Gandhara

[Germanicus]

I was at the National gallery of Victoria in Melbourne yesterday, and paused to look at some statues of Buddha and various Bodhisattva that looked decidedly Greek in terms of their flowing, toga like robes, the realistic treatment of their bodies, facial features and hair. As confimred by the commentary next to these, they show a Hellenistic influence due to the invasion of Gandhara by Alexander. (Gandhara somewhere around southern Afganistan/Northern India/Pakistan).

 

It was something I hadn't come accross before, so thought I'd post this link to gandhara.com.au where there is a Gallery of similar statues/heads etc from the same area. They were sculpting Hellenic mythological figures prior to or perhaps at the same time as the Buddha images - on this website I found a partial sculpture of Atlas from the same period. Makes it all the worse in my mind that it's just this kind of thing the Taliban were destroying prior to invasion.

[DecimusCaesar]

Thanks for the link Germanicus. This reminds me of Michael Wood's 'In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great' where he visits a museum in Kabul that has been gutted by the Taliban. Among the smashed statues and pottery hidden in the museum's cellar he finds a little stauette of a Hellenistic Buddha, whose head has been knocked off. The former curator of the museum says that looking around the place today is 'like seeing your mother and father killed...Our whole history was here.' Michael wood simply says that it is 'heart breaking.'

[Kosmo]

India was seriouselly inluenced by hellenistic art. First when Alexander and his succesors controled areas in the west of India. Later the greek kings of Bactria established a strong control of even larger areas and finnally during the Kushan kingdom, of scythian origins, that kept hellenistic tradition and developed extensive realations with the romans. Kushans had at a point control of today Pakistan, much of Gange valley in India, whole Afghanistan, large areas in Central Asia including the Tarim Basin in today China.

The kings called themself Caesar, had send several embassies at Rome concluding treaties with romans, possibly even an alliance against parthians with Trajan, minted coines similar with aureus including depictions of Minerva and greek inscriptions.

As the Silk road crossed their Central Asia domein much of the silk from China crossed the Hindukush and from there down the Indus River and across the Indian Ocean to Egypt. Romans had excelent knowledge of this friendly kingdom.

In a kushan palace arheologists unearthed many roman-hellenistic art products toghether with chinese ones in what has been an art\curiosities kingly collection.

Many other roman objects were found in Gandahara area the heartland of the kingdom.