INTRODUCTION
The ancient Buddhist art of Gandhara, originating roughly in the northernmost tip of Pakistan, offers numerous object lessons both in the study of provenance and in the history of colonial archaeology. Provenance research has come to be recognised as a fundamental need in this field because the lack of reliable information about the findspots of Gandharan sculpture in world collections has hampered almost every aspect of its study, including the understanding of its chronology. That problem is closely related to the fact that this extraordinary ancient art tradition was rediscovered against the background of British colonial India – Gandhara was, broadly speaking, the North-West Frontier – and its remarkable stylistic and iconographical affinities to the ‘western’ art of the classical Mediterranean fuelled European visions of Alexander the Great’s Asian legacy and the merging of eastern and western cultures. In recent years, the importance of tracing the colonial-era histories of deracinated artefacts from Gandhara has been increasingly acknowledged, but the journeys of objects even in large and well-known collections often remain obscure and it is all too easy to gloss over the nuances and complexities of their acquisition. By elucidating the origins of a group of sculptures in Oxford, this article seeks to cast new light on one of the most famous Gandharan ventures of the later colonial era – the Barger expedition of 1938 – and the wider history of Gandharan collecting.
Almost as soon as Gandharan art was first recognised in the mid-nineteenth century, its supposedly ‘Graeco-Buddhist’ imagery exerted a strong appeal to collectors and souvenir-hunters. European travellers, soldiers and officials, engineers and missionaries collectively acquired many thousands of sculptures both in the field and in the bazaar, which became separated from the sites of the Buddhist monuments they had adorned in antiquity. Today, researchers are perpetually challenged by their obscure provenances and collection histories, even though such objects have often ended up in public museums. Highly educated antiquarians and administrators were just as likely to be involved in scouring archaeological sites so as to obtain Gandharan figures. Well-known scholars such as Charles L Fabri and Leonard Woolley were not immune to a certain amateurism in their collecting mentality and their names are associated with unprovenanced Gandharan material in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Many similar museums across Europe, America and South Asia possess Gandharan objects with similar histories.
In most of these cases, either the entire collection or considerable portions of it call for further research into the provenance, the chronology of acquisitions and the migrations of the objects, including their transmission between private and public repositories. Some recent work has taken great strides in addressing the challenge. Himanshu P Ray’s edited volume of 2018 is highly important in this respect. Its various chapters present ‘an archaeology of museum collections’ by exploring the objects’ stories, collecting attitudes and the journeys of objects from one destination to another. The work represents a methodological shift from ‘iconography and the relationship between text and image’ towards a complementary emphasis on archive-based research ‘highlighting the process of collecting’.Footnote 1 Similar efforts can be found in studies of specific artefacts and collections, such as Peter Stewart’s evaluation of the evidence about the provenance of the famous Gandharan ‘Trojan Horse’ relief in the British Museum. Its acquisition by Francis Verner Wylie (1891–1970) – an Indian Civil Service officer who served in several capacities on the North-West Frontier – its subsequent publication and the problems around its provenance have the potential to cast light on object-itineraries and trajectories in Gandharan art collecting more widely.Footnote 2 Broader issues of fieldwork, legalities, trafficking and commissioned campaigns by museums, especially on the outer frontier of British India, have also recently received attention.Footnote 3 The present study contributes to this evolving literature with three objects, now held in the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford, which were recovered from around the Barikot area of Swat, Pakistan, by Evert Barger’s mission, which is better known as the source of many of the Gandharan sculptures now in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). The style and iconography of these pieces has been studied elsewhere, as indicated in the footnotes below, notably in David Jongeward’s 2019 catalogue of the whole of the Ashmolean’s Gandharan collection.Footnote 4 In a couple of the cases the imagery is striking and distinctive, and contributes to the understanding of the sculpture of Swat. Our objective here is to concentrate rather on the collecting history of the sculptures and the story of the expedition that ultimately brought them to Oxford.
Scholars have long been concerned about the final destinations of Barger’s huge collection, which was assembled outside the formal limits of British administration, in the princely state of Swat. Luca Maria Olivieri has repeatedly speculated about their journeys to the Swat Museum and Peshawar Museum in Pakistan, and the V&A, Ashmolean and Bristol Museums in the UK.Footnote 5 Other studies have demonstrated with textual, rather than archaeological, evidence that two pieces can be located in each of the Pakistani museums above.Footnote 6 The evidence presented here and the objects themselves demonstrate conclusively that the group of objects illustrated here also came from the Barger campaign. The sculptures’ trajectory to Oxford, against the background of broader patterns of collecting, reveals systemic factors, individual motivations and institutional interests behind object biographies that have a broader relevance to the field.
THE BARGER EXPEDITION
The 1930s were an impactful decade in South Asian archaeology. John Marshall’s retirement as director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the global economic crisis are assumed, in one way or another, to have profoundly affected the ASI’s work. The government of India took two significant measures in response: an amendment was introduced to the antiquities laws in 1932; and in 1938 Leonard Woolley, a popular British archaeologist, was invited to examine and advise on the state of archaeology. The amendment allowed local and foreign bodies to do research in the field of Indian archaeology, and it was against that background that Evert Barger (fig 1) brought his expedition to India in the middle of 1938. The party included three other members: Philip Wright, assistant curator of the Indian Section at the V&A; T D Weatherhead, a surveyor and photographer; and W V Emanuel, who was in charge of transport and equipment. The team ended up working for around three months in the princely state of Swat and in Afghanistan. Small-scale surveys and intensive excavations were carried out in Swat, while work in Afghanistan was focused on reconnaissance.Footnote 7
Evert Barger (1910–75), in a photograph of around 1938. Photo: courtesy of Dr Jenny Naseemullah.
Originally intended for a reconnaissance in Central Asia, especially Chinese Turkistan, the expedition also tried to enter into northern Afghanistan when the principal plan failed. Afghanistan, however, also proved impossible owing to its rulers’ disapproval. In the meantime, Barger had requested the Indian government’s permission for work in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and its adjacent areas. This effort too was unsuccessful. An attempt to enter into Chitral failed as well. To avoid a complete collapse, the party was finally allowed by the ruler of the Swat, Miangul Abdul Wadud (1917–49), with the Frontier government’s support, to make excavations in the state. In the Barikot area, Kanjar Kote, Amluk, Abbasahib-china (Abasaib Chinah), Gumbat and other sites were dug, while Gumbatunah on the other side of the river was worked on in the Shamozi area. Jampurah Dherai was excavated in Charbagh. A large collection of household objects and Buddhist art-objects was assembled in the area.Footnote 8
It should be noted that the ASI was not totally uninvolved with the archaeology of the indirectly ruled areas, but it had no role in the case of the Barger expedition. The excavations made by Barger’s party thus lacked both the government of India’s consent and institutional cover. This seems to have paved the way for the removal of all the material discovered out of Swat through India, although that was inconsistent with the antiquities legislation.Footnote 9 This project had kept scholars of Gandhara puzzled until recent archival investigations and analysis. Except for the fact that a great part of the Barger material was housed in the V&A, the destinations of the Barger material have also remained uncertain, although some revelations have, however, been made over the last decade or so.Footnote 10
There is another point yet in need of explanation. How was the Barger party allowed to work in Swat despite the categorical disapproval of the Frontier and Indian governments hardly a month before? All this was enabled by Barger’s determination and his presentation to the Frontier officials. The substance of his argument was that the expedition had been sent by prestigious cultural and academic institutions based in England, ie the V&A, the Indian Institute, etc. They aimed for the promotion of Indian studies and historical investigation. Considering what it meant to the home country, the authorities should not let the expedition collapse, especially when other European countries had been far ahead in the field. This moral standpoint, tinged by a sense of nationalism, would have appealed, it seems, to A D F Dundas, chief secretary to the government of NWFP, and E H Cobb, political agent at Malakand Agency.Footnote 11 What resulted was the successful localisation of this otherwise largely unplanned and unstrategic foreign expedition at one archaeologically rich point on the periphery of colonial India.
SWAT IN THE ASHMOLEAN
The Eastern Art Department of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford accommodates a wide range of archaeological material of various periods from the Middle East, Japan, China, South Asia and South-East Asia. Gandharan artefacts constitute one of its most important collections and are represented in half of its Kreitman Gallery. Recently, a separate catalogue has been published about these objects. It is possible to identify with certainty one huge piece of a Bodhisattva image as belonging to the Barger expedition.Footnote 12 Another fragment of a harmika is suggested to be from the same source, a provenance that is confirmed below. We are now also able to add a third object, a fragment of a stair-riser, to the Barger group. In a later section of this article, we will add complex details regarding the journeys of these objects to the Ashmolean, particularly concerning the Bodhisattva image. Before pursuing this issue further, a brief introduction to the Ashmolean Museum and the Indian Institute would be useful.
The Ashmolean Museum came into being when Elias Ashmole presented his collection to the University of Oxford in 1682. Consequently it has a claim to be ‘Britain’s first public museum’ and the first university museum in the world, though its collections have moved and evolved considerably since the seventeenth century. Its original home was a building in Broad Street, which is now occupied by the History of Science Museum. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the museum moved into a new, purpose-built building in Beaumont Street. During the twenty-four year keepership of the influential British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, from 1884 onwards, the museum enriched its collections and took its modern form, merging with the university’s art collections in 1908 to become the present Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology. During the later nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the collections of the museum expanded as a result of new excavations across Europe, Egypt and the Middle East.Footnote 13 The Eastern Art Department was formed when collections of the university’s Indian Institute were handed over to Ashmolean around the mid-twentieth century.Footnote 14 A significant portion of the Gandharan material in the Ashmolean Museum came from this institute.
The idea of the Indian Institute was conceived by Sir Monier Monier-Williams, Boden professor of Sanskrit, in the later nineteenth century. His efforts came to fruition and the building for the institute was constructed at the end of the century. In the wake of Monier-Williams’ death in 1899, the institute remained beset by problems, particularly in respect to finances. His successors in the office, by virtue of holding the Boden professorship of Sanskrit, could hardly overcome their indifference towards Indian art. In this dismal situation, however, the keepership of Edward H Johnston (1937–42) was like ‘a brief Indian summer … Unlike his predecessors he appreciated the qualities of Indian art and purchased examples of Mathura sculpture, including the superb Śiva head … He arranged a new display of sculpture in the Museum’s main hall …, discussing the problems he encountered in a published article’.Footnote 15 During the Second World War, the Indian Institute Museum was closed, only to be reopened in 1949 under Dr William Cohn. It survived through the 1950s but ceased to exist with the closure of the institute in 1962.
Gandharan objects had often reached the Indian Institute from the families of the colonial officers who had served on the Frontier. Beside these donations, some materials were purchased. A collection of fourteen objects, including a frieze fragment from a Gandharan stupa, was purchased in November 1937 from Mrs Alexander Scott at a cost of £100, paid from the Max Müller Memorial Fund. With the same fund, numerous antiquities were obtained from Charles L Fabri in February 1941. The Barger material seems to have been paid for by Johnston from his pocket in July 1939. He subsequently ‘presented’ it to the Indian Institute Museum.
THE ARTEFACTS
1. The harmika block (fig 2)
Sculpted schist harmika block from Gandhara, c 2nd century ad. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, EAOS.26g. Photo: copyright the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.
The object (Ashmolean Museum, EAOS.26.g) is made of grey schist and measures 16.3cm high and 24cm by 23.5cm on the sides.Footnote 16 Two of its sides are badly damaged, while scenes on the other two are more clearly legible. Episodes from the Buddha’s life are represented within ornamented frames, separated from each other at the corners by ‘Corinthian’ pilasters.Footnote 17 Two of the scenes are clearly of the birth of the Buddha and his Renunciation; the other two, according to the excavators, could be the ‘first sermon (?), a worship of the triratna symbol held aloft by a kneeling figure’.Footnote 18 David Jongeward’s catalogue entry discusses the alternatives.
Jongeward notes that, although the object cannot be assigned an exact provenance, it ‘may be among several objects recorded as having been purchased by Prof E H Johnston from the 1938 E H Barger expedition’s finds in Swat’.Footnote 19 Acquisitions (1937–1941) of the Indian Institute Museum assigns this harmika to a stupa from Kanjar Kote.Footnote 20 The excavators’ description of the object cited above, the iconographical details of the Ashmolean object and the original note about its acquisition complement each other to the extent that they leave no doubt that this piece comes from Kanjar Kote in the Kandak valley. It can, therefore, be firmly assigned to the Barger expedition to Swat.
2. Fragment of stair-riser (fig 3)
Fragment of a schist stair-riser from Gandhara, c 2nd century ad. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, EAOS.23a. Photo: copyright the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.
The second Ashmolean object of interest to us is a schist stair-riser fragment (EAOS.23.a).Footnote 21 The fragment measures 12.7cm in height by 37cm and 5.5cm in width and depth respectively. As Jongeward describes it, the relief represents a bird, ‘probably an eagle, … perched on a water pot with legs spread and talons firmly gripping the rim’. An elaborate spiral ‘leaf-and-tendril’ is also seen and on both left and right sides of the bird, and under these scrolls on each side, are two draped figures with elaborate hair shown in bust form, each supporting a flattish object in one hand. Jongeward does not assign any provenance to the piece.Footnote 22 However, our research reveals that this is the second recorded object from Swat that Johnston bought from Barger. In July 1939, he presented it to the Indian Institute Museum. The Museum’s Acquisitions, 1937–1941 records it as ‘Architectural frieze, Gandhara School, from Chinabara, Swat’.Footnote 23 This information can be cross-referenced to the list of objects from Swat in the excavators’ report. It includes thirteen pieces of importance from Chinabara. The third in the sequence, no. 167, matches the iconographic details of this object. It reads: ‘Fragment of relief, 14½″× 4¾″, from the riser of a step (?); undulating vine scroll, framing head and shoulders of two women, each holding a bowl, and between them a bird with wings spread, perched on a bowl.’Footnote 24 From examination of the object, comparison of its imagery with the Barger and Wright description, Jongeward’s decoding of its iconography and the record in Acquisitions, 1937–1941, we are able firmly to identify this piece as having come from the Swat material of the Barger expedition (more precisely the Chinabara site).Footnote 25
3. The Bodhisattva figure (fig 4)
Gandharan seated figure of the Bodhisattva Maitreya, c mid- to late third century ad. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, EAX. 180. Photo: copyright the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.
The most significant Ashmolean object, though last in the sequence here, from Barger’s Swat expedition is a very distinctive Bodhisattva sculpture (EAX. 180).Footnote 26 This dark grey schist work measures approximately 56.5cm in height, 46.5cm in width and 10.6cm in depth. There is no confusion about its provenance as the piece was published, along with sufficient contextual details, by Barger and Wright in their excavation report.Footnote 27 It comes from the site the excavators called Abarchinar (the Abbasahib-china of other scholars).Footnote 28 The object depicts (the Bodhisattva) Maitreya with the distinctive iconography discussed by David Jongeward. He assigns it to the third or fourth century ad and a narrower date range can be proposed on the basis of recent research and comparanda in Swat.Footnote 29 It is fortunate that the provenance of this piece is known to us; its object-itinerary, however, is different from that of the other two pieces mentioned above. As we shall see, this Bodhisattva reached the Ashmolean Museum in 1948, in circumstances that cast light on the status of the Barger expedition and its finds.
FROM SWAT TO OXFORD VIA LONDON
The base of the activities of the Barger expedition in Swat state was Barikot, a large village and headquarters of the Tahsil (administrative area) of the same name. It seems that the material excavated in the surroundings of Barikot was stored in the Tahsildar’s (revenue official’s) office. It was here that Dilawar Khan, curator of the Peshawar Museum, selected two insignificant pieces each from the collection for the ruler of Swat and the Peshawar Museum on 27 September. The Barger collection reached Peshawar by way of Malakand probably on 30 September 1938. From there it travelled to Bombay, and it can be speculated that it left some time in early October.Footnote 30 We are sure that the collection had safely arrived in the V&A in London in January/February 1939. The museum served as the base for further treatment and distribution of the material.Footnote 31 From the V&A the harmika base and frieze fragment mentioned above, along with pottery fragments and terracotta objects, reached the Indian Institute and thence, more than two decades later, the Ashmolean Museum.
The process of distributing the Barger collection from the V&A is intriguing. Details of Oxford’s share are fortunately available in the records. The list of the objects that the museum authorities had for inspection has two relevant entries, ie nos 25 on page 1 and 167 on page 3. The former is described as ‘Model stupa-base’ and the latter as ‘Part of frieze (two figures, foliage and bird)’. In front of both entries ‘sent to Oxford, Indian Inste’ and a date of 28 July 1939 have been added in red pen. Some other terracotta objects and pottery fragments, all probably from Afghanistan except one from Sar Dherai, Charsadah, have been earmarked in red for the Indian Institute. On the request of Philip Wright, dated 25 July, these objects were sent by Eric Maclagan, director and secretary of the V&A,Footnote 32 to Johnston on 28 July. Johnston received the consignment the next day.Footnote 33 Both the pieces have correct entries, as also cited above, in the Acquisitions, 1937–1941 of the Indian Institute Museum. The other objects the Indian Institute’s record enumerates are: sixteen pottery fragments from Kunduz, Afghanistan; three heads of mother goddesses (?); and one female headless terracotta figure from Sari Dheri (correctly Sar Dherai), Charsadah.Footnote 34
The itinerary of the third, and most important, object is rather surprising. This Maitreya figure did not reach the Ashmolean Museum from the Indian Institute along with other material.Footnote 35 Unpublished records in the Eastern Art Department reveal that the Wright family donated this piece in 1948.Footnote 36 The record details are as follows:
The story of this piece in the Ashmolean Museum is both interesting and potentially revealing in many ways. It helps us to probe into the issues of the ownership of the Barger collection and its object-itineraries. When and how did the Maitreya image come into Wright’s possession? He probably laid personal claim to the piece from the outset. This conclusion is based on the lack of mention of the sculpture on the list of objects sent by Barger for inspection to the V&A. This did not preclude inclusion of the well preserved sculpture in the report the excavators prepared for publication by the ASI. This brings us back to the question of ownership of the material from the Barger expedition, and to the issue of sponsorship. The excavators claim that many entities in England, such as the V&A and the Indian Institute, financed the work. This assertion can be invalidated on the basis of our new archival findings. No evidence of support has been found. We suggest that the expedition had no prior formal sponsorship or any agreement with any institution about what it might receive during the course of the project. The Indian Institute was itself in the throes of financial breakdown. It has also been recently shown that the party originally aimed for a geographical and archaeological reconnaissance rather than focused excavations.Footnote 38 It ended up with excavation in Swat by default. The ‘accidental’ collection, conducted with special permissions and outside the normal jurisdiction of the British authorities, thus logically belonged to the excavators, primarily Barger, and they disposed of it the ways that best suited them.Footnote 39
This resolves questions that occurred to us at first sight of the records of the Ashmolean’s Department of Eastern Art: why did an employee of the V&A prefer to donate the sculpture to the Ashmolean Museum (and not to his own institution)? How was he able to retain it despite the fact that the expedition was supposedly sponsored by many interested institutions? A personal record for Phillip Wright in the V&A’s archives reveals that he joined the museum on 3 January 1936. His services were loaned to the War Office on 27 November 1939. Wright received early retirement on 6 March 1940 in order to embark on his journey to China. This implies that, at the actual date of his donation of the Bodhisattva figure to Oxford, he had long ago dissociated himself from the V&A.Footnote 40 From the Eastern Art Department’s record it is obvious that the Wright family moved to Jamaica at the end of 1948.Footnote 41 He also worked there as ‘a member of the staff of the Institute of Jamaica’.Footnote 42 It follows that Wright did not feel any restrictions at the time about donating his Maitreya to the Ashmolean Museum. He wrote to Cohn: ‘I wonder if you (the Museum) would be at all interested in another object from Gandhara … I mean it definitely as an unconditional gift, though I shouldn’t be in the least surprised if you don’t want it.’Footnote 43 The keeper of the museum happily welcomed the Maitreya to his collections.Footnote 44 Wright probably could not take it with him to Jamaica owing to legal issues involved, but how he had been able to retain this fine piece for himself may have a tentative answer in our argument that the expedition was the excavators’ private enterprise. In such a situation Barger and Wright would have first claim on any object if they so desired.
The Barger expedition material in the Ashmolean Museum now has a secure collection history, but a poor archaeological provenance. The excavators were not interested in recording their discoveries’ association with each other and to archaeological strata, but this is typical of many Gandharan collections of the colonial-period Frontier. Donations, bequests and purchased objects in the Ashmolean Museum typically suffer from such problems. They mostly come from those associated directly or indirectly with the Gandhara region through the British administrative and political systems or from those having scholarly connections or interests in Indian art and archaeology. David Jongeward also refers to donations to the Indian Institute and the Ashmolean Museum by those connected personally or through family ties with the frontier British sahibs. The stone sculptures were
most often presented by donors with personal or family connections to the Northwest Frontier region. The most extensive gift was a collection of 23 Gandhara stone pieces donated by the Rev. Murray-Aynsley in 1911; these include a number of panel reliefs dating from the second to third centuries AD (for example cats. 13, 15, 18, 20). Around the same time a very fine standing Buddha figure was donated by Miss Barlow (cat. 62) and a seated Bodhisattva by Mrs Gooding (cat. 74). Further Gandhara acquisitions made in later years, before the abolition of the Indian Institute in 1962, came from a number of donations and bequests. These included the estates of the archaeologists Sir Marc Aurel Stein and Sir Leonard Woolley and gifts from (among others) Major P.C. Hailey and E.M. Scratton – an Oxfordshire collector of Himalayan Buddhist art who had formerly served on the Northwest Frontier as an army veterinary officer.Footnote 45
Stein’s and Woolley’s material may be seen in terms of scholarly connections. To this we may also add Charles Fabri’s collection which the Indian Institute purchased in February 1941.Footnote 46 Similarly, F A Andrew, one of Stein’s closest friends, also presented ‘a great deal of material bearing upon Central Asia’.Footnote 47 About Woolley’s bequest, the Ashmolean’s Report of the Visitors records that it
strengthened the Museum’s already substantial collection of the art of Gandhara. Of three small stucco heads, a Buddha and a Bodhisattva are excellently preserved examples, with traces of original colour, of the extremely refined aspect of Gandhara modeling in stucco; the third, an unidentified ‘Socratic’ type, shows the vigour and realism of this school. The two remaining objects consist of a small seated figure of a goddess and, also in the characteristic grey schist of Gandhara, a toilet-tray (‘Sirkap’ tray) with amorous couple.Footnote 48
But still archaeological information about all these objects is lacking. Fabri was a great name in Indian historical research, yet he seems to have formed his collection like an amateur antiquarian. The case of Woolley, however, needs some detailing here. As mentioned above, on the invitation of the Indian government, Woolley visited India in 1938 and investigated the state of its archaeology. He submitted a critical report in February 1939. During his months-long stay in the country, he visited many archaeologically important areas including Taxila, Peshawar and Malakand. We may presume that the Gandharan objects associated with his name in the Ashmolean Museum would have been received by him in the form of gifts and souvenirs from officials and administrators during his tour to Taxila and Khyber Pukhtunkhwa. Otherwise, this is a curious example of scholarly-antiquarianism, not concerned by provenance and context, even around the mid-twentieth century. There can be little, if any, difference between the Woolley/Fabri/Andrew material and the pieces offered by the sahibs’ relatives.
This problem is further illustrated by a particularly striking 1928 acquisition (fig 5), which we present as a concluding illustration of the problems of Gandharan provenance. This head in dark grey schist (H 28cm, W 18cm, D 13cm), is included in David Jongeward’s catalogue as number 67 (EAOS.2). This piece from Swat Valley was gifted by a certain Revd W E Carless. Jongeward compares it with the Butkara sculptures and assigns it to the period of the first to second century. He also observes that it is a rough piece and raises the issue of forgery. Still he is of the opinion that its discovery in the early twentieth century proves its authenticity.Footnote 49 We can build on Jongeward’s comments by adding two observations. First, the object came from the lower Swat Valley, which was included in the Malakand Protected Area of the Political Agency of Dir, Swat and Chitral. The Indian Institute’s record documents this piece: ‘an offer on the part of the Rev W E Carless of Farmington Rectory, Cheltenham, to present a Greco-Buddhist head in stone, which had been excavated some days ago by an Indian regiment in the Swat Valley, was accepted, thanks to be conveyed to the donor.’Footnote 50 Here the words ‘excavated by an Indian regiment’ leave no doubt that they could have done it only in the Malakand Protected Area, now Malakand district, and not across the border in the princely space of Swat. This leads us to our second point of analysis. The potential conflation of the lower part of the Swat Valley for what was once Swat state, or the present-day district of Swat, may encourage the comparison of the object with material from Swat. Without such confusion, a reconsideration of this comparison is called for. At the same time, Jongeward’s comments about the possibility of forgery require further consideration that, in turn, may erode our confidence in the ‘authenticity’ of the object. There is, however, a general agreement about the originality of the work. A recent study sees it as the work of an innovative sculptor inspired by external Graeco-Roman influences and with particular affinities to Palmyra and Hatra. According to this argument, the sculpture characterises a sort of transition in sculpture making in Swat.Footnote 51 Despite all this, the fact that we do not know details as to how Revd Carless was able to obtain this freshly retrieved Gandharan piece makes further analysis problematic.
Gandhara schist head of the Buddha, c second century ad? Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, EAOS.2. Photo: copyright the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are grateful to Alessandra Cereda, Department of Eastern Art, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, the staff of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, and Nicholas Barnard, curator, South and South-East Asia, Asian Department, V&A, London, for their kind assistance. Improvements to the article were enabled by the helpful corrections and comments of the anonymous reviewers. The Higher Education Commission of Pakistan should also be thanked as it sponsored the postdoctoral fellowship of Rafiullah Khan at the Classical Art Research Centre, University of Oxford. The Ancient World Research Cluster at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, also subsequently awarded him a small grant to continue his research in the UK. We also thank officials of the Pakistan Public Service who assisted our work in the Deputy Commissioner/Political Agent’s record room at Malakand, and Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, which allowed both of Rafiullah Khan’s visits to England.
ABBREVIATIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abbreviations
- ASI
-
Archaeological Survey of India
- NWFP
-
North-West Frontier Province
- V&A
-
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
