When the ancient devotees of the Buddha Shakyamuni first represented “the enlightened one” in visual form, it was to Greek art that they turned, brought by Alexander the Great to the northwestern corner of the Indian subcontinent. In the region known as Gandhara, a flourishing Buddhist culture adopted the naturalism of Greek sculpture but endowed the figure with a divine pathos that Greece had never seen before.
One of the first representations of the Buddha during the Kushan empire (A.D. 30–375) in the historical region of Gandhara, Pakistan. (Gumpanat/Shutterstock)
In an extraordinary example preserved at the Tokyo National Museum, the Buddha stands atop a floral base against a large halo. The stylized drapery undulates like a thin veil, while the contour of his body hides subtly beneath, protruding only at the chest, abdomen and the left knee. It might seem that these figurative techniques are but a derivative form of Greek art, which doesn’t compare with the muscular proportion of an Athenian athlete or the dynamism of a Hellenistic soldier. But for the Gandhara artist, the static and frontal body only served as a foil to the face of the Buddha, which expressed externally the transcendental spirit from within. His features are idealized, his eyes downcast; though devoid of human emotions, he evinces an assured air of peace, compassion, and rectitude that can only be found in an enlightened one, untroubled by his worldly bearing….