A grey schist figure of a Bodhisattva, Ancient Region of Gandhara, 2nd - 4th century

Acquired by the father of the present owner in Paris in the late 1960s (by family repute).

Hand-held attributes and gestures that would firmly identify the iconography of the sculpture are now missing, but the turban with rosettes at either side and a central crest indicates a princely figure.

In Gandharan artistic convention, the turban usually indicates the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara or the Bodhisattva Siddhartha, see Wladimir Zwalf, A Catalogue of the Gandhara Sculpture in the British Museum, vol. I, London, 1996, pp 42-3. Normally the right hand would have been raised in abhaya mudra, and the lowered left hand would have rested on the thigh, or held a flower or garland. The pedestal with sawtooth cornice depicts two devotees with hands together in anjali mudra kneeling before a fire offering, homa, all flanked by pilasters with Corinthian capitals, ibid., cat. 111, pl. 4.