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Greco-Buddhist art

The Greco-Buddhist art or Gandhara art is the artistic manifestation of Greco-Buddhism, a cultural syncretism between Ancient Greek art and Buddhism. It had mainly evolved in the ancient region of Gandhara, located in the northwestern fringe of the Indian subcontinent.

His views as to dates and the crucial period of Western influence came to be widely rejected, but then received considerable support by the discovery of the important deserted city site of Ai-Khanoum(Alexandria on the Oxus), which was excavated in the 1960s and 1970s, where quantities of clearly Greek-influenced art were found, datable to the 3rd and (mostly) 2nd centuries BCE. It is considered that the orthodox Buddhists choose not to represent the Shakyamuni Buddha out of respect, as giving him a human form would bound him to this Earth as a living being which contradicts him obtaining his goal of enlightenment and achieving moksha. (Katsumi Tanabe, "Alexander the Great, East-West cultural contacts from Greece to Japan", p23)^"In Gandhara the appearance of a halo surrounding an entire figure occurs only in the latest phases of artistic production, in the fifth and sixth centuries.

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