The rediscovery and reception of Gandhāran art : proceedings of the fourth International Workshop of the Gandhāran Connections Project, University of Oxford, 24th-26th March, 2021 / edited by Wannaporn Rienjang, Peter Stewart

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. The ancient Buddhist art of Gandhāra 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 Gandhāran art has been impeded by gaps in documentation, haphazard excavation, forgery, and smuggling of antiquities. Consequently, the study of Gandhāran archaeology often involves the evaluation and piecing together of fragmentary clues. In more subtle ways, however, the modern view of Gandhāran 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 – Gandhāran 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 Gandhāra Connections project presents the most recent research on the factors that mediate our encounter with Gandhāran art. 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 Gandhāra 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 Gandhāra, 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). Cover 3 Copyright Information 4 Contents 5 Preface 11 Wannaporn Rienjang and Peter Stewart 12 Contributors 9 Acknowledgements 9 Part 1 Archaeology and Collecting History 15 Reconstructing Jamālgarhī and Appendix B: the archaeological record 1848-1923 17 Elizabeth Errington 17 Gandhāran stucco sculptures from Sultan Khel (former Khyber Agency) in the collection of Peshawar Museum: a study in three parts 59 Zarawar Khan, Fawad Khan and Ghayyur Shahab 59 A unique collection of confiscated material of Gandhāra (Pakistan) 99 Muhammad Ashraf Khan and Tahir Saeed 99 Part 2 Receptions 121 Gandhāran imagery as remembered by Buddhist communities across Asia 123 Kurt A. Behrendt 123 Archaeology of Buddhism in post-partition Punjab:the disputed legacy of Gandhāra 140 Himanshu Prabha Ray 140 From colonial Greece to postcolonial Rome? 152 Andrew Amstutz 152 Stories of Gandhāra: antiquity, art and idol 168 Shaila Bhatti 168 The art of deception: perspectives on the problem of fakery in Gandhāran numismatics 188 Shailendra Bhandare 188 Gandhāra in the news: rediscovering Gandhāra in The Times and other media 205 Helen Wang 205 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.0From 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