At the first glance, Gandharan art appears familiar/intimate (I LIKE YOUR

TRANSLATION MORE). Its formality and often only supposed depictions of the
contents and motives of Ancient Greek and Roman art of the Mediterranean
immediately grant it value to its cultural foundations. At least, so describes that in
various ways of a "Greco-Buddhist art" by the leading standards of work of Alfred
Foucher in 1905. This term is based on the acceptance that Gandharan art
eventually becomes the root of hellinistic artistry, which became established during
the wide-reaching conquest of Alexander the Great, and that Gandharan design is
almost always exclusively expressed by/incorporated into Buddhist monuments.
However, it can be assumed that without Roman
ancestry/inheritance/origin/tradition incorporated into Gandharan art, many details
of Gandharan art would have remained unclear. Gandharan art, on principle an
amalgamation of the west and the east or, in this case, south Asian, cannot be
reduced to such simplified classifications, as cultural Traditions in the art itself
cannot be so ignored. As the authors of this publication demonstrate, recent
discoveries have supposedly indicated a clear and multivaried cultural background
for Gandharan art and the original materials/contributions of the bearers/inheritors
of Gandharan culture have been worked out/elucidated.

Gandhara refers to a historical region in modern-day northwest Pakistan near the

city of Peshawar. In the context of artistry, the term includes this central area as
well as the greater region from Kabul to Islamabad, inclusive of the Swat Valley,
directly north from Peshawar. Chronologically the beginnings of art/craft of
Gandharan manufacture is dated/recognized to be from the start of the first
millenium until the fifth century. The gigantic Buddhas of Bamiyan, whose
destruction at the hands of the Taliban in 2001 received worldwide media attention,
represents a later creation of the Gandharan art style.

The most proliferative era of Gandharan art occurred predominantly during the
Kushana Dynasty, ruled by a people from the East Asian grassland
plains/savannahs/shrubland biome (CHECK STEPPE ON WIKIPEDIA), assimilated into
Bactria (HOW HAVE I NEVER LEARNED ABOUT THIS), and subsequently took over
northwest India. At the height of their civilization, their kingdom spanned from the
region of Bactria northwards through Hindukush (KNOWN IN ANCIENT GREEK AS
CAUCUSUS INDICUS) and into central India. As depicted on their coins, the Kushans
themselves were followers of a Shiva-related deity known as Oesho (THOUGHT TO
BE IDENTICAL TO SHIVA, AND "OESHO" IS THE PRONOUNCIATION OF "SHIVA" IN THE
BACTRIAN LANGUAGE OF THE KUSHANS) and Zoroaster/Zarathustra (OESHO IS NOW
THOUGHT TO BE ZOROASTRIAN WITH MANY ATTRIBUTES OF SHIVA). The latter
(REFERRING TO ZOROASTER) was discovered in the inscriptions/writings from the
year 90 of Kanishka I, writings known as the Rabatak inscriptions, which identified

that the zoroastrian deities existed in the caste system (REFERRING TO

BRAHMIN/INDIAN CULTURE). Beyond that, the inscriptions lay out how expansive
and the wealth of this dynasty, reaching deep into the Ganges and the Yamuna
tributary (largest river leading to the Ganges) of northern India, as well as a secret
group of Kushan rulers who believed their rights to be equal to those of God. It is
thus justified in excellent condition the larger-than-life royal sculptures from Surkh
Kotal in what is now modern-day Afghanistan, and Mat, in north-indian Mathura.

The coins of Kanishka, his successor Huvishka and the Rabatak inscriptions all
indicate/substantiate the level of tolerance that the Kushan rulers had for all of the
existing religions of the time. The simultaneity of existence of zoroastrian Gods with
those of the brahmine and ever-popular Pantheon are documental that those who
governed the Brahmines must have been followers of an earlier form of Hinduism.
Actually, it has been accepted that the Gandharan population was culturally indian,
not only because the region was in 300 BC a part of the Mauryan Empire, which
then concentrated in North India, but also because over the course of the next 200
years the bearers of Vedic culture, as part of the Indian subcontinent through which
it originated, entered this region. Despite all of this, it was through the allowance
and public support by the Kushan Empire that buddhist art truly blossomed.

Kanishka I can naturally not critically be deemed as buddhist, as he commonly

appears in buddhist text/literature. He is the only Kushan emperor who allowed
Buddhist figures of his time, Buddha Sakyamuni and Bodhisattva Maitreya, to be
minted on monetary coins. The beginning of the rule of Kanishka I, and therefore his
own era, can be dated with certainty to the year 127 AD due to two discoveries
from Harry Falk. This date indicates that the first proliferation of Gandharn art
occurred entirely during the second century (see below). 500 years would pass
between the conquest of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC and the
"matured Hellinism" of Gandhara, as Maurizio Taddei calls it.