1889.] 



on the GioHlzaUoH of Ancient India. 



treatment as the model of the miniature, and comparatively feeble, 

 adaptations of it by the Indian sculptors. The influence of Rome on 

 the sculptures at Janialgarhi, and the other works of the Gandluira 

 school, belonging to the same period, is so strongly marked that the 

 most probable conclusion is that the Indians derived their knowledge 

 of the artistic use of the Gigautomachia from Roman copies of Greek 

 works. 



I strongly suspect that the Indians borrowed from the Greeks the 

 giants themselves as well as the sculptured representations of their 

 battles. The Asuras of Hindu post-Vedic mythology are described as 

 fierce demons, enemies of the gods, and correspond closely with the 

 Greek giants. Recent research has proved, or at least rendered pro- 

 bable, the existence of so much Greek, and even Christian, influence on 

 the development of Hindu, mythology that the borrowing of the con- 

 ception of giants, enemies of the gods, offers no improbability. 



Whether the Buddhist sculptors of the Kabul valley intended their 

 snake-legged or winged monsters to be images of Asuras, or merely 

 used them as conventional imitative decoration I cannot undertake to 

 determine. 



A group, frequently recurring in Gandluira art, of which four ex- 

 amples have been photographed by Major Cole (Plates 1, 2, 4, and 17), 

 and one is in the Woking Museum, can bo demonstrated to be an adap- 

 tation of a famous composition by a known Greek artist. Another of 

 the ultimate Greek sources from which the sculptors of Gandhara 

 derived their inspiration is thus determined with certainty. I shall dis- 

 cuss this case with some fulness of detail. 



The group referred to represents a plump young woman, fully 

 draped, standing, held in the grasp of an eagle with expanded wings, 

 and is reasonably conjectured to represent the translation to heaven of 

 Maya Devi, the mother of Buddha, in order that she might bo born 

 again, as related in the Buddhist scriptures. However this may be, it is 

 quite impossible to doubt the correctness of Sir A. Cunningham's opinion, 

 as quoted by Major Cole, that the composition in question is an 

 adaptation of the Rape of Ganymede, a favourite subject of the later 

 Greek artists, and of their Roman imitators. 



The bronze work on this theme by Loochares (B. C. 372-330) was 

 considered a masterpiece of that famous artist of the later Attic school, 

 and was praised with enthusiasm by Pliny. 



The original has unfortunately perished, but soveral copies or 

 imitations of it, belonging to various periods, some executed in marble, 

 and some engraved on gems, are extant, and have been figured in many 

 well-known works on the history of art. 



