Sculpture: Gandhara, Mathura and Amaravati Schools

The correct answer is B, the Gandhara school, which grew in the Peshawar valley and the north-west, a region long open to Hellenistic and later Roman culture, so the style is often called Greco-Buddhist or Indo-Greek. Its Buddhas have wavy hair, sharp features, muscular bodies and robes with thick naturalistic folds. Option A is wrong because the Mathura school is wholly indigenous, growing out of the older yaksha figures of the Yamuna region. Option C is wrong because the Amaravati school of the Krishna valley is also indigenous, and its mark is crowded narrative relief with slender figures. Option D is wrong because the Sarnath school belongs to the later Gupta age and produced the classical Indian Buddha in cream Chunar sandstone. All three of the first schools flourished between roughly the first century before the common era and the third century after it.

The correct answer is B, spotted red sandstone, quarried near Sikri in the Mathura region, a deep red stone flecked with cream and black spots that makes a Mathura piece recognisable at a glance. Option A is wrong because grey or bluish-grey schist is the stone of the Gandhara school in the north-west, which later also used stucco. Option C is wrong because white to greenish-white limestone belongs to the Amaravati school of the Krishna valley, so fine that its removed pieces are still called the Amaravati marbles. Option D is wrong because black basalt is the stone of the much later Pala sculpture of Bengal and Bihar and of some south Indian work, not of these three schools. Material is the fastest way to identify a school, so fix the three stones first: grey schist, spotted red sandstone, white limestone.

The correct answer is B, the Satavahanas, who ruled the Deccan from the first century before the common era, with the school continuing later under the Ikshvakus of the Krishna valley. Option A is wrong because the Kushanas, ruling the north, patronised both Gandhara and Mathura, and that is exactly the pairing this question tests. Option C is wrong because the Guptas belong to the fourth century onward and are associated with the Sarnath school and the classical Buddha image, not with Amaravati. Option D is wrong because the Mauryas, two centuries earlier, are associated with the polished sandstone pillars and capitals of Ashoka, including the Lion Capital at Sarnath, and with a period in which the Buddha was not shown in human form at all. The Satavahana capital was at Pratishthana, modern Paithan, and Gautamiputra Satakarni was their greatest ruler.

The correct answer is C, Amaravati. Its sculptors worked mainly in relief on the drum slabs and railings of the great stupa, filling each panel with figures that tell a story from the Buddha's life or from the Jataka tales, and their bodies are slender and elongated, bent in the triple flexion called tribhanga, so that the whole surface seems to move. Option A is wrong because the Gandhara school, though it also carved narrative panels, is identified by its realistic muscular figures and heavy Greek style drapery rather than by this slenderness. Option B is wrong because Mathura is identified by heavy, energetic, broad-shouldered figures in spotted red sandstone. Option D is wrong because the Sarnath school of the Gupta age is known for the calm, smooth, free-standing Buddha with wet drapery. Amaravati relief also uses the lotus medallion and the pot and garland motif.

The correct answer is A, covering both shoulders in thick folds. The Gandhara sculptor treated cloth as a Roman sculptor did, with deep, heavy, naturalistic folds falling over both shoulders, and the halo behind the head is left plain. Option B is the description of the Mathura Buddha, whose robe is so thin that it is almost transparent, covers the left shoulder and leaves the right bare, with a richly decorated halo; this is the single commonest point of confusion between the two schools and is tested constantly. Option C is wrong because no school shows the robe on the right shoulder alone. Option D is wrong because the Buddha is never shown bare above the waist, though Jain tirthankara images from Mathura are shown without clothing, which is one way to tell them apart from Buddha figures.

The correct answer is B, the Kushanas, whose empire stretched from Central Asia across the north-west into the Ganga plain, so that both Gandhara in the Peshawar valley and Mathura on the Yamuna lay within it. Kanishka, the greatest Kushana ruler, is linked with both, and the Kushanas also set up royal portrait statues at Mat near Mathura. Option A is wrong because the Satavahanas ruled the Deccan and patronised Amaravati. Option C is wrong because the Shungas, who followed the Mauryas, are associated with the earlier railing and gateway art of Bharhut and Sanchi, in which the Buddha appears only as a symbol. Option D is wrong because the Guptas came later and are linked with the Sarnath school. Kanishka's court is also connected with the fourth Buddhist council in Kashmir, the poet Ashvaghosha and the physician Charaka.

The correct answer is B, Mathura, the broadest of the three schools in subject matter. Besides Buddhist figures it carved the earliest known images of the Jain tirthankaras, found at the Kankali Tila mound, and the earliest images of Brahmanical deities including Vishnu, Shiva, Surya, Balarama and Kubera, along with a long line of yakshi figures. Option A is wrong because the Gandhara school worked almost entirely on Buddhist subjects, with no Jain and essentially no Brahmanical images. Option C is wrong because Amaravati is a Buddhist school, devoted to the stupa and to narrative scenes from the Buddha's life and the Jatakas. Option D is wrong for both of the reasons just given. This breadth is why Mathura is called the first truly pan-Indian workshop, and why its influence outlasted Gandhara's.

The correct answer is B, the Krishna. Amaravati lies in the lower Krishna valley in Andhra Pradesh, and the other sites of the same school, Nagarjunakonda, Jaggayyapeta, Ghantasala and Bhattiprolu, are in the same stretch of country. The stupa itself is called the Mahachaitya, and it was surveyed by Colin Mackenzie in 1816, after which many of its sculptures were removed and are now held chiefly by the British Museum in London and the Government Museum at Chennai. Option A is wrong because the Godavari, though the larger river of the region, is not the valley of this school. Option C is wrong because the Kaveri belongs to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and to a much later tradition of Chola bronzes and temples. Option D is wrong because the Mahanadi is in Odisha and Chhattisgarh and is associated with sites such as Udayagiri and Khandagiri.

The correct answer is C, the wheel, the dharmachakra, which stands for the first sermon delivered in the deer park at Sarnath, an event called the dharmachakra pravartana, the turning of the wheel of law. Option A is wrong because the lotus, often with an elephant, stands for the birth of the Buddha at Lumbini. Option B is wrong because the horse stands for the Great Departure, the night on which Siddhartha left Kapilavastu, and the riderless horse is the usual way of showing it. Option D is wrong because the stupa stands for the mahaparinirvana, the passing away at Kushinagar. One more symbol completes the set: the bodhi tree stands for the enlightenment at Bodh Gaya. This symbolic or aniconic phase belongs to Bharhut and Sanchi and ended when Gandhara and Mathura began carving the Buddha as a man.

The correct answer is B, Mat near Mathura, where the Kushanas built a shrine with a gallery of royal portrait statues, an idea quite new in India and probably borrowed from Central Asian and Iranian practice. The best known of them is the standing figure of Kanishka in spotted red sandstone, broken at the neck, whose inscription names him Maharaja Rajatiraja Devaputra Kanishka, and it is now in the Government Museum at Mathura. Option A is wrong because Taxila, in the Gandhara region, is famous for its monasteries, its university tradition and its Buddhist sculpture, but not for this statue. Option C is wrong because Sarnath is the site of the first sermon, of Ashoka's Lion Capital and of the Gupta period Buddha images. Option D is wrong because Nagarjunakonda belongs to the Amaravati school in the Krishna valley.

The correct answer is A, Gandhara. Bamiyan, in the highlands of what is now Afghanistan, lay on the trade route through the Hindu Kush and was part of the wide Gandhara cultural region, along with Hadda, Begram, Jalalabad, Swat and Taxila. Its two colossal standing Buddhas, cut into a cliff face and once plastered and painted, were destroyed in 2001. Option B is wrong because Mathura lies far to the east on the Yamuna and worked in spotted red sandstone, not in rock-cut cliffs. Option C is wrong because Amaravati is in the Krishna valley of Andhra Pradesh and worked in limestone relief. Option D is wrong because Sarnath, near Varanasi, is a Gupta period centre in Chunar sandstone. The spread of Gandhara art along this route is how the Buddha image travelled to Central Asia, China and beyond.

The correct answer is C, Sarnath. In the Gupta age a workshop at Sarnath, near Varanasi, carved in cream Chunar sandstone and produced the seated preaching Buddha whose hands form the dharmachakra mudra, the gesture of teaching, and whose robe clings so closely that art historians describe it as wet drapery. This calm, smooth, inward-looking figure became the model for the Buddha image for centuries and spread across Asia. Option A is wrong because Amaravati, in white limestone, is a school of crowded narrative relief and had declined before the Gupta age. Option B is wrong because Gandhara, in grey schist, is marked by heavy folded drapery over both shoulders. Option D is wrong because Bharhut belongs to the earlier aniconic phase, in which the Buddha was shown only through symbols on railings and gateways.