Gandhara Art and Buddhism

Gandhara art developed as a genre within Buddhist Indian art under the rule of the nomadic Kushan Empire. It drew inspiration from the Graeco-Bactrian kingdoms of northern Afghanistan (3rd-2nd cents. BC), offspring of the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great (327-325 BC), as well as from nomadic immigration, the region's position along important caravan routes, especially the Silk Road, and the intensive cultural contacts which developed through trade. Characteristic of the genre are the use of single materials (mainly grey schist, stucco) and the appearance of the first anthropomorphic portrayals of the Buddha, who had hitherto only been symbolically emblematized in Ancient Indian art. Also typical are the influence of nomadic stylistic components and the synthesis of Graeco-Roman forms with Buddhist motifs.

The birth of Gandhara art is dated to the reign of the most important of the Kushan emperors, Kanishka I, whose regnal dates continue to be disputed, fluctuating, according to argument, anywhere between AD 78 and AD 278 [32; 40]. The use of different methods of measuring time in various regions of India means that fixed chronological reference points are lacking. In contrast to the former early dating of Gandhara art to the 2nd/1st cents. BC [14. vol. II], a date between the 1st and 3rd/4th cents. AD is generally accepted today [5; 41]. Gandhara works differ from pictorial works of other Indian schools of art by their processing of the Hellenistic-Roman style. Hellenistic garment forms  are evident especially in the Buddha statues . The iconography of ancient deities (Aphrodite , Dioscuri  etc.) is borrowed or used for the depiction of Indian and Buddhist divinities (Tychenagaradevatta/city goddess, Heracles-Vajrapāṇi ) and ancient mythological content is adapted

The influence of Gandhara in the artistic centre of Mathura, active at the same time [26], can be seen in the style and structure of garments on some Buddha statues. For one thing, they are clad in the monastic cloak (sanghati,pali), covering both shoulders, typical of Gandharan Buddha images [24. no. 78]. By contrast, Buddha figures from the original Indian school wear only an outer and inner garment. Secondly, the plastic representation of the garment folds in works influenced from Gandhara contrasts with the clothing on typical Mathura images, in which the garment lies thin and transparent on the body, and folds are only shown by incised lines.

In the development of classical Indian art of the Gupta period from the 4th cent. AD, the Gandhara style was of limited importance, and then for only one of the two main workshops, Mathura, and not for Sarnath. Certain stylistic elements (garment fold style) or motifs (relief composition with groups of figures in symmetrical rows, 'European sitting posture' and specific hand gestures of the Buddha, importance of the Bodhisattva figures) were adopted and developed in characteristic ways (transformation of schematic garment folds of the late GandharaBuddhas into rhythmically sequenced, transparent plications) [33. pl. 80].

Some Buddha images of the central and southern Indian art schools of Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda [33. pl. 71 A] betray Gandharan influence through reminiscences of Antiquity in folded garments, krobylos hairstyles and Apollonian physiognomies

Gandhara and the Afghan province of Bactria, its neighbour to the west, formed by virtue of their location on important trade routes the base for the expansion of Buddhism into Central and East Asia. The Buddha image developed in Gandhara was transmitted eastward along the main routes of the Silk Road during the late phase ofGandhara art in Afghanistan (Hadda, Bamiyan, Fondukistan) in the 3rd/4th cents. AD [25; 15]. The earliest evidence for Gandharan influence in Central Asian oasis cities, e.g. in the wall-paintings of Miran, cannot be dated before the 3rd or 4th cents. AD, and arise from the development of a Buddhist monastic culture in this period. As Buddhism did not reach geographically isolated Tibet until the 8th cent. AD, there are no Gandhara influences there. The same is true of South-East Asia, where Ashoka's Buddhist mission on Sri Lanka came very early, in the 3rd cent. BC. However, Gandharan elements are occasionally perceptible in Chinese sculpture in the folded garment style The Graeco-Roman 'armsling himation' type [29] transmitted by way of Gandhara art [21. fig. 211] is the origin of the form of monastic robe in which the right arm is folded into a draped sling 

Gandharan stylistic traditions also had an effect on later art works in the immediate sphere of influence ofGandhara art. The two colossal Buddha statues of Bamiyan [33. pl. 55], dated to the 5th-7th cents. AD and completely destroyed in March 2001 by Afghan Taliban fighters, showed the long continuity of Gandharainfluence in Afghanistan in their adoption of individual Gandharan elements (garment forms of the monastic robe covering both shoulders, sculptural fold style). The smaller of the two Buddha figures (height 35 m) was closer to Gandharan art because of the way its garments accentuated the shape of the body. In the schematic style of the garment folds on the larger Buddha statue (height 53 m) an influence of the Buddha images of the Gupta period at Mathura (from 4th cent. AD), themselves derived from late Gandhara figures, could be seen.

Early research concerned itself mostly with the issue of the foreign origins of Gandhara art. The theory of Greek origin considered Gandhara art as the continuation of Hellenistic pictorial art in the Graeco-Bactrian kingdoms [14; 17]. This is the context both of Alfred Foucher's term "Graeco-Buddhist" [13] and of his early dating ofGandhara art to the beginning 1st cent. BC. Increasing awareness of a chronological gap between Graeco-Bactrian art and the appearance of the first demonstrable works of Buddhist Gandhara art (not before the 1st cent. AD) led scholars such as Hugo Buchtal [3], Benjamin Rowland [34], John Wheeler [42] and Alexander Soper [39] to seeGandhara art not as deriving directly from a Hellenistic-Bactrian predecessor but as constituting a new artistic epoch, the crucial influence upon its emergence being Imperial Roman art which was at the same time spreading along trade routes into the east. The advocates of this Romano-Buddhist theory cited iconographic and stylistic comparisons [3; 4; 35; 39], and saw in the Buddha figure, in its bodily structure and primarily its treatment of garments, the model of the Imperial Roman robed figure [42. 7], especially the toga statue. Benjamin Rowland identified the robes of some Buddha statues as the Roman pallium and saw this as an adoption of the ancient pictorial motif of the philosopher [36]. Dieter Ahrens, in Die römischen Grundlagen der Gandharakunst ("The Roman Foundations of Gandhara Art", 1961), selected ten Buddha images and put them in a chronological sequence in stylistic comparison with Roman sculptures. He began his sequence with Buddhas similar in three-dimensional depiction of robes to Classicist works of the reign of Hadrian, and ended it with Buddha figures dated to Theodosian influence by reason of their stylized treatment of robes. Other scholars explain the schematized garments either as a parallel to stylistic developments in Roman sculpture of late Antiquity [37] or as evidence of the influence of the orientalizing art of Palmyra [39]. Hans Christoph Ackermann, examining the stock of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, used formal design techniques such as image composition and relief style to show the development of the Gandhara relief in comparison with Imperial Roman relief art [1]. Older research assumed a course of development in Gandhara art from a superior, Hellenistic-influenced early phase to one increasingly subject to Indian influence. An anti-Roman Philhellenism among the French and Germans [14; 17], who identified Gandhara art as Graeco-Buddhist, was here increasingly in confrontation with the pro-Roman ideology of the British [34; 39; 42], who preferred a Romano-Buddhist origin for Gandhara art. Conditioned by a colonial background, this model corresponded to a Eurocentric position which was not called into question until the reevaluation of Indian art by E.B. Havell [20]. This reevaluation led to an anti-Gandhara polemic in Indian scholarship , which has derided Gandhara art as an inferior imitation of foreign artistic principles. The Parthian style of finds, particularly from Sirkap/Taxila and Swat (Butkara), indicates close connections betweenGandhara art and Iran. Daniel Schlumberger [38], M. W. Khan [22] and Chantal Fabrègues [9] for their part acknowledged the parallels with Parthian and, to a lesser extent, Roman art, while asserting a continuity from Hellenistic-Bactrian art based on the existence of a Graeco-Parthian hybrid art in Bactrian cities.

Current scholarship is no longer concerned with the derivation of Gandhara art from any specific artistic culture. Rather, Gandhara art is accepted as a hybrid style, and the emphasis of research has shifted in favour of detailed iconographic analysis [12]. Central issues are connected with the problem of chronology and the study of cultural contacts, and are leading to a reassessment of Gandhara art along research-historical lines

Since at first excavation activity was being carried out mainly by the British, it followed that Gandharan finds were in the 19th cent. mostly exhibited at British museums, as examples of high-quality Indian artistic creativity.Gandhara art represented the art of the Crown Colony of India. Increasing understanding of its uniqueness combined with the difficulties in its classification subsequently led most frequently to the incorporation ofGandhara art in ethnological museums or collections. There are only a few departments entirely devoted toGandhara.