NORTHWEST PAKISTAN OR AFGHANISTAN.

GANDHARA.

4TH - 5TH CENTURY AD.

H. 18 CMS, 7 INS.

A sublimely beautiful white stucco head of a Bodhisattva with a gentle face and soft eyes, the hair in wavy lines and secured by a circular diadem.

In Kim, Rudyard Kipling refers to the Gandhara sculptures of the Lahore Museum as possessing ‘the mysteriously transmitted Grecian touch’ and this is especially apparent here. For a similar head see no. 328 in Isao Kurita, Gandharan Art II: The Buddha’s Life Story, Tokyo: Nigensha publishing, 2003.