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Romano-Buddhist Art: an old problem restated

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

R. E. M. Wheeler
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Extract

Since about 1870, when a Dr Leitner, of the Punjab service, brought from north-western India a small collection of Buddhist ‘Indo-Scythian’ sculptures to England, the literature of the so-called Gandhāra art has not ceased to grow, and the last decade has added rather more than its quota. Dr H. Buchtal has re-emphasized and re-illustrated the affinities between this Buddhist art and that of the Roman Empire (1). Dr L. Bachhofer has recognized the emergence of a Partho-Buddhist art based on secular Hellenistic imports into Gandhāra in the 1st century A.D. (2) Entrenched behind the formidable ramparts of his unpublished Taxila, that great veteran Sir John Marshall has machine-gunned both the learned doctors with a vigour most happily unimpaired by the ills to which he lightly refers (3). And, since I do not always find myself in agreement with Sir John, I may at once say this : that, had Drs Buchtal and Bachhofer done no more than draw his fire, they would have deserved sufficiently well of us.

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Research Article
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Antiquity , Volume 23 , Issue 89 , March 1949, pp. 4 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1949

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References

1 ‘The Common Classical Sources of Buddhist and Christian Narrative Art’, Journ. Roy. As. Soc. 1943, pp. 137 ff ; ‘The Western aspects of Gandhāra Sculpture’, Proc. Brit. Academy, LXXXI (1945), 3 ff.

2 ‘On Greeks and Śakas in India’, Journ. Amer. Or. Soc. LXI (1941), 223 ff.

3 Journ. Roy. As. Soc. 1946, pp. 116 ff. ; ibid. 1947, pp. 3 ff.

4 Journ. Asiatique CCXXXIV (1943-45), 63 ff. ; and Bégram, recherches archéologiques et historiques sur les Kouchans (Cairo, Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1946), pp. 99 ff.

5 Journ. Roy. As. Soc, 1947, p. 32.

6 L. Bachhofer, Journ. Amer. Or. Soc, LXI (1941), 229-30 ; J. Marshall, Journ. Roy. As. Soc, 1947, p. 14.

7 L. Bachhofer, Early Indian Sculpture (New York, 1929), 11, pl. 140 ; H. H. Wilson, Ariana Antiqua (London, 1841), p. 71 ; W. W. Tarn, The Greeks in Bactria and India (Cambridge, 1938), p. 399.

8 A. Cunningham, Arch. Sur. Ind. Reports 11 (Simla, 1871), 162.

9 ‘There is nothing to be made out of dated Buddha statues’. Tarn, op. cit., p. 300.

10 Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, 11, pt. 1, p. 106 ; N. G. Majumdar, Guide to the Sculptures in the Indian Museum, pt. 11 (Delhi, 1937), pp. 18 ff.

11 Majumdar, op. cit., p. 13 ; Marshall, Journ. Roy. As. Soc, 1947, p. 31.

12 See, for examples, H. Buchtal, The Western Aspects of Gandhāra Sculpture (Brit. Academy, 1945) ; and Journ. Roy. As. Soc, 1943, pp. 137 ff.

13 Here illustrated by kind permission of Mr Dickinson, who has generously allowed me to anticipate his own publication.

14 Eg. E. A. Gardner, Handbook of Greek Sculpture (London, 1905), p. 518, fig. 130.

15 J. Allan, ‘A tabula Iliaca from Gandhāra’, Journ. of Hellenic Studies LXVI (1946), 21 ff.

16 H. Buchtal, ‘The Western Aspects of Gandhāra Sculpture’, Proc. Brit. Acad, XXI (London, 1945).

17 Ibid.

18 Marshall, Guide to Taxila (3rd éd., Delhi, 1936), p. 33 ; Journ. Roy. As. Soc, 1946, pp. 116 ff.

19 Journ. As. Soc. of Bengal, 1889, p. 172.

20 Marshall in Journ. Roy. As. Soc. 1947, pp. 6 ff. In no case has any precise objective evidence been cited for this dating ; the nearest hint is the statement in respect of one of the figures that ‘on stylistic grounds, coupled with the place of finding, this piece may be assigned to the second quarter of the first century A.D.’ Of another all that we know is that ‘the treatment of the falling dhoti folds reminds one of the acanthus leaf decoration in the small early stüpa in Block E of Sirkap, dating from the 1st century B.C.’—surely a difficult and tenuous comparison on which to found chronology ! Of yet another we are told that ‘the early date of this piece is indicated by the sketchy treatment of the drapery and the clumsy unsteady chiselling’. The general impression conveyed is that the style of these crude works is the main basis of their dating. But, since the essential problem is just that of the chronology of the style, the argument is circular and gets us no further forward along our road.

More important is the unquestionable fact that these selected sculptures have in any case little or nothing to do with Gandhāra and do not as a group contain even the germ of that art. One is a purely oriental figurine with no hint of the Gandhāra style ; another is an oriental type with mechanical drapery of a rudimentary kind which only the most determined theorist could link significantly with the West ; others, with the partial exception of a decayed ‘Demeter’ or Hāritī, have scarcely any sort of stylistic value. To affirm, with Marshall, that these poor relics leave us ‘in no doubt that the Gandhāra school had begun to shape in the latter part of the 1st century B.C.’ is surely mere wishfulness. Their miserable quality indeed induced Marshall himself to infer that ‘we must allow some decades at least after the eclipse of Greek rule in Gandhāra for the practice of Greek art to have been largely forgotten’ by the authors of these works ; and to add : ‘We are thus forced to the conclusion that the School,of Gandhāra was not the immediate offspring of Greek art in India, but that it arose during the Saka period, when Greek art was becoming increasingly decadent’. The logical further step is to admit that most of these ‘early’ works at Taxila have in fact no significant connexion with Greek art, decadent or otherwise.

21 Guide to Taxila (3rd ed.), p. 20.

22 S. Beal, Buddhist Records of the Western World (London, 1906), 1, XCIX.

23 P. Masson Oursel and others, Ancient India and Indian Civilisation (London, 1934), pl. vu.

24 J. J. Barthoux, Les Fouilles de Hadda (Mém. de la Délég, Arch. Française en Afghanistan), m (1930), 64.

25 Arch. Sur. India Reports II (1871), 141 and 159-60.

26 The date of the original of the Apollo Belvedere, best represented by the Roman marble copy in the Vatican, is unknown, but its smooth academic quality may be supposed at least to have retained its popularity into the academic revival of the Middle Empire, to which the copy probably belongs.

27 See, e.g., Aurel Stein, Serindia (Oxford, 1921), 1, 485 ff. (Miran) ; III, 1183 ff. (Ming-oi) ; Sand-buried Ruins of Khotan (London, 1903), pp. 459 ff., etc. Also, J. Strzygowski, ‘Die Stuckbildnerei Irans’, Belvedere, Hegt 9 (Berlin, 1934).

28 See Postscript, p. 17.

29 For a short time after the settlement of the Armenian question by Nero, relations between Rome and Parthia improved, but the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, compiled probably sometime between A.D. 60 and 110 (for the later dating see J. A. B. Palmer, ‘Periplus Maris Erythraei : the Indian evidence as to date’, The Classical Quarterly XLI, 1947, pp. 137 ff.) indicates only a restricted trade in the Persian Gulf. The land routes through Parthia seem never to have been secure for any lengthy period. A pioneer effort such as that of Maes Titianus during the pacific reign of Hadrian shows how little was then known by Western merchants about these routes. On the other hand, after the 1st century trade flowed intermittently along the flanks of the Parthian kingdom and there is evidence for an appreciable traffic between Syria and the East via Charax and the Persian Gulf in the Antonine period (see in particular the epigraphs from the Palmyra agora published by H. Seyrig, ‘Antiquités Syriennes’, Syria 1941, pp. 258 ff.). It is relevant to note in this connexion, with Rostovtzeff, the Palmyrene character of the jewellery reproduced in Gandhāra art—see Revue des Arts Asiatiques VII (Paris, 1931-2), 309.

30 F. Hirth, China and the Roman Orient (Leipzig and Munich, 1885), pp. 173 ff.

31 The hoard is now distributed between the Kābul Museum and the Musée Guimet in Paris. For the portion found in 1937, see J. Hackin, Récherches archéologiques à Bégram (Mémoires de la Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan, ix, Paris, 1939) ; and R. Ghirshman, ‘Fouilles de Bégram’, Journal Asiatique CCXXXIV (Paris, 1947) 59 ff., and Bégram (Cairo : Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1946).

32 These medallions were doubtless intended as models for metalwork, e.g. the escutcheons or emblemata on the inner base of silver bowls. Such models are characteristic of the metal industry of Ptolemaic and Imperial Egypt (Alexandria, Memphis). See T. Schreiber, Die Alexandrische Toreutik (Leipzig, 1894), pp. 470 ff. ; A. Adriani, Le gobelet en argent (Soc. Roy. d’Arch. d’Alexandrie, 1939), pp. 12, 26, 33 ; and O. Rubensohn, Hellenistisch.es Silbergerät in antiken Gipsabgiissen (Berlin, 1911), passim. Outside Egypt, but within the sphere of Alexandrian influence, similar medallions and moulds occur at Sabratha in Tripolitania (museums at Sabratha and Tripoli)—see pl. ixc.

33 Syria XXII (1941), 262.

34 It is appropriate to recall Rostovtzeff : ‘The wares exported from the Roman Empire to the East . . . were chiefly products of Alexandrian industry. The active agents in the exchange of goods between the Roman Empire and India and China were the Alexandrian merchants. Without them the commerce with India would probably not have existed’. Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (Oxford 1926), p. 147 ; cf. p. 259.

35 Stucco sculpture occurs but rarely in Egypt before the Ptolemaic period, though it is occasionally found as early as the 18th Dynasty.

36 See generally, O. Rubensohn, op. cit. ; also F. von Bissing in Arch. Anzeiger 1901, p. 205 ; E. Breccia, La Necropoli di Scialbi [Cat. gén. des antiquités égyptiennes, musée d’Alexandrie, 1912) I, 156, etc.; il, pis. Lxxv, LXXXI ; C. C. Edgar, Cat. gén. des antiquités du musée du Caire, Greek Sculpture, 1903, pp. 21, 69, 71. Outside the Nile Delta, stucco sculpture occurs sporadically in the Mediterranean area, but Egypt (Alexandria, Memphis) was undoubtedly the centre. The application of stucco ornament to Kertch sarcophagi (C. Watzinger, Griechische Holzsarkophage aus der Zeit Alexanders des Grõssen, Leipzig, 1905, p. 53) is not comparable ; nor, save in the vaguest way, is the occasional preparation of (plaster ?) casts of Greek sculpture perhaps as early as the end of the 4th century B.c., see S. Reinach in Revue Archéologique, 3rd S., XLI (1902) 5 ff. Stucco was widely used in Islamic Iran and occurs as early as the Sasanian period at Ctesiphon and in Syria (Riefstahl, as cited in note 38) ; but here again no causative connexion with our Romano-Buddhist art can be postulated from the evidence available.

37 Arch. Anzeiger, 1907, p. 168.

38 R. M. Riefstahl in The Art Bulletin XIII (Chicago, 1931), pp. 457-8 ; and a good example in the insula del Serapide in the nuovi scavi at Ostia.

39 J. Marshall, Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization (London, 1931), 1, 117.

40 Journ. Roy. As. Soc. 1946, p. 119 ; ib., 1947, pp. 16 ff. ; also Guide to Taxila (3rd ed.), pp.32 ff.

41 For a recent summary of the history of the period, see R. C. Majumdar and A. S. Altekar, A New History of the Indian People VI (Lahore, 1946), 21 ff.