ANCIENT REGION OF GANDHARA, 3RD-4TH CENTURY CE

With a scene of two wrestlers grappling on one side, and an incised lotus between two well-worn and hand-shaped indentations on the other, the present work is likely to have been a stone weight used by ancient wrestlers or athletes for training. A comparable example in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (acc. no. 1994.112) has a similar form, with two semi-circular indentations on one side. The Met example is carved with a similar scene of two wrestlers grappling on the side with the hand holds, while the other face is carved with a scene of Hercules facing a lion, reflecting the influence of the Graeco-Roman traditions in the area. Another wrestler's weight, with a single remaining handle carved in open work on one end, resides in the Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography, formerly the National Museum of Oriental Art, in Rome, illustrated by A. di Castro in "A Late Gandharan Wrestler's Weight," East and West, vol. 53, no. 1/4, December 2003, p. 258, fig. 1. The Pigorini example is carved on one face with a lotus motif not dissimilar to the present example, and on the other face with a gada, or club, the mythical weapon of Vishnu. In the Indian tradition, athletes and warriors mythologized the club as the ultimate battle weapon, and trained with heavy club-form weights in order to master wielding the weapon. The simultaneous presence of weights with both Graeco-Roman and proto-Hindu motifs in the Gandharan context illustrates the confluence of cultures and traditions in the region in ancient times.