The Gandharan culture might be as old as 1200 BC, but it only emerged as a unified kingdom around 500 BC. Sandwiched between the great empires of the Mediterranean world and the Indian subcontinent, it was regularly subjected to waves of foreign invasion, each of which left its own mark as the culture developed. At first it was the Achaemenids who conquered Gandhara, but it was the arrival of Alexander the Great which left the most indelible mark, both in terms of social development as well as in cultural and artistic output. Later, the Mauryans took control, but soon an independent Indo-Greek Kingdom (yavanaraja), founded following the Graeco-Bactrian invasion, took hold. Essentially a client state of the Mauryan Empire, it was subject to various Indian influences, the most notable of which was the arrival of Buddhism under Ashoka the Great (reigned 268 BC – 232 BC). As his famous Edict reported: ‘here in the king’s domain, the Greeks […] are following Beloved-of-the-Gods’ [the Buddha’s] instructions in the dharma.’ Buddhism survived waves of invasion, from the Parthians and Skythians, and eventually flourished under the Kushans and their great Fifth-Century AD king Kanishka. It took an invasion by the Huns, in the Sixth Century AD, to suppress Buddhism in the area, after some 800 years.

Gandharan art imported the best of Hellenistic art – a clear understanding of anatomy, elaborate drapery, and increasingly baroque compositions – and combined it with the artistic traditions of India. The result was a series of masterpieces which remained unappreciated by Western scholarship until the arrival of Gandharan artworks into leading museums in the Nineteenth Century AD. Unlike its Greek and Roman predecessors, Gandharan art never made extensive use of bronze as an artistic medium. While Hellenistic artists pushed bronzeworking to its extreme limits, both in terms of the complexity of their compositions and the size of the artworks themselves, Gandharan bronzes are small. Nonetheless, Gandharan bronzes exhibit the delicacy and sensitivity that characterise Gandharan art as a whole. This standing figure of the Buddha represents him as a stocky, well-built youth. He has the traditional attributes of the Buddha: the ushnisha topknot, which indicates his wisdom, and also refers to the tradition of wearing one’s hair long and bunched into a bun under a turban; the urna spot on his forehead, symbolising his ‘third eye’, or his ability to see beyond this earthly realm; a monk’s robe (sanghati) which covers both his shoulders, representing the simplicity of his ascetic life; long stretched-out ears, formerly weighed down by the heavy gold earrings of the princely class; and his hands (missing the little finger on the right) raised in a mudra, a sacred hand gesture, in this case the abhayamudra, a gesture of fearlessness and protection. The Buddha has a serene expression – eyes half closed, and mouth drawn into a slight smile – which alludes to his attainment of enlightenment at a young age. His high arched eyebrows, almond-shaped eyes, pursed lips, and the tight curls of his hair are all thoroughly Indian, but the attention to the drapery, and the modelling of the limbs, are fully Hellenistic. On the back of the figure is a loop, most likely for attaching a halo (pabha) or a chatra, a kind of umbrella or parasol, which represents the dome of the sky and thereby the extent of the universe. Indeed, a number of Gandharan images of the Buddha which closely follow this model are furnished with a nimbus or aureole, and with fittings for a chatra (Metropolitan Museum of Art 1981.188, Victoria and Albert Museum IS.12-1948).

A close parallel to this Buddha can be found in the British Museum (1958,0714.1), which allows us to date this figure to the Fourth or Fifth Century AD. Such figures were small and portable, and probably represented the individual devotion of an elite person. Kept in a portable shrine, it is likely that figures like this were partly responsible for the wide reach of Buddhism both across the Gandharan heartlands, and among the trading partners of the Gandharans. Each of these bronzes depicts the Buddha in the same pose; legs at shoulder width, hands in the abhayamudra, sanghati draped over both shoulders. Showing influences of Gupta bronzeworking, it is possible that artisans from the Indian subcontinent were employed in Gandhara itself to produce them, adopting the artistic norms of their hosts and applying their own techniques.

References: a very similar bronze can be found in London (British Museum 1958,0714.1), with another example in New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art 2003.593.2). Bronzes of the Buddha in the same pose, with nimbus and aureole, can be found in London (Victoria and Albert Museum IS.12-1948) and New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art 1981.188).