96. Plan of Ionic Monastery, Shah Dehri. (From a Plan by General Cunningham.) Scale 50 ft. to 1 inch.
97. Ionic Pillar, Shah Dehri. (From a Drawing by General Cunningham.)
The extraordinary classical character and the beauty of the sculptures found in these Gandhara monasteries is of such surpassing interest for the history of Indian art, that it is of the utmost importance their age should be determined, if it is possible to do so. At present, sufficient materials do not exist in this country to enable the general public to form even an opinion on any argument that may be brought forward on the subject; nor will they be in a position to do so till the Government can be induced to spend the trifling sum required to bring some of them home. They are quite thrown away where they now are; here, they would hardly be surpassed in interest by any recent discoveries of the same class. Pending this, the reader must be content with such a statement of the argument as may be put forward by those who have access to photographs and such materials as are not available to the general public.[216] It it is understood that General Cunningham intends to publish photographs of the 165 objects in his collection. When this is done, it will supply the want to a certain extent, but a really correct judgment can only be formed on an actual inspection of the objects themselves.
Among Indian antiquaries there are two different views as to the age of these sculptures, regarding either of which a great deal may be urged with a considerable degree of plausibility. The first is, that the Bactrian 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 Bactria established a school of classical art in the Peshawur valley. It further assumes 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. This is the view adopted by General Cunningham, who, however, admits that, as all the sculptures are Buddhist, the earliest must be limited to the age of Kanishka, which he assumes to be about B.C. 40,[217] and that they extend to A.D. 100, or thereabouts.
The other theory equally admits the presence of the classical element, derived from the previous existence of the Bactrian Greeks, but spreads the development of the classical feeling through Buddhist art over the whole period during which it existed in the valley, or from the 1st to the 7th or 8th century of our era, and ascribes 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 Bactrians.
Confining the argument as much as possible to the instances above quoted, either it is that these Corinthian capitals are a local development of forms the Greeks took with them to Bactria, or they were executed under Western influence when the classical orders had lost their original form, after the age of Constantine. We know perfectly the history of the Corinthian capitals in Italy, in Greece, and in Syria, between the ages of Augustus and Aurelian at all events (A.D. 270); and we know that it requires a practised and well-educated eye to distinguish between the capitals of the Pantheon of Agrippa and those last executed at Baalbec or Palmyra. The entablatures show considerable progress, but the capitals were so stereotyped that it is evident, if any Greek or Roman artists had designed capitals in Gandhara during the period just alluded to, we could predicate exactly what they would have been. After Constantine, however, the design of the capitals went wild, if the expression may be used. The practice of springing arches from them, instead of their supporting horizontal architraves, required a total change, and in the West it produced exactly the same effects that we find in Gandhara. The capitals, for instance, in the churches of St. Demetrius and that now known as the Eski Jouma at Salonica, both built in the early part of the 5th century, are almost identical in design with these;[218] and many in the churches in Syria and Asia Minor[219] show the same “abandon” of design, though frequently in another direction.