The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c7.2

c7.2

For the information of those who may not be familiar with the word ‘Gandhāra’ let me start by explaining that it was the ancient name of the tract of country on the west bank of the Indus river which comprises the Peshāwar Valley and the modern Swāt, Buner and Bajaur. It was a country with rich, well-watered valleys, clear-cut hills and a pleasant climate: a country where a Greek might well dream of being back in his homeland. Situated on the borderland between India and Western Asia, Gandhāra belonged as much and as little to the one as to the other. In the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. it formed part of the Achaemenid empire of Persia. In the fourth it was occupied for a brief period by the armies of Alexander the Great. Thereafter it was conquered by Chandragupta Maurya, but after a century of Indian rule the West again asserted itself, and for another century (roughly, the second century B.C.) Greek dynasts took the place of Indian. Then came, early in the first century B.C., the victorious Śakas or Scythians, to be followed, after yet another century, by the Parthians and Kushāns. And even then the tale of foreign conquest was not ended. For in the third century of our era Gandhāra again reverted to Persia, now under Sasānid sovereigns, and was again reconquered by the Kidāra Kushāns in the fourth. Finally, the death-blow to its prosperity was given by the Ephthalites or White Huns, who swept over the country about A.D. 465, carrying fire and sword wherever they went and destroying the Buddhist monasteries.