Page 309 - Eye of the beholder

STANDING STATUE OF BODHISATTAVA MAITREYA: GANDHARA, 2ND-3RD CENTURY AD
The art of Gandhara, properly speaking is the official art of the Kushan Emperor Kanishka and his successors which, flourished in north-western regions of India from the first to the fifth centuries A.D.. The designation Kushan art may properly be applied to all the production of architecture, sculpture and painting in Afghanistan, north western India and Punjab and the present day Pakistan, from about the first to the seventh centuries A.D. when these territories were under the domination of the Kushan or Indo-Scythian Dynasty of rulers. Art under the Kushans, however, divides itself into two completely distinct categories. In the northern portion of their domains, comprising the ancient provinces of Gandhara, the Kushans as patrons of Buddhism availed themselves of the services of journeymen, craftsmen from the Roman East, who produced a form that was of the late Antique character dedicated to Buddhism.
Of far greater importance for the history of Gandhara were the Kujulas’s, the follower of Kanishka, the most powerful and renowned of the Kushan sovereigns, who made Peshawar his winter capital and extended his conquests from Central Asia to Bengal. Kanishka is frequently referred to as the second Asoka in his efforts in the propagation and patronage of Buddhism. Although Buddha himself never visited Gandhara, the texts composed by Buddhist sages under the Kushans made the region a veritable holy land of Buddhism by association of various sites with events from his previous incarnation.
The Gandhara designation comes from the ancient name of the region, and is referred to as ‘Greco-Buddhist’, a term sometimes applied to the same art, but also misleading, since it implies a derivation from Greek art. As a matter of fact Gandhara sculptures have little to do with Greek art either in its Hellenic or Hellenistic phase, and is closely related to Roman art. It is best described as the easternmost appearance of the art of the Roman Empire, especially in its late and provincial manifestations. The subject matter of Gandhara art is exclusively Buddhist and Kanishka through his patronage of Buddhism has rightly been regarded as a great patron of the Gandhara School. It was at this time that the Gandhara sculpture was initiated.
The influence came in part from objects of unquestioned foreign origin that have been found at various points in Gandhara region. A more considerable treasure of imported objects of art, including Syrian glass and Roman metal and plaster sculptures was unearthed at Begram in Afghanistan. The importance of all these finds was a confirmation of the intimacy of relations - commercial and cultural between Gandhara and the Roman west.
Under the Kushan Emperors Gandhara enjoyed its period of greatest prosperity, and it is to that era that the finest Gandhara sculpture is attributed. There never was a fusion of Indian and western ideal in Gandhara. The arts of India and Gandhara advanced along separate paths in different directions. Inevitably the, inappropriateness of the humanistic classic form of Western art for the expression of the mystical and symbolic beliefs of Indian Buddhism led to the disappearance of this imported style with the development of the truly Indian ideals of the Gupta period.
The reference to Gandhara art primarily is to the sculpture of the Peshawar Valley [Pakistan] dedicated to Buddhism, which probably had its beginnings in the later decade of the first century A.D. under the patronage of the first Kushan emperors who ruled in north western India.
The Gandhara School is usually credited with the first representation of Buddha in its
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