The Light Garden of the Angel King by Peter Levi

Author:Peter Levi [Peter Levi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780600512
Publisher: Eland Publishing
Published: 2014-07-09T16:00:00+00:00

There are twenty-five lines of this inscription, written with incised guidelines on a smooth-sided, rough-backed slab of white limestone. The script is based on Greek with some special Kushan characteristics, the language is the eastern Iranian language of the Kushan Empire, of which this inscription is the longest example; Surkh Kotal is not a local but a conventional name dating from 1952; its ancient name was Bagolango. The site was first discovered through inscriptions, not so long or important, but strongly and freely written, which came to light during the making of a road at the end of the summer of 1951.† Excavation revealed three stages in the history of the hillside; first, a series of three terraces, each with its classic flight of steps in the centre, one above the other, with the sanctuary ending at a monumental gateway on the lowest terrace, and a final flight of steps to ground level outside the sanctuary, then Nokonzoko’s restoration with a new lowest terrace below the lowest flight, and a canal for water, and finally later again a well beyond the canal with a stairway leading down into it, built of the re-used inscribed stones from Nokonzoko’s lowest terrace; at this last period the canal was moved back and narrowed and it was walled in and bridged so that the well could be part of the sanctuary. Each of the terraces is about a hundred yards wide and fifty deep. There must also have been three stages of building on the top of the hill; almost everything was complete at the first stage, when the entire sanctuary was commissioned by Kanishka in his lifetime, then came a second period of minor changes which may possibly correspond to Nokonzoko’s restoration, that is to the building of the canal and the lowest terrace at the foot of the hill, and finally a thorough destruction by fire followed by a modest rebuilding. Nothing except guesswork connects this last period with the digging of the well, and neither the reconstruction nor the well has been exactly dated.

Fragments of three stone statues have been found, all representing men in full Kushan dress with breeches and the swell-toed boots which were probably used for riding with thong stirrups. The statues are as flat as kippers and have a hieratic but secular appearance; they are very like the small limestone relief figures of Kushan chiefs in the Kunduz Museum.‡ But the fragments of some clay sculpture found at Surkh Kotal at the same time show the full swirls of classic drapery which one may suppose Kushan artists knew and imitated from Hellenistic stucco. It is easier to model elaborately in clay than in stone, and a similar disproportion of development between clay and stone figure techniques can be seen in Chinese animal figures under the T’ang dynasty not long afterwards; but at the time of Kanishka all the resources of Gandaran Buddhist art both in schist and in clay were available for a great Kushan sanctuary, and

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