Maitreya Gray schist Gandhara

The standing figure of Maitreya clad in a finely pleated dhoti and uttariya looped over his shoulder and draped across his body. He is ornamented in lavish jewelry including several necklaces, a foliate armband and hoop earrings, his long tresses arranged in a looped knot above his head and secured with a jeweled band. His face with downcast eyes bears a meditative expression is framed by a fragmentary halo. His pendent left hand would have held his attribute the water flask, now missing.

Compare the form with a larger standing bodhisattva in the Peshawar Museum; see Kurita, 2003, vol. II, no. 109, p. 45. The treatment of the face, particularly the deeply carved long eyes with their ends pointing upward, is similar to another fragmentary image of a bodhisattva in a private Japanese collection; see ibid., no. 183, p. 71.