Greco-Buddhist Art - Kushan Contribution

Kushan Contribution

The later part of Greco-Buddhist art in northwestern India is usually associated with the Kushan Empire. The Kushans were nomadic people who started migrating from the Tarim Basin in Central Asia from around 170 BCE and ended up founding an empire in northwestern India from the 2nd century BCE, after having been rather Hellenized through their contacts with the Greco-Bactrians, and later the Indo-Greeks (they adopted the Greek script for writing).

The Kushans, at the center of the Silk Road enthusiastically gathered works of art from all the quarters of the ancient world, as suggested by the hoards found in their northern capital in the archeological site of Begram, Afghanistan.

The Kushans sponsored Buddhism together with other Iranian and Hindu faiths, and probably contributed to the flourishing of Greco-Buddhist art. Their coins, however, suggest a lack of artistic sophistication: the representations of their kings, such as Kanishka, tend to be crude (lack of proportion, rough drawing), and the image of the Buddha is an assemblage of a Hellenistic Buddha statue with feet grossly represented and spread apart in the same fashion as the Kushan king. This tends to indicate the anteriority of the Hellenistic Greco-Buddhist statues, used as models, and a subsequent corruption by Kushan artists.

• Maitreya, with Kushan devotee couple. 2nd century Gandhara.

• Maitreya, with Kushan devotees, left and right. 2nd century Gandhara.

• Maitreya, with Indian (left) and Kushan (right) devotees.

• Kushans worshipping the Buddha's bowl. 2nd century Gandhara.

• Kushan devotee couple, around the Buddha, Brahma and Indra.

• The "Kanishka casket," with the Buddha surrounded by Brahma and Indra, and Kanishka on the lower part, 127 CE.

• Buddha triad and kneeling Kushan devotee couple. 3rd century.