origins of the kashmiri style 157
The Dras sculpture’s Kashmiri origin is not in question, given the inscrip-
tions, the iconographic references, and the formal language, despite its loca-
tion outside the heartland of the Srinagar Valley. In order to suggest a date,
however, a closer scrutiny of the style of the sculpture, and comparison to
other Kashmiri sculptures is necessary. The naturalism of the torso and legs,
which remain in legible condition, is of a particular order. The thighs are
noticeably modelled, not tubular, with a swelling power. The stance is a sub-
tle but sophisticated contrapposto or déhanchement with the left leg engaged
and the right slightly turned out. The chest is flat and muscular, the shoulders
broad, and the waist relatively narrow. This is quite different from the squat but
powerful musculature of Gandhāran bodhisattvas or the pre-Kārkoṭa Kashmiri
Bijbehara Karttikeya of the fifth or sixth centuries19 that had yet to completely
move out of the Gandhāran (or Hūṇa) penumbra, as demonstrated by its fron-
tality, bulkiness and Gupta-like surface softness. Nor is the Dras sculpture of
the mannered, snake-hipped mode found at the Mārtāṇḍa Sūrya Temple, the
famous eighth century ruin in the Kashmir Valley, datable to the eighth century
(fig. 5.5). So the Maitreya standing with such elán and patience in windy Dras
is stylistically in between the massive and the mannered, the bulky and the
pretty; he is muscled and springy but not swivel-hipped. He probably best fits
into the seventh or very early eighth century, where Snellgrove and Skorupski
originally placed it.20
Sonam Phuntsog rightly, if broadly, observes that such rock sculptures
“were made by expert sculptors of Kashmir from the 5th to the 8th century
ce.”21 He goes on to assert that the bodhisattva and the other sculptures at
Dras “were commissioned by Wastak Paldan, the king of Pashkyum.” Elsewhere
in the same publication, he writes that the Śārāda inscription reveals that all
of the sculptures were produced by “king Pashkum (Kargil) title[d] as Vastak
Paldan in the 6th century”.22 Pashkyum is a village Southeast of Kargil. There is a
castle there, and it played a role in Ladakhi history, but only in the 18th century.
On the other hand, Francke provides a tantalising justification for the presence
of these sculptures at Dras, based on his fieldwork there in 1909. “According to
19 Huntington, Art of Ancient India, 355–357; Siudmak, John, “Early Stone and Terracotta
Sculpture,” in Art and Architecture of Ancient Kashmir, ed. Pratapaditya Pal (Bombay:
Marg Publications, 1989), 42–43; Siudmak, John, The Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Ancient
Kashmir and its Influences (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013), pl. 26.
20 Snellgrove, David L. et al., The Cultural Heritage of Ladakh, Volume One: Central Ladakh
(Boulder: Prajña Press, 1977), 1. Dorjay, without citing specific evidence, claims that there
are “iconographic as well as historical reasons [the Dras images including the Maitreya] are
unlikely to be much earlier than the ninth century CE”; Dorjay, “Embedded in Stone,” 40.
21 Sonam Phuntsog, Ladakh Annals Part Two, 4th revised edition (Delhi: Jayyed Press, 2009), 9.
22 Phuntsog, Ladakh Annals, 222.