The ancient Buddhist art of Gandhara was rediscovered from the 1830s and 1840s onwards in what would become the North-West Frontier of British India. By the end of the century an abundance of sculptures had been accumulated by European soldiers and officials, which constituted the foundations for a new field of scholarship and internationally celebrated museum collections. Both then and since, the understanding of Gandharan art has been impeded by gaps in documentation, haphazard excavation, forgery, and smuggling of antiquities. Consequently, the study of Gandharan archaeology often involves the evaluation and piecing together of fragmentary clues. In more subtle ways, however, the modern view of Gandharan art has been shaped by the significance accorded to it by different observers over the past century and a half. Conceived in the imperial context of the late nineteenth century as 'Graeco-Buddhist' art - a hybrid of Asian religion and Mediterranean artistic form - Gandharan art has been invested with various meanings since then, both in and beyond the academic sphere. Its puzzling links to the classical world of Greece and Rome have been explained from different perspectives, informed both by evolving perceptions of the evidence and by modern circumstances.

From the archaeologists and smugglers of the Raj to the museums of post-partition Pakistan and India, from coin-forgers and contraband to modern Buddhism and contemporary art, this fourth volume of the Classical Art Research Centre's Gandhara Connections project presents the most recent research on the factors that mediate our encounter with Gandharan art.

About the Author
Wannaporn Rienjang is Lecturer in Archaeology, Museum and Heritage Studies at the Faculty of Sociology and Anthropology, Thammasat University and a project consultant for the Gandhara Connections project at the Classical Art Research Centre, Oxford. She completed her doctoral degree in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge in 2017, and has been involved in research projects focusing on the art and archaeology of Greater Gandhara, Indian Ocean Trade and ancient working technologies of stone beads and vessels. ;

Peter Stewart is Director of the Classical Art Research Centre and Professor of Ancient Art at the University of Oxford. He has worked widely in the fields of Graeco-Roman sculpture and ancient world art. His publications include Statues in Roman Society: Representation and Response (2003), The Social History of Roman Art (2008), and A Catalogue of the Sculpture Collection at Wilton House (2020).


Book Information
ISBN 9781803272337
Author Wannaporn Rienjang
Format Paperback
Page Count 230
Imprint Archaeopress Archaeology
Publisher Archaeopress
Weight(grams) 792g