The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s7.313

c10.s7.313

I am only concerned with chronology, and the long priority of the Gandhāra Buddha is now, I think, proved by a definite piece of evidence; but I should like to sketch what, in my opinion, must have been the course of events.³ The Greek, as we have seen, was becoming Indianised from about the beginning of the first century B.C., and therewith was born the Gandhāra school, which *must* from its date be in the line of development of the Greeks who came to India from Bactria; the Indian Buddhist, influenced by Bhakti (p. 406), wanted the story of the life and previous lives of Buddha cut in stone, and the Greek was now, as he might not have been in the time of Demetrius and Menander, ready to respond. The first Greek artist had to decide what to do with the perpetually recurring central figure. He may or may not have known, or cared, whether Gautama had been a man or a god; being a Greek, he only knew one way of representing either, and therewith was born, in the mind of some unknown and obscure Greek sculptor, the idea of representing Buddha in human form. The Greek artists took their own Apollo type and Indianised it; the steps from the Greek Apollo to the Graeco-Indian Buddha have often been traced.¹ But their Buddha went no deeper than their Apollo; he was just a beautiful man; you may search these suave faces² in vain for what should have been there, the inner spirit of the great Reformer.