Gandhara Art or Greco-Buddhist art is one of the most special chapters in the history of art.  It decends back to Alexander the Great and the start of the Silkroute.

 

There are many examples in history of great civilizations coming and going.  Temporary benefits and competitive advantages or strategically important placements could be very crucial and provide the basis for a thriving civilization. Just as dramatically, large, and advanced cultures can perish due to climatic changes, accidents or competition from the rival group. This was the fate of the Incas, the Khmer Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, the Mycenaean culture and the Gandharan culture. Long-term domination can both corrupt and become perishable when hungry neighbors live side by side.

 

Gandharan culture originated in a strategic location from the beginning of our era, at the foot of the Himalayas, the western gateway to the Silk Road through the Hindu Kush and Karakorum. This is where you had to stop by to bunker provisions or unload goods after completing a strenuous journey through mountain passes and deserts. The area was, in a sense, the precursor to the important trading points along the sea route to China. But that was before the boats arrived and while the camel caravans were the only means of transport. Gandharan was the well-known as a cultural and religious center where rich people from India and other parts of the Central Asia sent their children for education, probably because the monks like today are an important resource for spiritual and intellectual awareness.

 

Then, suddenly around 5-600 AD the Gandharan culture disappears. Huns and Muslims displace the Buddhist culture, plundering and tearing down stupas and temples. What was once a cultural center in Central Asia is forever forgotten and overgrown. Alternative trade routes and the sea route to China also gradually turn this area into abandoned and inaccessible mountain landscapes. It was not until the 19th century that many of the ruins were excavated by French, Italian and English archaeologists in Takht-i-Bahi (Peshawar Valley), Barikot, (Swat Valley) and Dharmarajika (Taxila). Although local authorities now have major plans for the preservation of cultural heritage sites and the reconstruction of the ancient shrines, there is an abyss between the original culture and Muslim fundamentalists careless vandalization of cultural and unique cult treasures.

Fortunately, many of the artefacts are safely preserved in museums

​

The first accounts of Gandhara culture are found in Persian inscriptions dating back to the Achaemenids empire in the sixth century before Christ. Emperor Darius the first declared in 519 bc that Gandhara was a protectorate during the Akehmenids dynasty as the most easternmost province. At the time, Gandhara was an important center for education and many royal houses in India sent their young men to Taxila for education.

Gandhara played an important role in the historical development of the artistic representation of Buddha. Although there is great discussion around when it happened it is obvious that the first pictorial depictions of Buddha as human took shape in the first century after Christ. At the same time as the Gandhara era, a human depiction of Buddha under Mathura culture also arose further south in India.

Gandhara Art, also known as the Graeco-Buddhistic Art, consists of almost exclusively Buddhist sculpture that flourished along the valleys of the Kabul river and it’s tributaries in what is now Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan, as well as along the river Indus and some of it’s tributaries in contemporary India.

Today it is very difficult to understand how an outpost like the Gandhara region could develop into such a strategic and prosperous area. But imagine the similar position Malakka Strait or Suez has today! Long before boats could sail, there were only caravanes and only few routes to pass along the long and dangerous Silk Route. Cities like Tashkent, Taxila, Kashgar, and Turpan had all strategical locations on both sides of the the Karakoram mountains and the Taklamakan desert. They were the cornerstones on the Silk Route linking China and South Asia with the Mediterranean.

This made the Gandharan aera and Kushan empire into a prosperous center for commerce, culture and early Buddhist art.  Chronologically, it started in the 1rst century AD and lasted until the arrival of the Islam. By the end of the 7th century nearly all the monasteries had been abandoned. Because often the monasteries were constructed in remote valleys (for meditation purposes), they slowly covered up by sand and the sculpture survived until their re-discovery from the 19th century onwards.

Art-historically the Gandhara-period represents an extremely interesting period, since it shows one of the first cultural meetings between the eastern and western cultures.

Alexander The Great conquered the Achamenid Dynasty with 50.000 men in the 4th century. After Alexanders death in 323 BC, the Gandhara region remained under control of one of his officers, Seleucus, who stablished his own Dynasty. Soon after, in 305 BC, he lost the region to the Indian king Chandragupta, founder of the Mauryan dynasty. This was the beginning of a massive building of Buddhist monasteries in the Gandhara region but only a few have been found and excavated. After a limited period of Bactrian and Scytian influence, the Kushan Dynasty was established and dominated from the 1st century until ist was runover by the Huns in the 5th century.

There is undoubly a great influence from the greek culture in the Gandharan art and some call it Greco-Buddhist art. Until the first century BC, Buddha had largely been made symbolic in the form of foot imprints, bodhi tree, umbrella, Dharma wheel, the conch shell or an empty throne. He was now shown as a greek god, with all the features of Greek sculpture such as the treatment of the hair, the Mediterranean nose, the folding and the transparency of the robe and the use of optical illusion.

Ghandaran images of the Buddha have certain common characteristics;  the flowing robes draped around the shoulders and across the body, with the hair in loose flowing curls rather than the tight ringlets characteristic of later sculptures. The hair is drawn up into a bun which is the ushnisha, the protuberance at the top of the head which represents the flame of supreme enlightenment. Ghandaran sculptures of the Buddha almost always have the urna as well as the "third eye" in the middle of the forehead.

The main material used in the Gandhara School is stone, usually blue, bluegreen, and grey schist stone. This is a quite heavy metamorphic rock like basalt with a preponderance of lamellar minerals like mica or chlorite. It is the mica which gives certain schist sculptures their glitter or sparkle. This special schist was found in certain regions of todays Pakistan.

In the later Ganhara period from around 3rd century AD during the Kushan Dynasty, a lot of sculptures were also made in stucco, a mixture of cement, sand and/or limestone.

This made molding and more detailed sculpturing easier, but these sculptures were not weather resistant and normally used under roof or inside bulidings. Stucco sculptures could also be easily painted.