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

This triangular relief likely once decorated the interior panel of the steps leading up to a stupa base. The subject, a mythical beast resembling a plump cockerel, suggests Hellenistic or Scythian influence and speaks to the intermixing of Indo-Greek and Indo-Scythian peoples in the Buddhist region of Gandhara. For a diagram replicating a riser’s placement at a stupa and a further discussion, see K. Behrendt, The Art of Gandhara, 2007, p. 27, fig. II. A comparable pair of stair risers, including a similarly depicted mythical cockerel, was sold at Christie’s New York on 12 September 2012, lot 517.