A Tiny Buddhist Sculpture
It’s been a while since my last post. I have a pretty good excuse for my slow rate of posting. I threw out my back quite painfully a few weeks ago, and it has been aching ever since. That has made it hard to concentrate on writing.
But I went to the Museum of Fine Arts this afternoon, and as has become my habit, I went to check on the ancient Buddhist art. I’ve become fascinated in this history that happened between the appearance of Buddha in Northern India in the 5th or 6th century BCE, and its gradual spreading of his teachings. Specifically, I am interested in the collision of Buddhism and Greek culture.
So imagine Buddha, preaching in 425-ish BCE, then a hundred of so years later, Alexander the Great invades India (327 BCE). Alexander fails to conquer India, but does conquer Gandhara (located in modern-day Pakistan). Then after Alexander’s death in 323 BCE, his general Seleucus comes into conflict with Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of the first large Indian empire. (To end the war with Maurya, Seleucus accepts a gift of 500 war elephants from Chadragupta, who was given Seleucus’ daughter in marriage.) The Seleucid empire was unable to hold onto the Afghan part of his kingdom, which broke away and became the Greco-Bactrian kingdom (I wonder what they called themselves?). Then Chandragupta’s grandson, Ashoka (c. 304 – 232 BCE), pushed the Mauryan empire to its greatest extent. Ashoka was a blood-thirsty tyrant who subsequently converted to Buddhism and made a point of sponsoring Buddhist missionaries to neighboring areas, including Greco-Bactria. Part of Greco-Bactria broke away and formed a new kingdom now known as the Indo-Greek kingdom around 200 BCE. It was both thoroughly Greek but also thoroughly Buddhist. It’s best known king, Menander (reigned c.165/155 –130 BC), later became the subject of a famous Buddhist text, the Milinda Panha, which is a dialogue between Milinda (the Pali form of the name Menander) and a Buddhist monk, Nāgasena. As the Greeks became increasing Buddhist, Buddhist art became increasingly Greek. Then after around 100 BCE, the Indo-Greeks were conquered by the Kushans, a nomadic group of steppe-dwellers about whom I’ve written before. The Kushans moved into Bactria and the Punjab, liked what they saw, and adopted Greco-Buddhist ways. Their greatest ruler was Kanishka the Great (ruled from c. 127–150 CE), who was an energetic Buddhist and promoted many missionary missions, mostly east along the Silk Road
This tiny image dates from the last century of the Kushan empire. It comes from what is now Afghanistan. It appears profoundly Greek in style. For the first few decades of Kushan rule, their empire retained Greek as its administrative language. But sometime during the reign of Kanishka, Greek was replaced by Bactrian (a language related to Persian)—but they continued using the Greek alphabet to write the Bactrian language.
I find this mish-mash of ancient cultures fascinating, especially because there seems no trace of it left today. You don’t see signs of Greek culture in Afghanistan or Pakistan today. But 2000 years ago? Greek Buddhists were wandering around Taxila like they owned the place. (Taxila was about where modern Islamabad is.)
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