Looking at Gandhāra
Looking at Gandhāra

Summary/Abstract: Gandhāran artifacts serve as memory of the two millennium past aesthetics, art,culture and norms of the people of Gandhāra. The modern scholarship was started with thearchaeological excavations, it’s interest in the western world with its link up, peculiar withclassical forms. The intellectual society’s urge to learn from Buddhist visuals andcollectionism had grown to its peak from last two centuries. The Kushan empire was intocontact with the Mediterranean Rome, Egypt & Iran, one of the world’s best cultural centersof the era that burgeoned the local centers of Art and it was obvious that assimilations offorms of making artifacts were based on the demand of the patron. By these exchanges,Gandhāran Art also influenced Roman Art with introduction of Jewelry and Flower garlandsetc. as it was going both ways; with exporting goods to the western society. Buddhism wasalso going westward, the prime time was second century CE when it saw its finest floweringand prominence on the gateway of the Silk Road. The quest for divinity through seeing artwas the one way to attract lay people and theirs donation could accelerate the monasticactivities from writing religious codes (Sutta in Pali, Sutra in Sanskrit) to making newViharas (monasteries) and Chaityas (temples) .

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