work

of provincials?Syrian, Parthian, or Indian, it

does not matter?who evidently learned some

of the superficial tricks of the technique of Roman sculpture and certain formulae, with

out ever being able to grasp the underlying

problems of the formal physical organization and articulation of the body. The figures are a

combination of many separately composed units ;

some parts, like the faces, are often of real

beauty, but without any sense of fundamental

unity, anatomical or aesthetic. Insofar as it is

possible to be specific chronologically, the mod

elling of the bodies is like a further simplifica tion or Indianization of the structure vaguely reminiscent of the Phidian style that appears in

some carving of the Antoine Period.

A statue of a Bodhisattva in the Indian Mu

seum, Calcutta provides an illustration of how

the sculptors who came to Gandhara adapted the formulae of representing Roman dress for

the costume of this princely figure in Gand

hara (Fig. 7). The Gandhara figure is repre sented wearing a robe which leaves one shoulder

exposed and a mantle, the heavy folds of which

pass in front of the body and are supported by the arms. This is an arrangement which approxi

mates the dress of a number of Roman female

portraits, one formerly in the Altes Museum in

Berlin,9 the other in the museum at Aix-les

bains.10 Both are presumably of the early first

century A.D. The schematization of the drapery of the Gandhara statue into so many attenuated

lancet shapes, with the crests of the folds in

sharp ridges, represents a conventionalization of

the structure of these Roman prototypes. But

the feeling for the separate voluminous exist

ence of the drapery is there, as well as the classic

revelation of the full bodily form. It could be said that the relationship of pieces like this to

Roman originals is very much the same as the

relationship of the famous Visitation group at

Reims to a classical prototype (Figs. 8 and 9).n

In these Gothic figures at Reims the drapery,

although preserving something of the volumi

nous character of the classical original, is re

ordered in a system of line-rhythms that sug

gests the manipulations of a Gothic calligrapher, the stone equivalents of Villard d'Honnecourt's

linear translations of classical garments.12 The

faces are, of course, animated by spiritual ex

pressiveness unknown to classic art. Similarly, in the Gandhara image, although the folds and

arrangement appear close to a Graeco-Roman

model, a certain stiffness and formalization have

begun to transform the garment into a more

linear Oriental mould. The facial mask, reminis

cent of the classical ideal, has something of the

symmetry and rigidity which we associate with

Parthian art. The jewels are of course taken

from real Indian ornaments, and although this

insistence on the actual is part of Roman por

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Fig. 8. The Visitation. Reims Cathedral. 13 th century, Gothic.

Fig. 9. Portrait of Agrippina Roman. National Museum, Athens.

Fig. 7. Royal Portrait, or

Bodhisattva. Gandhara.

Indian Museum, Calcutta.

traiture, the addition of such regalia to cult

images is part of the old Indian tradition.

A question which should be raised in relation to the date of the Gandh?ra statues of Buddhas

and Bodhisattvas is their connection with the

copies of these Indian statues in China. Do the

latter bear the relation of Roman copies to

Greek originals of centuries earlier or are they

replicas of cult images which are still being made in Gandh?ra at approximately the same

time as these Chinese facsimiles? Japanese schol ars have dated the Gandh?ra type Buddha in the Fogg Museum and the gilt bronze Bodhi sattva of the Fujii Collection in Kyoto in the late third century, so that it is in the realm of

possibility that these icons are either imports from Gandh?ra or copies made while the Gand

h?ra school was still in existence as an active

center.13 The figure in the Fujii Collection ac

tually seems more like a Chinese copy, since it

has the formalized features and enlargd head and

Fig. 10. Gold Amulet boxes. Archaeological Museum, Taxila.

hands which came to be a typical stylistic aspect of Six Dynasties sculpture in China. But in every other respect it is an accurate replica of the

typical Gandh?ra Bodhisattva.

The realism of these sainted portraits extends to the representation of details. The jewels are all

representations of actual bracelets and torques, such as have been found at Taxila and else

where. Some of this jewelry was undoubtedly

imported from the Roman world, such as the

necklace with the bust of a bearded Herakles

figure; the armlets with their dragon ornaments

are perhaps Sarmatian imports. Actual turban

pins with figures in repouss? have come to light at Taxila.14

An iconographical feature which testifies to

the essentially human character of the Gandh?ra

Bodhisattva is the charm boxes which he wears

on one or more chains across the chest (Fig. 1).

10



This is a reflection of a custom going back to

the amulet-loving aborigines who believed that

the wearer of such spells bore a charmed life.15

These spells or dharanis?talismanic sets of words of magic import?enclosed in the little caskets are an exotic device of animistic origin, adapted

by the Buddhists for the purpose of protecting superstitious humanity against specific fears and

dangers in the external world by the outward means to which it had long been accustomed.

It may be noted that various types of charms

and amulets are worn by deities at S?nchi and Bh?rhut.16 Amulet boxes of exactly the same

type worn by the Gandh?ra figures have been found at Taxila (Fig. 10).

Besides the fact that they are representations of sainted personages in Indian royal dress, the

so-called Gandh?ra Bodhisattvas show little rela tion iconographically or stylistically to the por

trayal of the yaksas, nagas, and other deities in

the sculpture of the Sunga and Andhra Periods.

Although essentially elements of the costume, like the dhoti and armlets and necklaces, are

similar, the type and style of these articles are

just as different as is the style of carving the

figures as a whole.

It is noteworthy that the dress of the Gandh?ra Bodhisattva statues has no resemblance at all to

the accoutrement of the Kushan royal portrait statues, which has many affiliations with Par thian costume.17 The finery of the Gandh?ra

images must be modelled on that of a local native

nobility, princes of Indian or Indo-Greek race, who had no blood connection with the Scythian rulers. It is evident, also, that the facial types are unrelated to the features of the Kushanas as

we know them from their coins and fragmentary portrait statues. Kushan official art, as known in the Mat images at Mathura and the frag

ments from Surkh Khotal, is more related to western Asiatic forms as represented by the

royal effigies of Parthian and Sasanian date.18

There are no indications of any sponsoring of Buddhism by the Kushan rulers beyond the patronage of the faith by Kanishka, so that one

may well ask if the entire support for Buddhism and the Gandh?ra school came from the native

population; that is, a native Indian nobility de voted to Buddhism, whereas the religion of the Kushan ruling house, judging by their coins and the finds at Surkh Khotal, was of a decidedly syncretic nature.

One question which is raised by the figures in

the crowns of these so-called royal Bodhisattvas

is whether these attributes may really be used as a means of identifying these personages as

members of the Mah?y?na pantheon. The sub

jects represented in these turban pins vary con

siderably. There are not only miniature Buddha

figures but also representations of the Garuda

and a figure in a four-horse chariot.19 Some of

these, like the Garuda, have nothing to do with

the iconography of any of the great Bodhisattvas.

It should be noted that the appearance of figures of different types in headdresses or crowns is

not limited to Gandh?ra. In a number of Pal

myra busts small half-length figures appear in

the so-called conical modius headdress.20 It has

been suggested that possibly these miniature fig ures represent divinities worshipped by the per sons whose crowns they ornament, or that

possibly they represent badges of distinction

given by civic or religious authorities.21 It may be

that in some cases these Palmyra portraits rep resent priests wearing crowns with the image of

the god they served. A Hellenistic bust in the Vatican shows a personage wearing a diadem

with what looks like an enlarged medallion modelled from one of the early Seleucid coins with royal portraits. It has been suggested that

possibly this is a representation of Antiochus I

wearing a portrait medallion of his father Seleu

cus, or that possibly the head is simply a repre sentation of a priest attached to the royal cult

of one of the Seleucid monarchs.22 These parallels make one wonder if the richly attired Gandh?ra

figures, loosely described as Bodhisattvas, are not

in many cases representations of lay personages or donors wearing emblems in their turbans to

proclaim their attachment to the Buddha or

other members of the Buddhist pantheon. It is

obvious, of course, that individuals dressed in

the same type of costume are unmistakably

represented as donors bearing offerings in many Gandh?ra reliefs.

Another explanation for the representation of these personages in the crown and jewels of a maharaja is that some of them, at least, are

representations of S?kyamuni as a Bodhisattva.

Siddh?rtha, the prince, was a member of the

Kshatriya clan of the S?kyas, and until the mo ment of his Enlightenment had before him the career of a cakravartin. It might be possible, of

course, to identify all the figures wearing turban and jewels and no other recognizable attributes as Siddh?rtha. To this interpretation, of course,

may be added the suggestion advanced by

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Coomaraswamy that noble donors in Gandh?ra

may have had themselves represented as the

Bodhisattva Siddh?rtha, just as the Khmer rulers of Cambodia were often represented in the guise of Buddha, Siva, or Vishnu. Some of the figures, like the first example from the Toronto Mu

seum (Fig. 13) are just as certainly representa tions of the Bodhisattva Maitreya, who enjoyed a considerable cult in these regions, as attested

by the mentions by Fa Hsien and Hsiian Tsang.23

There is also the question of the occasional

Gandh?ra figures with miniature Buddha images in their crowns. Although the leading authority on the study of Avalokitesvara, Mlle. Marie

Th?r?se de Mallmann, has tentatively identified a number of heads and complete figures with

Buddhas in the turban as portrayals of the great

Bodhisattva, it is not at all sure that this identifi

cation is acceptable.24 Although the Amit?yus sutra with the earliest mention of Avalokitesvara

dates from the 2nd century A.D., the earliest

description of the Bodhisattva is not found until the 5th-century version of this sutra by Ka

layasas. Insofar as we know, the dhy?ni Buddhas are completely unknown in Gandh?ra, and so

the heads and isolated statues with Buddhas in their turbans may in reality be portrayals of lay

personages expressing their allegiance to Buddha

by wearing his likeness in their crowns. It is per

fectly obvious, of course, that this type was

adopted in later Mah?y?na Buddhist art in India to represent Avalokitesvara with Buddha Ami

t?bha in his diadem.

An image which has a bearing on this prob lem is another figure in the Toronto Museum,

which I once published in connection with a

wall-painting of a solar divinity at B?miy?n, the

identification of this image as a Bodhisattva now

seems to me decidedly unlikely.25 Nowhere in

later Mah?y?na iconography do we find a Bodhi sattva image with the attribute of a solar quad

riga in the crown. It seems much more likely that, following the western Asiatic parallels, this

is a representation of a donor with the object of

his personal worship in his crown, in this in

stance, the Buddha transfigured as Sun god.

It is difficult to know whether to call these Gandh?ra images likenesses in the true sense of

the word. It would be more accurate, perhaps to

describe them as transfigured likenesses, since

the actual appearance is coerced into the mould

of the godlike mien of Apollo to show that this

is a divine prince who, even though human, is

himself an incarnation of Buddha or the Sun god.

In the same way, as has been mentioned above, in Cambodia the portraits of living kings were

shown in the guise of Buddha or Siva or Vishnu, and the actual features of the man were subordi

nated to the completely ideal and abstract mass

of the divinity. Because of this imposed idealiza tion in Gandh?ra it was only a step to adapt these portraits of royal donors to representations of Buddha as a Prince and, ultimately, into the

images of the mythical Bodhisattvas. In this

transformed aspect the Gandh?ra royal statues

came to affect the art of all eastern Asia.

NOTES

1. A. Foucher, L'Art Gr?co-bouddhique du Gandh?ra, II, Paris,

1918, p. 211, n.l; A. Gr?nwedel, Buddhist Art in India, Lon

don, 1901, p. 182; A. K. Coomaraswamy, "The Origin of the

Buddha Image," The Art Bulletin, IX, 4, June, 1927, p. 309. 2. S. Beal, Budhist Records of the Western World, London,

1906, I, p. lxxviii.

3. Foucher, II, pp. 179-181; Beal, II, p. 75. 4. C Cecchelli, // Campidoglio, Rome, 1925, pi. 63. 5. Sir John Marshall, Taxila, III, Cambridge, 1951, pi. 18,

a-no. 18. 6. A. Maiuri, La Villa dei Misteri, I, Rome, 1931, p. 223; F. Poul

sen, Greek and Roman Sculpture in English Country Houses,

Oxford, 1923, p. 53, fig. 34. 7. H. B. Walters, The Art of the Romans, New York, 1911,

pi. XVI. 8. Marshall, III, pi. 191, h-no. 59, a-f.

9- A. Goldschmidt, Gotische Madonnenstatuen in Deutschland,

Augsburg, 1923, pi. 39. 10. M. Millard, Andrea Mantegna as Illuminator, Columbia Uni

versity, New York, 1957, fig. 20. 11. W. Worringer, Griechentum und Gotik, Munich, 1928, fig.

71,75. 12. Worringer, fig. 74. 13. S. Mizuno, Bronze and Stone Sculpture of China, Tokyo, I960,

p. 11, pis. 6, 7, 86, 87 a and b. 14. Marshall, III, pi. 190, 191, 196. 15. L. A. Waddell, "The 'Dharani' Cult in Buddhism," Ostasia

tische Zeitschrift, I, 1912-13, pp. 158-159. 16. Waddell, p. 159, fig. 2; for the Taxila amulet boxes, see

Marshall, III, pi. 191, h-no. 59, a-f. 17. B. Rowland, The Art and Architecture of India, Pelican His

tory of Art, II, Harmondsworth, 1956, pi. 43, 44. 18. Cf. Illustrated London News, Dec. 18, 1954, p. 1116, fig. 3.

19. Foucher, II, figs. 320, 398, 399; Marshall, III, pi. 191. 20. M. T. de Mallmann, "Introduction a l'?tude d'Avalokitesvara,"

Annales du Mus?e Guimet, 57, 1948, p. 126; H. Ingholt, "Palmyrene Sculpture in Beirut," Berytus, I (1934), p. 34. It is suggested here that the personages with figured medal lions in their crowns are priests of Bel or attached to ancestral

cults. 21. Cf. L. Robert, Bulletin de Correspondence Hell?nique, LIV,

1930, p. 264, n. 6. 22. Robert, p. 266; F. Bruckmann, Denkm?ler griechischer und

r?mischer Sculptur, 105, 106; A. Hekler, Greek and Roman

Portraits, London, 1912, pi. 124b.

23. The images of Maitreya Bodhisattva may be recognized by the

stupa and the crown, by the vitarka or dharmacakra mudra, by the chignon or krobilos, the distinctive hairdressing of a

Brahmin, and by the kundika or water-bottle, which again refers to the anticipated birth of the future Buddha into a

Brahmin household (Beal, II, p. 47: "In future years when this country of Jambudvipa shall be at peace and rest, and the age of men shall amount to 80,000 years, there shall be a

Brahmin called Maitreya.") 24. de Mallmann, op. cit., pp. 121, 125. 25. B. Rowland, "Buddha and the Sun God," Zdmoxis, I, 1938,

pi. VII.

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Boddhisatvas Note of Ghandara