The stucco Buddhas of Jaulian
A hilltop monastery near Taxila whose stupas are ringed with rows of seated Buddhas modelled in stucco, many still in place.
The main court holds small votive stupas whose bases are covered with figures of the Buddha, bodhisattvas, elephants and crouching Atlas figures. One Buddha has a hole at the navel, where pilgrims put a finger and prayed to be cured; an inscription names the monk who gave it.
The monastery was burned in the fifth century, perhaps by the Huns; the fire baked the stucco and helped it survive. Jaulian is part of the Taxila World Heritage Site.
More sculpture
The Buddha in the years of starvation before his enlightenment, every rib and vein showing: the most famous sculpture of Gandhara, found at Sikri near Mardan.
Princely figures of the Buddha-to-be, with moustaches, turbans, jewels and sandals, modelled on the Kushan nobles of Gandhara.
In 1985 excavators at Sanghol, between Ludhiana and Chandigarh, found 117 carved pillars and railing pieces of a Kushan-era Buddhist stupa, buried as if hidden: women beneath flowering trees, lovers, drinkers and dancers.
A small stupa from Sikri, near Mardan, set up again in the Lahore Museum, its drum carved with thirteen panels of the life of the Buddha.
A gilded reliquary found in 1908–09 in the ruins of Kanishka's great stupa at Shah-ji-ki-Dheri outside Peshawar. On its lid the Buddha sits between the gods Brahma and Indra; on its side stands a Kushan king, probably Kanishka himself.
One of Ashoka's inscribed pillars, carved with his edicts in Brahmi. Firuz Shah Tughlaq had it carried from Topra to Delhi in 1356 on a cart said to have had forty-two wheels; its script was finally read by James Prinsep in 1837.