Sacrificial table leg, 5th-3rd century BCE.
The Historical Museum of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

 

 

Buddhist influence

 

During the first centuries of our era, Bactrian sculpture received a strong Buddhist influence from India. The statues and reliefs at Air-tam and Stary Termez follow the Buddhist canons, but at the same time keep the stamp of the local school of sculpture.

 

The high-relief in white stone of the Fayaz-tepe monastery at Termez, represents Buddha seated in the shade of a tree surrounded by monks who look at him with a very canonical humility. The buildings of the Air-tam monastery are also decorated with sculptures in white stone. Excavations brought to light fragments of a great statue of Buddha and more recently a monumental block with an inscription in Bactrian-Kushan where Huvishka, king of the Kushan, Shodiya, the founder of the monastery, and the master Mehrzad, probably a sculptor, are mentioned.

 

The sculptures over the inscription are supposed to represent Shodiya and his wife (the figures are only half preserved). The legs are naked. The woman wears an ample garment. Her legs are crossed, bracelets adorn her ankles, characteristic details of Hindu art. Using real people as models of minor gods of Buddhist mythology, Bactrian sculptors were less restricted by the canons and were freer in their creations. Executed with the technique of sculpture in clay or plaster, the inhabitants of the sky (deva) of Dalverzin-Tepe, with their young and tender faces and curly hair divulge the models of Praxitele’s school. The delicate sculpture, creating a rich clair-obscure effect, the slight smile, the pensive gaze, all this gives a great spirituality to the faces. Representing the laity, the sculptors of Dalverzin-Tepe try to create not realistic but idealised portraits.

 

Although the individual lines of the face are preserved, signs of age, character or emotional state are absent. The social position of each character on the hierarchic scale is expressed by its size. The members of the dynasty are larger than life, their wives half their size, the noblemen even smaller.