Which school produced the earliest known images of the Jain tirthankaras and of Brahmanical deities?

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.