attribute it to Asoka's time. Royal patronage of the Buddhist abbey of Sānchī continued for many centuries after the stūpa was built by Asoka. It is true that in technique it is fully equal to the best craftsmanship of the Mauryan period: it has, moreover, all the freshness and vitality of the early Sānchī school. But Buddhist orthodoxy did not allow a sculptured image of the Buddha, either as a King or a Guru, until long after Asoka's time. It is clearly the work of an early Gupta sculptor: the Gupta royal standards were of the same lotus pattern as those of Asoka, and at that time Mahāyāna Buddhism had sanctioned the worship of the Buddha's image both as the Teacher and as the King. In the earlier Hīnayāna school a Bodhisattva was only the name for one of the Buddha's previous existences as told in the jātakas: the idea of a divine ruler of the Sangha had not arisen, though the Patriarch of the Order was accorded royal honours as the representative of the Founder.
This torso is clearly distinguished from most Gupta sculpture in bearing no trace of Hellenistic or Gandharan influence, and brings fresh evidence to prove that Indian sculpture was not so deeply indebted to the Gandharan school as archæologists have maintained. The fine image of Sūrya, the Sun-god, from the temple of Kanārak, in Orissa (Pl. LVI, b), will enable us to realise what the missing head of the Bodhisattva was like. It also illustrates the wonderful continuity of Indian artistic traditions, for the two sculptures, though separated from each other by a distance of at least nine centuries,[1] have so many close correspondences that it might almost be thought they were works of the same school. Only the pose differs, for the Sun-god, driving his seven-
- ↑ The Kanārak temple was built between a.d. 1240 and 1280.
