Gandhāran art is often regarded as the epitome of cultural exchange in antiquity. The ancient region of Gandhāra, centred on what is now the northern tip of Pakistan, has been called the ‘crossroads of Asia’. The Buddhist art produced in and around this area in the first few centuries AD exhibits extraordinary connections with other traditions across Asia and as far as the Mediterranean. Since the nineteenth century, the Graeco-Roman associations of Gandhāran art have attracted particular attention. Classically educated soldiers and administrators of that era were astonished by the uncanny resemblance of many works of Gandhāran sculpture to Greek and Roman art made thousands of miles to the west. More than a century later we can recognize that the Gandhāran artists’ appropriation of classical iconography and styles was diverse and extensive, but the explanation of this ‘influence’ remains puzzling and elusive. The Gandhāra Connections project at the University of Oxford’s Classical Art Research Centre was initiated principally to cast new light on this old problem. This volume is the third set of proceedings of the project’s annual workshop, and the first to address directly the question of cross-cultural influence on and by Gandhāran art. The contributors wrestle with old controversies, particularly the notion that Gandhāran art is a legacy of Hellenistic Greek rule in Central Asia and the growing consensus around the important role of the Roman Empire in shaping it. But they also seek to present a more complex and expansive view of the networks in which Gandhāra was embedded. Adopting a global perspective on the subject, they examine aspects of Gandhāra’s connections both within and beyond South Asia and Central Asia, including the profound influence which Gandhāran art itself had on the development of Buddhist art in China and India.

South Asian religious art became codified during the Ku a Period (ca. beginning of the 2nd to the mid 3rd century). Yet, to date, neither the chronology nor nature of Ku a Art, marked by great diversity, is well understood. The Ku a Empire was huge, stretching from Uzbekistan through northern India, and its multicultural artistic expressions became the fountainhead for much of South Asian Art. The premise of this book is that Ku a Art achieves greater clarity through analyses of the arts and cultures of the Pre- Ku a World, those lands becoming the Empire. Fourteen papers in this book by leading experts on regional topography and connective pathways; interregional, multicultural comparisons; art historical, archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic and textual studies represent the first coordinated effort having this focus.