Quarterly Journal of the. Pakistan Historical Society Editor: Dr. Ansar Zahid Khan Vol. XLIX January-March 2001 No. 1

Transcription

1 Quarterly Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society Editor: Dr. Ansar Zahid Khan Vol. XLIX January-March 2001 No. 1

2 GANDHARA CULTURE 55 The Gandhara Culture Gul Shahzad Sarwar Lecturer Govt. National College, Karachi-74800, Pakistan The area extended from Rawalpindi to Peshawar valley including the hilly regions south of the river Swat and Buner in the north, formally called Gandhara (see map), is the site of one of the earliest civilisation in the world. The country lay on both sides of the Indus. 1 Gandhara was a semi-independent kingdom that flourished from the 3rd century B.C. to the 5th century 2 with its twin capitals, Pushkalavati the city of the lotus flowers 3 (modern Charsadda in the North-West Frontier Province) and Takshasila (Taxila, about thirty two kilometres north-west of Rawalpindi). 4 Strabo says 5 between the Indus and the Hydaspes (Jhelum) was Taxila, a large city, and governed by good laws. The neighbouring country is crowded with inhabitants and very fertile. The kingdom of Taxila formed the eastern part of the old kingdom of Gandhara. 6 During the period of Emperor Asoka of the Maurya dynasty ( B.C.) who ruled over most of the subcontinent and strongly supported Buddhism, the pilgrims from abroad considered Gandhara to be the second home of Buddhism after Bihar, where the Buddha spent most of his life. Gandhara is a later form of the name of the people called Gandhari in the Rig Veda and Atharva Veda. In the Rig Veda 7 the good wool of the sheep of these tribesmen is referred to. In the Atharva Veda 8 the Gandharis are mentioned with the Mujavats, apparently as a despised people. The Brahmana texts refer to Nagnajit, king of Gandhara, and hid son Svarjit. The former receives Brahmanic consecration, but observations of the family on ritual are treated with contempt. 9 Hardly any art objects dating from before the beginning of the Christian era have come down to us. True, we have a large number of small terra-cotta figures, most of them representing the age-old autochthonic mother goddess or goddess of the earth, who remained popular at village level in spite of the introduction of Buddhism. However, these figurines are generally very difficult to date, and are usually so crude that they should rather be classified as folk art. A few small images in stone depicting this Mother Goddess have survived and are truly works of art. They were probably made for patrons wealthier than the average villager, who could afford only the cheaper fired-clay figurines. After the introduction of Buddhism, monasteries sprang up all over the country. In the north-west, where stone was easily available as building material, many remains of monastic establishments have been discovered. Those at Taxila were so famous that the city became a great centre of learning. In the plains of Punjab and Sindh areas without stone quarries burnt or sun-dried bricks were the standard material. Since this medium is not very durable, practically all the monasteries in the greater part of Pakistan have disappeared, and can only be re-discovered by excavation. The principal object of worship in these religious centres was a stupa or burial mound containing a relic if possible of the Buddha himself or of one of his disciples, but usually of some less important person. A few of the largest stupas have a core which goes back to the Mauryan times. The Dharmarajika stupa at Taxila was almost certainly built by Asoka and contained a relic of the Buddha. It was a pious custom to enlarge these relic mounds continually, so the core is sometimes old, although their outer appearance suggests a date many centuries later. Apart from such brick stupas, many smaller ones have been discovered, sometimes in the remains of a chapel. The relic caskets enshrined in these monuments often have the shape of a miniature stupa in stone or metal, but many are simple round pots of stone, carefully turned on a lathe. Occasionally they were more elaborate like, for

3 56 J.P.H.S., Vol. XLIX, No. 1 example, the famous casket of Kanishka, excavated from the remains of the great stupa near Peshawar, which was erected by a well-known Scythian ruler of that name in the late first century A.D. In the later half of the sixth century B.C. Gandhara was conquered by the king of Persia. The Iranians had in many ways made a marked influence on the social and cultural life of the people. Iranian customs and practices were adopted. 10 This extension of the Persian empire s eastern dominions brought the Indus valley within the orbit of the ancient civilisations of the Orient. The imperial road ran from Persepolis to Taxila and this provincial capital reaped the fruits of Oriental learning. Princes, scholars and commoners came to the University of Taxila for higher education. A new system of alphabetic writing, called Kharoshthi, written from right to left, was evolved at this time. The syntax of Sanskrit was perfected by that greatest of grammarians, Panini, who might have taught at Taxila. The local currency was linked with the new system of Persian coinage of Daric weight related to karsha: hence the coin named karshapana. Above all, the Persian administrative system secured peace and prosperity. It also made a deep impression on the minds of political thinkers such as Kautilya (also known as Chanakya), who educated Chandragupta, the future Mauryan Emperor, in his seminary at Taxila, Kautilya s book, Arthasastra, reveals the considerable influence of the Achaemenian system on him. In later times the angle of vision of the men of the Mid-India changed, and Gandhara became a resort of scholars of all classes who flocked to its capital for instruction in the three Vedas and the eighteen 11 branches of knowledge. In a significant passage of the Chhandogya Upanishad 12 Uddalaka Aruni, the contemporary of the Vedic Janaka, mentions Gandhara to illustrate the desirability of having a duly qualified teacher from whom a pupil learns (his way) and thus remains liberated (from all worldly ties) till he attains (the Truth or Beatitude, Moksha). A man who attains Moksha is compared to a blindfold person who reaches at last the country of Gandhara. The passage runs as follows: O my child, in the world when a man with blindfold eyes is carried away from Gandhara and left in a lonely place, he makes the east and the north and the south and the west resound by crying I have been brought here blindfold, I am here left blindfold. Thereupon (some kind-hearted man) unties the fold on his eyes and says This is the way to Gandhara; proceed thou by this way. The sensible man proceeds from village to village inquiring the way and reaches at last the (province) of Gandhara. Even thus a man who has a duly qualified teacher learns (his way). 13 It is stated in the Kaushitaki Brahmana 14 that Brahmanas used to go to the north for purposes of study. The Jataka tales are full of references to the fame of Takshasila town. Panini, himself a native of Gandhara, refers to the city in one of his Sutras. 15 An early celebrity of Takshasila was perhaps Kautilya. 16 There have been contacts between the subcontinent and countries further west, but in the last few centuries B.C. these relations increased tremendously, because of the Bactrian kingdom founded in Afghanistan by the successors of Alexander the Great, who later extended their influence into northern Pakistan. The Greek cultural influence on India was deep and Greek script and Greek language continued in use long after their rule. One important contribution of theirs was the making of minted coins which were later copied by other ruling dynasties. So far we know of two cities Taxila and Pushkalavati which were rebuilt by the Greeks on the Hellenistic pattern. Among minor arts and crafts we see their influence in jewellery, gem making, beads and various types of pots and pans. 17 The Parthian and Scythian rulers who succeeded the Bactrian kings on this side of the border inherited their love and admiration for Hellenistic culture, as can be seen from the many excavated objects which were originally imported from the Eastern Mediterranean, and in the course of time were imitated by local artists. Now the sculpture of Gandhara is sometimes described as a mere imitation of an imitation, the weak copy of a great art in decline. Neither judgement is fair. In an Indian context the style of Gandhara has a rather insipid flavour, but it is not without originality. The Buddhas of Gandhara, though perhaps lacking in the spirituality of those of the Gupta period, are gentle, and compassionate, while some of the plaques are vivid

4 GANDHARA CULTURE 57 and energetic. The school continued after the great Kusanas, though with less prosperous times it produced few works in stone, but many in plaster or stucco. Its influence was felt far beyond the bounds of India, and can be traced even in China. 18 At a certain date, as yet not definitely established, an interesting development took place, not only in Swat but in many neighbouring valleys Dir, Chitral and the Indus itself. This is the appearance of a large number of cemeteries having a distinctive range of grave goods and evidently remaining in use over many centuries. These are the cemeteries of the so-called Gandhara Grave Culture. They first became known from the work of the Italian mission in Pakistan, and their work has now been augmented by excavations of the Peshawar University Department of Archaeology. 19 The burial practices of the Gandharan graves are still far from clearly defined: certainly there were both inhumations, cremations and multiple secondary burials; but their relationship in time has not been, and perhaps can never be, definitely established. It is to be expected that as the Aryan rites of cremation became widespread evidences for inhumations would dwindle. 20 This culture is different from the Indus Culture and has little relation with the village culture of Balochistan. The Gandhara grave culture, in fact, has opened up two periods in the cultural heritage of Pakistan: one of the Bronze Age and the other of the Iron Age. As Buddhism was the backbone of life in the northwest, the art of Gandhara was basically indigenous in character, though its style soon became strongly influenced by Hellenism. However, in its initial stage, the indigenous elements were still very clear, as they are, for instance, in an early relief depicting the Buddha s descent from heaven, in which true to tradition the Master was not represented in human form but was merely indicated by the symbol of his footprints and other circumstantial evidence. In the first century A.D., this convention of using substitutive symbols was abolished and, in later reliefs showing the same event, the Buddha appears in human form, between Brahma and Indra, on the triple ladder leading down from heaven. Much of the Buddhist sculpture of Gandhara art during the time of Kanishka, according to some traditions, may be properly be called Graeco-Buddhist because the forms of Greek art were applied to Buddhist subjects, with considerable artistic success in many cases. Images of Buddha appear in the likeness of Apollo, the Yaksha Kuvera is posed in the fashion of the Phidian Zeus, and so on. The drapery follows Hellenistic models. The style was transmitted to the Far East through Chinese Turkistan, and the figures of Buddha now made in China and Japan exhibit distinct traces of the Hellenistic modes in vogue at the court of Kanishka. The explorations of Sir M.A. Stein and other archaeologists have proved that the Khotan region in Chinese Turkistan was the meeting place of four civilisations Greek, Indian, Iranian, and Chinese during the early centuries of the Christian era, including the reign of Kanishka. The eastward advance of the Roman frontier in the days of Trajan and Hadrian ( A.D.) was favourable to the spread of Hellenistic ideas and artistic forms in India and other Asiatic countries. The Indo-Greek artists found their inspiration in the schools of Alexandria, and of Pergamon, Ephesus, and other places in Asia Minor rather than in the works of the earlier artists of Greece. In other words, the Gandhara style is Graeco-Roman, based on the cosmopolitan art of Asia Minor and the Roman empire as practised in the first three centuries of the Christian era. Much of the best work in that style was executed during the second century A.D. in the reigns of Kanishka and Huvishka. 21 In some Gandharan sculptures, both god Brahma and god Sakra are also represented in a Buddha- Bodhisattva triad, sometimes accompanied by other devas or youth, 22 appearing in the background at the sides of the central Buddha. 23 Along with fragments pertaining to human figures, some architectural pieces have also been found. They can be considered as architectural elements outlining a scene, or separating groups of figures. In the representations a Buddha and a Bodhisattva are easy to distinguish. The Buddha type in sculptures is conventional, the representation is partly based on the literary tradition. Some indications are in connection with 32 marks of a great man: so the outgrowth of the head (ushnisha), and the curl between the eyebrows (urna). The sculpture of a Bodhisattva differs from that of a Buddha by the profane dress and the belonging princely jewellery (crown, jewels, necklets and arm-rings); for he did not yet turn away from

5 58 J.P.H.S., Vol. XLIX, No. 1 profane life. Often he wears a talisman chain with small boxes fixed on it. A Bodhisattva also wears the usual ear trinkets. It shall be mentioned that the widened lobe of the ear of the Buddha figures points to those early days when this heavy jewellery was worn. Buddha and Bodhisattva figures in the Gandharan art cannot always be considered as symbolic of the historical Buddha and so the Bodhisattva as Siddhartha Gautama. From the early second century A.D. onwards, the north-western workshops turned out sculptures by the hundreds good, bad and indifferent. The best examples are truly beautiful. Some of the Buddhas convey an unsurpassed serene spirituality. Among the finest images are the representatives of the so-called Bodhisattvas, saviours of mankind, who have renounced nirvana in order to be able to reincarnate and help their fellow men on the difficult path to salvation. It was at one or other of these centres that sculptors produced the first image of the Buddha in conventional postures, showing him protecting, meditating, praying, preaching, warning, blessing, and so on, according to the position of his right hand. 24 Although many images represent Maitreya, the future Buddha, the most popular Bodhisattva was undoubtedly Avalokitesvara, Lord of Mercy, who is usually depicted with a lotus in his left hand. The queen Maya was regarded as a virtuous Buddhist women and Indian canonical texts and poetry agree that Maya during her conception of the Bodhisattva was freed from human conditions and sexual passions. In Gandharan and subsequent Indian art styles, the Buddha s nirvana was invariably represented with body out-stretched on its right side, usually facing the worshipper 25 and only exceptionally to be seen from behind. These fixed correspondences between texts and sculptures are not the general rule and do not exist in depictions of Maya dream and conception. According to belief traditional in India, male progeny originates in the right part of the womb (kuksi, kucchi), and consequently sculptors and painters of India and adjacent countries depicted a chaste and dispassionate queen Maya receiving Bodhisattva, in the shape of white elephant, from her right side. 26 Consequently the Gandharan sculptors represented Maya as lying on her left side, usually facing the observer and supporting her head with her left hand. Whilst the majority of Gandharan artists observed this rule, a few Indian or foreign craftsmen seem to have introduced some unusual Graeco-Roman artistic conventions in order to illustrate vividly the erotic atmosphere of the scene. The earliest existing Indian paintings are at Ajanta, painted in the first seven centuries A.D. by the Buddhist artists who worked on the interior walls of the cave-monasteries by sunlight reflected from mental mirrors. The painters took both sacred and secular subjects for their themes. Along with scenes from the Buddha s previous lives, they impartially depicted princes and beggars, coolies and peasants, ascetic saints and bejewelled courtesans. 27 Whereas the many images of Buddhas and of Bodhisattvas were meant for worship, the purpose of the countless narrative reliefs was edification and decoration of religious monuments. Often the scenes represent an event in one of the Buddha s previous incarnations. These so-called jataka stories were immensely popular in the earlier schools of art, because in these reliefs the troublesome convention of substituting symbols could be avoided. However, the artists of Gandhara, who were no longer hampered by this restriction, preferred to represent events from the Buddha s last life; so the overwhelming majority of the reliefs show incidents in the life of Prince Siddhartha and his later career as Gautama, the Buddha. Of course, the various occasions on which Brahma and Indra, two of the most important gods of Hinduism, were said to have paid homage to the Master are often depicted. Lesser deities, belonging to the realm of folk religion, were eventually incorporated into Buddhism owing to their popularity among the villagers. Thus the yaksis, or tree spirits, and Hariti, originally a goddess of smallpox but later a protectress of children, found their way into the Buddhist art of Gandhara. Towards the middle of the fifth century, the flourishing Buddhist culture of the north-west was destroyed by the invasion of the Hephthalites or White Huns, as a result of which the monasteries were burnt and cultural life came to a complete stand-still. The Chinese pilgrim Hsiuan Tsang arrived at the monastic university of Nalanda in 639 A.D. to perfect himself in the study of Sanskrit and of Indian Buddhism. He had come a long way through desert and over icy

6 GANDHARA CULTURE 59 mountains, past towering stupas and opulent monasteries from Khotan to Gandhara, and through the Punjab, to the homeland of Buddhism within sight of Rajgir. As a distinguished foreign scholar, he was welcomed by the senior Master of the Law, Silabhadra. 28 But during his 16 years of travel, he found India a mere heap of ruins and wrote a detailed account of all he saw during his visit. His description is probably a completely accurate description of the terrible dissolution of this once flourishing Buddhist centre. 29 It was from that time the great Buddhist missinories Kasyapa Mantanga, Dharma Ratna and Kumara Jivan took the Buddha s message to China and Central Asia. Hsiuan Tsang also described Mingchili, the modern Mingora, where he saw the biggest Buddhist monastery. He saw the huge footprints of Buddha at Terah, near Madyan and also the huge image of Buddha at Shakhurai, some 16 kilometres away from Mingora. 30 Notes and References 1. Ramayana, VII ; VII According to Jataka no. 406 the kingdom of Gandhara included Kasmira. Hekataios of Miletus ( BC) refers to a Gandaric city called Kaspapyros. 2. Lexicon Universal Encyclopaedia, Lexicon Publications, New York, 1988, vol. 9, p Pakistan Archaeology, No , The Department of Archaeology, Ministry of Education, Karachi, Government of Pakistan, p John Marshall, A Guide to Taxila, Karachi, 1960, pp Hamilton and Falconer s translation of Strabo s Geography, vol. III, n.d., p H.C.R. Chaudhuri, Political History of Ancient India, Calcutta, 1953, p Ramayana, I Ramayana, V cf. Mahabharata VIII-44-46; VIII etc. 9. A.A. MacDonell and A.B. Keith, Vedic Index of Names and Subjects, London, 1912, vol. I, p R.C. Majumdar, The Advanced History of India, London, 1956, pp Cf. T.W. Rhys Davids and W. Stede, Pali-English Dictionary, London, 1921, p Ramayana, VI Cf. Dr. R.L. Mitra s translation of the Chhandogya Upanishad, p VII-6. Vide A.A. MacDonell and A.B. Keith, Vedic Index of Names and Subjects, op. cit., vol. II, p J.D. Cunningham, Ancient Geography of India, London, 1924, p Mahavamsa. Translation into English by Turnour, vol. I (1837), p. xxxix. 17. I.H. Qureshi (ed.), A Short History of Pakistan, vol. I (written by A.H. Dani), Karachi, 1967, p A.L. Basham, The Wonder that was India, London, 1954, pp Bridget and Raymond Allchin, The Rise of Civilisation in India and Pakistan, Cambridge, 1982, p Ibid., p V.A. Smith, The Oxford History of India, New York, 1958, pp H. Ingholt, Gandharan Art in Pakistan, New York, 1957, pp Ibid., pp A Popular History of The Arts, Published by Marshall Cavendish Books Ltd., London, 1968, p John Marshall, The Buddhist Art of Gandhara. The Story of the Early School: Its Birth, Growth and Decline, Cambridge, 1960, plates. 68,72,87 and pp P.V. Sharma, Indian Medicine in the Classical Age, Varanasi, 1972, p A Popular History of The Arts, op. cit., p D.D. Kosambi, The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline, Delhi, 1970, p Pakistan Miscellany, August, 1952, p Pakistan Archaeology, No , The Department of Archaeology, Ministry of Education, Karachi, Government of Pakistan, p Bibliography Books The Atharva Veda. The Chhandogya Upanishad. The Mahabharata. The Mahavamsa. The Ramayana. The Rig Veda. A Popular History of the Arts, Published by Marshall Cavendish Books Ltd., London, Basham, A.L., The Wonder that was India, London, Bridget and Allchin, Raymond, The Rise of Civilisation in India and Pakistan, Cambridge, Chaudhuri, H.C.R., Political History of Ancient India, Calcutta, 1953.

7 60 J.P.H.S., Vol. XLIX, No. 1 Cunningham, J.D., Ancient Geography of India, London, Hamilton and Falconer s translation of Strabo s Geography, n.d. Ingholt, H., Gandharan Art in Pakistan, New York, Kosambi, D.D., The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline, Delhi, MacDonell, A.A. and Keith, A.B., Vedic Index of Names and Subjects, London, Majumdar, R.C. (ed.), The Advanced History of India, London, Marshall, John, The Buddhist Art of Gandhara. The Story of the Early School: Its Birth, Growth and Decline, Cambridge, 1960., A Guide to Taxila, Karachi, Qureshi, I.H. (ed.), A Short History of Pakistan, Karachi, (4 vols: vol. I is written by A.H. Dani, vol. II by M. Kabir, vol. III by Sh. Rashid and vol. IV by M.A. Rahim). Rhys Davids, T.W. and Stede, W., Pali-English Dictionary, London, Sharma, P.V., Indian Medicine in the Classical Age, Varanasi, Smith, V.A., The Oxford History of India, New York, Periodical Literature Pakistan Archaeology, No , The Department of Archaeology, Ministry of Education, Karachi, Government of Pakistan. Pakistan Miscellany, August, 1952, Pakistan Publications, Karachi. Encyclopaedias Lexicon Universal Encyclopaedia, Lexicon Publications, New York, vols.

8 GANDHARA CULTURE 61 Chitral Mingora Sado Udigram U D Y A N A S W A T Uterasena Stupa B U N E R Malakand Kharkai Loriyan Tangai Nathu Sanghao Periano Dheri Sikri Sare Makhe Dheri Takht-i-Bahie Jamalgarhi MT KARAMAR Mardan Bhimadevi parvata Shahbazgarhi Stupa of the Eye Gift Charsadda MT MAHABAN KHYBER PASS Peshawar Shah-ji-ki-Dheri Kabul River LAHORE Taxila Kohat 25 km Rawalpindi

9 62 J.P.H.S., Vol. XLIX, No. 1 Fig. 1 At Dir, Swat and Takht-i-Bahie, the great stupas still stand today. Fig. 2 Left: Buddha seated in a Yogi or ascetic position. Right: Bodhisattva (or Buddha before he achieved full enlightenment). This unique figure wears full princely regalia with flowing toga.

10 GANDHARA CULTURE 63 Fig. 3 Queen Maya receiving Bodhisattva, in the shape of white elephant, from her right side.