GANDHARA Graeco-Buddhist Sculpture.—The prolific Graeco-Buddhist school of the North-West Frontier (Afghanistan and part of the Panjab, including Peshawar and the site of Taxila) has always attracted the attention of archaeologists. Its subjects, as in Indian Buddhist art, are drawn from the Buddha legend, and we meet with countless images of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and of other deities such as the Tutelary Pair, Kubera and Hariti. The influ ence of the school is widely extended in Central Asia, affecting China, Korea, and Japan to a less degree.
Very few Gandhara images bear dates, and no one of these dates is in a known era. According to some interpretations these dates indicate a beginning of the art in the first century B.C. But at Taxila, where excavations have been scientifically conducted, Graeco-Buddhist art is entirely absent from the Scytho-Parthian and very early Kusana levels of the city of Sirkap, and only ap pears a little before the time of Kaniska. In any case the period of greatest production coincides with the reigns of Kaniska (acc. A.D. r 2o) and Huviska, in the second century A.D. Grunwedel dates Kaniska A.D. 78 and makes the Gandhara school begin in the second century, thus later than the establishment of the Mathura type. But, the Buddha image may have come into use, as the result of a common religious necessity, simultaneously in both areas ; though the priority for Gandhara, even if established, would not affect the fact that the Indian Buddha image of the Gupta period is derived directly from the early Mathura type, as this in turn is derived from that of the Yaksa types of the earliest Indian school. It may be safely said that the influence of the Graeco-Buddhist school in India has been much exag gerated.
The Gandharan type differs from Indian types in more than one way; iconographically by a different treatment of the hair, and in the seat, which is in Gandhara nearly always a lotus, in India is at first always a lion throne, despite the fact that the lotus seat as a divine symbol had long been known. Stylistically, the differences are more profound. Gandharan is "late," and belongs to an age of aesthetic decadence in its own cycle; it is naturalistic by intention, although its appearance of realism is no longer based on any structural reality; its graces are deliberate and languid; the solid folds of the drapery are carefully repre sented. The Indian type has still all the energy and volume of primitive art ; it makes no pretensions to grace, is without natural istic intention, and the drapery is schematic and clinging. It would hardly be possible to juxtapose two contemporary styles more distinct in kind.
The Gandharan art in its own environment is gradually Indian ised, and its productivity ends with the Huna invasions of the fifth century.