- Greco-Buddhist art is the artistic manifestation of Greco-Buddhism, a cultural syncretism between the Classical Greek culture and Buddhism, which developed over a period of close to 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.
Origin Place and Period of Development
- The origins of Greco-Buddhist art are to be found in the Hellenistic Greco-Bactrian kingdom (250 BC- 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 to extend to the rest of South-East 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.
Salient Features
- Gandhara style of art that developed in sculpture was a fusion of Greco-Roman and Indian styles. Gandhara school was heavily influenced by Greek methodologies, the figures were more spiritual and sculpted mainly in grey, and great detail was paid to exact depiction of body parts.
- It is also known as Graeco-Buddhist School of art.
- The Gandharan Buddha image was inspired by Hellenistic realism, tempered by Persian, Scythian, and Parthian models.
- Theme is mainly Buddhist, depicting various stories from the life of Buddha.
- Sculptors constructed Buddhist images with anatomical accuracy, spatial depth, and foreshortening.
- The images of Buddha resembled Greek God Apollo. Buddha’s curls were altered into wavy hair. The Buddha of Gandhar art is sometimes very thin, which is opposite in Mathura art.
- More stress is given to the bodily features and external beauty.
Gandhara Style, Afghanistan,4th-5th C.
- It looks like the Mathura, Gandhara arts cross-fertilized in due course of 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. ThisGupta 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 is used in Gandhara School of Art. The Bamyan Buddha of Afghanistan were the example of the Gandhara School.
- The other materials used were Mud, Lime, Stucco. However, Marble was not used in Gandhara art.
- Terracotta was used rarely.
- Stucco provided the artist with a medium of great plasticity, enabling a high degree of expressiveness to be given to the sculpture.