The region of Gandhara is located in Northern Pakistan and Eastern Afghanistan. The area comprises sections of Peshawar, Swat, Sir, Bajaur Taxila Valley (in Punjab), Hadda and Bamiyan. The area was first mentioned (in the second millennium BC) in the Rig-Vedas, a collection of ancient Indian hymns and a religious book of the Aryans. In the book, the people living in Peshawar Valley and the area of Rawal Pindi (in today’s Pakistan) were referred to as Gandhara. For the most part, the region remained under the reign of foreign leaders of Greek, Bactrian, Parthian, Achaemenian backgrounds. Alexander’s successor Seleucus ceded it to the Indian King ChandraGupta, whose grandson, Asoka became the heir and eventually converted to the Buddhist religion. It is under his reign, that the people of Gandhara converted and became devoted followers of the Buddhist religion. Though after Asoka’s death, the region was captured by the Greeks again and remained in the hands of foreign leaders for the next seven centuries.

The introduction of Hellenism in the region was an important part of why Gandharan art is the way it is. Alexander’s expeditions had him set off to different cities in the stages of his conquest. His conquest of the Gandhara region marks one of the most important stages of Hellenism slowly conveying their culture over Asia. After Alexander’s death, his empire divided, where the northern regions were under the Hindu Kush rule, and the Southerly regions were reclaimed by the Maurya’s.

It was during the reign of the Kushan dynasty in Gandhara, that Buddhist art was developed, and spread throughout China, Korea and Japan. The Kushans were able to adapt elements from the Hellenistic culture and language and incorporate it to suit their own culture. Though they were believed to be mostly Zoroastrian, they were able to adapt aspects of Buddhist and Greek culture. It was during their rule that Gandhara artists were able to lean heavily on Classical Greek mythology such as plantations, using realistic facial features, angels and garlands. “The result is that we have Buddha with curly hair, muscles, and mustaches. Gautama is made to look like the youthful Apollo, the Greek sun-god symbolizing beauty and strength dressed in loose attire.”

The artists at that time incorporated many classical Greek mythologies in their interpretation of the Buddhist legends. They tended to make Buddhist art more realistic, by giving these objects a more humanistic form. For instance, statues of Buddhas would be sculpted to have curly hair, muscles and mustaches, while dressed in loose clothing, such as robes. Instead of the Buddha being being seated, in this school of art, they are seen to be standing with Greco inspired iconography. “The Gandhara artist, it is said, had the hand of a Greek but the head and heart of an Indian. Although the process of production and manner of using the material was Hellenistic, the basic urge, imagery and iconography remained Indian.” They seemed to maintain a balance between both cultures of art.  They balanced between the realness, sensuous and humanistic features of Hellenistic art and incorporated it with Indian sacred and spiritual expressions in return creating an “Indo-Greek god, who looked physically close to Greek mythology but spiritually dipped in Indian doctrine and style.”