164 



V. A. Smith— Groeco-Roman influence 



[No. 3, 



cuted subsequent to the reign of Constantino, I cannot agree with him. 

 They belong rather to the Antonine period, and may be referred with 

 approximate correctness to A. D. 250, the Indian development being 

 necessarily a little later than its Roman original. 



I do not know whether true structural arches, carried on Corin- 

 thian pillars, were employed in the construction of the Gandhara monas- 

 teries or not, but it is probable that they were ; for the reliefs show 

 numerous examples of arches carried on such pillars, and used as deco- 

 ration. 



Mr. Fergusson's hint that it would perhaps be more accurate to 

 call the Indo-Corinthian capitals Byzantine than either Greek or Roman 

 does not seem to me a fruitful one. The term Byzantine may, of course, 

 be used with reference to any Roman art of the fourth century,* to 

 which pei'iod some of the Gandhara sculptures must be referred, but 

 it generally connotes the formal, hieratic, and long stationary style of 

 later date, The good Gandhara works do not seem to me to be charac- 

 terized by the hieratic stiffness which is the special note of Byzantine 

 art, although some of them are closely related to works executed in 

 the reign of Constantiue ; and when tho school began to decay, the art 

 of Gandhara passed, not into Byzantine formalism, but into Hindu 

 barbarism. 



When Mr. Fergusson wrote, the erroneous date which he assumed 

 for the Amaravati rails, and the inferences which he drew from the 

 discovery of the coin of Yaso Varman in the great tope at Manikyala 

 predisposed him to assign an unduly late date to the Gandhara school. 



Mr. Fergusson rightly observed that some of the Gandhara sculp- 

 tures might be mistaken for early Christian works, but he did not 

 follow out the hint thus given, and the remark, though perfectly true, 

 has not attracted much attention. He supported the observation by a 

 cursory reference to the early Christian sarcophagi and ivories. I have 

 examined the fine collection of ivories, original and casts, in the South 

 Kensington Museum, and, while admitting that some have really an 

 artistic relation with the Gandhara work, I venture to think that the 

 relation is not very close. 



The representation of Christ standing under a small arch, support- 

 ed on fluted columns, with florid capitals of a modified Corinthian form, 

 as seen on the front of the Brescia casket, dating from the fifth or sixth 

 century, is undoubtedly akin to the Gandhara representations of Buddha ; 

 and the procession of Joseph and his brethren on the Ravenna chair 

 recalls, though less vividly, some of the processional scenes of the 



Constantinople was formally consecrated as the Now Home in A. D. 330. 



