Gandhara School of Arts
The Gandhara school of art, also known as Greco-Buddhist art, arose from the meeting of Classical Greek culture and Buddhism in the northwestern reaches of the Indian subcontinent, and represents one of the most historically significant fusions of foreign and Indian artistic traditions. For UPSC History Optional aspirants, Gandhara art is essential both for its own distinctive Hellenistic-Buddhist synthesis — from its stupas and Buddha images to its use of Roman and Greek motifs — and for its far-reaching influence on the Mathura and Amaravati schools and, eventually, on Gupta art. This article traces the origins and development of the Gandhara school, its salient features, materials, and iconography, its flourishing under the Kushans, its specific debts to Greek and Roman art, its influence on other Indian schools of art, and a structured comparison with the Mathura school.
Gandhara School of Arts and Greco-Buddhist Art
- Indian craftsmen came into contact with the Central Asians, Greeks, and Romans, especially on the north-western frontier of India, in Gandhara.
- This gave rise to a new form of art in which images of the Buddha were made in the Graeco-Roman style, with his hair, too, fashioned in the Graeco-Roman manner.
- Greco-Buddhist art is the artistic manifestation of Greco-Buddhism, a cultural syncretism between Classical Greek culture and Buddhism, which developed over a period of close to a thousand years in Central Asia — between the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC and the Islamic conquests of the 7th century AD.
- A large number of monasteries were also built from the first to the fourth centuries AD; ruins of about fifteen monasteries were found in and around Peshawar and Rawalpindi.
- The Buddhist stupas erected during this period bore the impact of Graeco-Roman architecture.
- The height of the stupa was raised, and ornamentation was added to its structure; these changes made the stupa more attractive.
Origin Place and Period of Development
- The home of the Gandhara school of art is the territory in and around Peshawar in northwestern India.
- The origins of Greco-Buddhist art are found in the Hellenistic Greco-Bactrian kingdom (250–130 BC), located in today’s Afghanistan, from which Hellenistic culture radiated into the Indian subcontinent with the establishment of the Indo-Greek kingdom (180 BC – 10 BC).
- Under the Indo-Greeks and the Kushans, the interaction of Greek and Buddhist culture flourished in the area of Gandhara, in today’s northern Pakistan, before spreading further into India — influencing the art of Mathura, and then the Hindu art of the Gupta empire, which was in turn to extend to the rest of Southeast Asia.
- The influence of Greco-Buddhist art also spread northward towards Central Asia, strongly affecting the art of the Tarim Basin, and ultimately the arts of China, Korea, and Japan.
- The best of the Gandhara sculpture was produced during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.
- It originated during the reign of the Indo-Greek rulers, but the real patrons of this school of art were the Sakas and the Kushanas, particularly Kanishka.
- Specimens of Gandhara sculpture have been found at Taxila, Peshawar, and in several other places in northwest India.
Salient Features
- The Gandhara style of art that developed in sculpture was a fusion of Greco-Roman and Indian styles.
- The Gandhara school was heavily influenced by Greek methods; its figures were more spiritual, sculpted mainly in grey stone, and great detail was paid to the exact depiction of body parts. It is also known as the Graeco-Buddhist school of art.
- The Gandharan Buddha image was inspired by Hellenistic realism, tempered by Persian, Scythian, and Parthian models.
- The theme of the Gandhara school is mainly Buddhist, and it produced sculptures of the Buddha in various sizes, shapes, and postures.
- The reliefs depict the Buddha’s birth, his renunciation, and his preaching; the main theme was the new form of Buddhism — Mahayana — and the evolution of an image of the Buddha.
- Sculptors constructed Buddhist images with anatomical accuracy, spatial depth, and foreshortening; the images of the Buddha resembled the Greek god Apollo.
- The human body was moulded in a realistic manner, with minute attention to physical features such as muscles, moustache, and curly or wavy hair; rich carving, elaborate ornamentation, and symbolic expressions were characteristic.
- The Buddha of Gandhara art is sometimes very thin — the opposite of the Mathura tradition — with thick drapery and large, bold fold lines; more stress is given to bodily features and external beauty.
- It appears that the Mathura and Gandhara schools cross-fertilised over time, and the bulky Mathura Buddha gradually gave way to the slender elegance of the Gandharan image.
- The result of this synthesis ennobled, refined, and purified the Buddha image that appeared in the Gupta period, and this Gupta style became the model for Southeast Asian Buddha images.
- Some Greco-Buddhist friezes represent groups of donors or devotees, giving interesting insights into the cultural identity of those who participated in the Buddhist cult.
Material Used
- Grey sandstone was used in the Gandhara school of art; the Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan are an example of this school.
- Other materials used were mud, lime, and stucco; marble was not used in Gandhara art, and terracotta was used only rarely.
- Stucco provided the artist with a medium of great plasticity, enabling a high degree of expressiveness to be given to the sculpture.
The Various Mudras of the Buddha in Gandhara Art
- In Gandhara art, the Buddha is invariably shown making one of four types of hand gestures (mudras) — a remarkable feature of this art. These gestures are as follows:
- Abhaya mudra: the gesture of fearlessness;
- Dhyana mudra: the gesture of meditation;
- Dharmachakra mudra: the preaching gesture;
- Bhumisparsha mudra: the earth-touching gesture.
Under Kushana
- In India, Gandhara art first flourished under Kushana rule; Kanishka, the greatest of the Kushanas, was a great patron of art and architecture, and it was during his reign that the Gandhara school of art flourished.
- The Kushans, positioned at the centre of the Silk Road, enthusiastically gathered works of art from all quarters of the ancient world, as suggested by the hoards found in their northern capital, at the archaeological site of Begram, Afghanistan.
- The Kushans sponsored Buddhism together with other Iranian and Hindu faiths; particularly under the Kushans, there are numerous representations of richly adorned Bodhisattvas, all in a very realistic Greco-Buddhist style.
- The Bodhisattvas, characteristic of the Mahayana form of Buddhism, are represented under the traits of Kushan princes.
- Their coins, however, suggest a lack of artistic sophistication: the representations of their kings, such as Kanishka, tend to be crude (lacking proportion, with rough drawing), and the image of the Buddha is an assemblage of a Hellenistic Buddha statue with feet grossly represented and spread apart in the same fashion as the Kushan king.
- This tends to indicate that Hellenistic Greco-Buddhist statues were used as models, subsequently corrupted by Kushan artists.
Gandhara School of Art and Greco-Roman Influence
- The Gandhara school of art developed in the post-Mauryan period, during the reign of the Kushana emperor Kanishka; both the Shakas and the Kushanas were patrons of the Gandhara school.
- Though the subject matter is predominantly Buddhist, many sculptural motifs show Greco-Roman influence.
Greek Influence
- The mother of the Buddha resembles an Athenian matron, and many early Buddha images have Apollonian faces; Greek gods are depicted paying obeisance to the Buddha.
- Other Greek influences include: artistic beauty; a halo around the Buddha; a masculine Buddha; natural realism; a broad forehead and long earlobes; curly or wavy — and sometimes very thick — hair; a moustache and beard; and heavy bodily forms with depiction of the muscles.
Roman Influence
- The dress of many Buddha images is arranged in the style of a Roman toga, with deeply delineated folds in the robes of the Buddha.
- Other Roman influences include artistic interpretations incorporating Roman motifs, such as the triton, and the anthropomorphic tradition.
Other Greco-Roman Influences
- The facial features of the Buddha reflect Greco-Roman influence, including protruding eyeballs, elongated eyes, half-closed eyes, and an elongated face with a sharp nose.
- Many ordinary people shown in various scenes also bear the imprint of a distinctly Greco-Roman style.
- Though many features of Gandhara art were influenced by foreign elements, it also developed unique features shaped by indigenous influence.
Influence of Gandhara Art on Other Indian Arts
Influence on Mathura Art
- Many Mathura sculptures incorporate Hellenistic elements, such as the general idealistic realism, and key design elements such as curly hair and folded garments.
- Specific Mathuran adaptations tend to reflect the warmer climate, with a greater fluidity of clothing that progressively came to cover only one shoulder instead of both; facial types also tended to become more Indianised.
- This reflects the mixed character of the Mathura school, in which we find, on the one hand, a direct continuation of the old Indian art of Bharhut and Sanchi, and on the other, the classical influence derived from Gandhara.
Influence on Amaravati Art
- The influence of Greek art can be felt beyond Mathura, as far as Amaravati on the east coast of India, as shown by the use of Greek scrolls in combination with Indian deities; other motifs, such as Greek chariots pulled by four horses, can also be found in the same area.
- The art of Mathura acquired progressively more Indian elements and reached a very high level of sophistication during the Gupta empire, between the 4th and 6th centuries AD; Gupta art is considered the pinnacle of Indian Buddhist art.
- Hellenistic elements remain clearly visible in the purity of the statuary and the folds of the clothing, but are refined with a very delicate rendering of the drapery.
- Artistic details tend to be less realistic, as seen in the symbolic shell-like curls used to render the hairstyle of the Buddha.
Main Differences Between the Mathura and Gandhara Schools of Art
Origin
- Mathura School: No foreign influence initially, though it later cross-fertilised with the Gandhara school; its development took place entirely indigenously.
- Gandhara School: Strong Greek influence; based on Greco-Roman norms, encapsulating foreign techniques and an alien spirit, and also known as the Graeco-Buddhist school of art. Initially inspired by Yaksha images; a hallmark of the Gandhara style is the assimilation of various traits from the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Bactrian traditions into the local tradition, alongside its initial inspiration from Hellenistic features.
Material Used
- Mathura School: spotted red sandstone.
- Gandhara School: blue-grey mica schist / grey sandstone.
Image Features
- Mathura School:
- Early period: light-volumed, fleshy figures.
- Later period: flashiness reduced; the Buddha carved in various mudras; not much attention paid to detailed sculpting; the Buddha appears stout.
- Gandhara School: finer details and realistic images; the Buddha carved in various mudras; curly hair, anatomical accuracy, spatial depth, and foreshortening; the Buddha is sometimes thin.
Halo
- Mathura School: the halo around the head of the Buddha was profusely decorated; images are less expressive.
- Gandhara School: generally not decorated; the images are very expressive.
