Gandhara

node · earth · Peshawar valley and adjacent Afghanistan / Pakistan

A region spanning the Peshawar valley and adjacent parts of eastern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, sitting on the routes between the Iranian plateau, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Successively under Achaemenid, Greek, Mauryan, Indo-Greek, Saka, Parthian and Kushan authority, it absorbed Persian, Hellenistic, Indian, Central Asian and Roman influence. Its Buddhist sculpture, produced under Kushan-era patronage, depicts the Buddha with Hellenistic drapery and Apollo-like facial conventions. Whether the anthropomorphic Buddha image originated in Gandhara or Mathura was long disputed; current scholarship generally holds that both schools developed their own conventions independently around the first century CE.