What were the features of the Gandhara School of Art in the 6th Century B.C.?

The sculpture of the Gandhara region, embracing the north-west provinces and part of Afghanistan, represents a fundamentally different art which falls outside the lines of the natural and consistent growth of the art forms represented at Sanchi,

Bharhut, Bodh Gaya, Udayagiri and Khandagiri this region was under the sway of Achaemenids of Iran in the sixth-fifth centuries BC. Subsequently, the Greeks, the Shakas, the Parthians and the Kushanas ruled over it and the result was the birth of a hybrid culture that found expression in an eclectic school of art, prolific in output and contemporary with the flourishing period of the indigenous art movement at Mathura.

The Gandhara School is usually described as Graeco- Buddhist but the school comes into view after the end of the Greek domination. The principal patrons of this art movement were the Shakas and the Kushanas. The technique employed is undoubtedly Hellenistic, though modified by Iranian and Scythian contacts; but the themes depicted are Indian and almost exclusively Buddhist.

Thus the Gandhara School represents that stage in which foreign elements were being Indianized at a greater pace. The acceptance of Buddhism by a large mass of these foreign elements may be explained in terms of the confusion in the minds of the brahmanical elements where there was no provision for conversion and also by the rigid Varna structure.

The main centres where the evidence of art pieces belonging to Gandhara school have been found are: Jalalabad, Hadda and Bamiyan in Afghanistan, the Swat Valley (Udyana), Taxila, Takht-i-Bahi, Bala Hisar, Charsada, Palatu-Dheri, Ghaz Dheri, Begram, Bamaran etc. The material employed is usually a dark grey slate in the beginning, stucco and terra-cotta becoming the dominant medium later.

According to some scholars the importance of this school consists in the revolutionary procedure of representing, for the first time, the image of the Buddha in Anthropomorphic shape. Independent images, seated or standing occur very frequently. Though bearing all the iconographic marks and traits of the Indian tradition, the Gandhara Buddha is rendered in the manner of the divine figures of the Graeco- Roman pantheon.

Robed in a thick garment arranged in the fashion of a Roman toga, with hair arranged in wavy curls, with a physiognomy and expression foreign to Indian notions, and sometimes with a moustache or turban, the Buddha of the Gandhara artists resembles the Greek god Apollo. The reliefs representing scenes from the life of the Buddha, in spite of their minute details, have the appearance of mechanical reproductions lacking all the spontaneity and emotional warmth that distinguish the reliefs of early Indian art of Bharhut, Sanchi, Bodh Gaya and Amaravati.

The earliest specimen of Gandhara art so far discovered is the Bimaran reliquary dated to the reign of Aizes I. The free-standing Buddha from Loriya Tangai (AD 6), the well known Buddha from Takht-i-Bahi, the Buddha from Charsada (AD 72), standing Buddha from Takht and the seated Buddha from Sahri-Bahlot are famous for their pronounced transparent drapery.

In the image of Hariti from Skarah-Dheri (AD 87), the drapery clings to the body closely with small parallel folds which suppress the transparency to a certain extent. These early art forms faded and ultimately degenerated after the schematisation in the second century. From the 3rd century AD onwards a revival is noticed.

Stone sculpture became rare, stucco and terra-cotta of easier tractability became the dominant medium. The style now was much freer than the schematic productions of the second century AD. The drapery again tends to be the transparent gossamer type and in the body treatment the harmony of rhythmic lines is more in evidence. In the attitudes of the figures we observe the same tendency to relax. The two significant centres of this late Gandhara art are Mohra Moradu and Jaulian.