The Gandhara School passed through its adolescence and maturity under the Kushans, who overthrew the Parthians in circa A.D. 64, and that it came to an abrupt end in the reign of Vasudeva I, when the Buddhist monasteries throughout the North-West were overrun and reduced to ruins.
In this book, the author tells us about the influences of Gandhara Art, its asso ciation to the early school of Central India, beginning of Gandhara Art in the Saka period, the renaissance of Hellen istic art under the Parthians and the period of maturity of Gandhara Art.
Secondly, my discoveries showed that in the late Saka period, to which the oldest examples of Buddhist carvings are referable, the old Hellenistic art in Gandhara had sunk to a lamentably low level, though better work appears to have been done by sculptors of the Early Indian School imported from down country. Thirdly, the new evidence from Taxila proves that a strong revival of Hellenistic art took place under the philhellene Parthians, who suc ceeded the Sakas in the North-West in the first century A.D., and that this Partho-Hellenistic art played an all-important part in the subsequent evolution of the Gandhara School.
With such history behind them is not surprising that the people of Gandhara were thoroughly cosmopolitan in their culture and their outlook. Of their physical appearance we get some idea from the old sculptures. Some the men, with strikingly tall and dignified figures, closely resembled many present-day Pathäns, and wore the same distinc tive kind baggy trousers and sleeved coat. Others were characteristic ally Greek; others just as characteristically Indian. And, no doubt, we knew more about them, we should recognize other racial elements por trayed the sculptors.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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Art (276)
Biography (245)
Buddha (1958)
Children (75)
Deities (50)
Healing (33)
Hinduism (58)
History (534)
Language & Literature (448)
Mahayana (420)
Mythology (73)
Philosophy (425)
Sacred Sites (109)
Tantric Buddhism (94)
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