136 V. A. Smith — Grajco-Bomau infiwrm [No. 3, 



procession of Vices and Virtues, and that the soldiers may be inter- 

 preted as the escort. In his Catalogue he gives a somewhat different 

 explanation. 



Whatever be the correct interpretation of this strange composition, 

 it is certainly one of the best, and presumably among the earliest, 

 works of the Gandhara school. All the figures are well executed, and 

 the aged and monstrous heads in the upper compartment are carved 

 with great cleverness and spirit. It probably, like the Athene, belongs 

 to the pre- Roman period. 



Inasmuch as my object in this paper is not the publication of an 

 exhaustive monograph on the Gandhara school of sculpture, but the 

 presentation of a general view of the modes of Grreco-Roman influence 

 on India, though with special reference to the Gandhara sculptures, I 

 shall not proceed further in the detailed description of works from the 

 Kabul valley, which deal with subjects obviously belonging to the 

 domain of Buddhist mythology. 



Certain decorative elements, which are not peculiar to the Gandhara, 

 school, but also occur iu the earlier sculptures at Bharhut and Buddha. 

 Gaya in the interior of India, are mythological, but not in themselves, 

 so far as appears, specially connected with Buddhist mythology. I 

 allude to the hippocamps, centaurs, tritons, and various winged and 

 other monsters, which are frecpieutly met with. These forms, which 

 are certainly of Graco-Roman origin, so far as India is concerned, were 

 probably used by the Buddhist artists for purely decorative purposes, 

 without any definite symbolical meaning. Such monsters were common 

 in Greek art, and are supposed especially to characterize the works of 

 the followers of Scopas. 



The comic friezes in which boys are shown pulling cattle by the 

 tails, riding on lions, and disporting themselves in sundry fantastic ways, 

 are obviously not Indian in design. Major Cole's plate 26 illustrates a 

 tolerably good specimen from the Mian Khati monastery of such a comic 

 frieze, the figures iu which are boys mounted on lions. 



The direct model for these works was probably found iu Roman art. 

 Their ultimate source is to be traced to the Alexandrian compositions 

 depicting the " erotqpcegma (love-sports, amatory poems) of the Ana- 

 creontic school, iu which Eros becomes a boy, and rides all sorts of 

 wild animals and monsters, lions, panthers, boars, centaurs, hippocamps, 

 dolphins, dogs, and deer."* 



Among the remains of the Gandhara sculptor's work an extra- 

 ordinary abundance of detached human heads, chiefly executed in 

 stucco, is met with. 



* Perry, History of ijr^-l- amd limn.in Scttlptwe, p. 629. 



