Description
The casket features hellenistic representations of the Buddha (contrapposto pose, Greek himation, bundled hairstyle, realistic execution), surrounded by the Indian deities Brahma and Śakra, inside arched niches (called "homme arcade", or caitya) of Greco-Roman architecture. There are altogether eight figures in high-relief (two identical groups of Brahman-Buddha-Indra, and two devotees in-between) and two rows of rubies from Badakhshan.
Owing to their necklace, bracelets, and armbands, and aurora, the two devotees might be representations of Bodhisattvas. They hold their hands together in a prayerful gesture of reverence, Añjali Mudrā.
The casket is made in gold-repoussé and is very small, with a height of 7 cm (2¾ in), and is probably Indo-Greek work. It is considered as a masterpiece of the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara.
Read more about this topic: Bimaran Casket
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”
—Freda Adler (b. 1934)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, and that Missionaries of that description from [France] would avail more than those who should endeavor to tame them by precepts of religion or philosophy.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)