Gandharan noble couple

Noble couple from GANDHARA (an ancient region in northwest India) dating to the 3rd-5th centuries AD, which correspond to the late stage of the KUSHAN EMPIRE and the Hunnic invasions of India, period when the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara reached its peak. The prince is based on statues of bodhisattvas, while the princess is based on statues of the goddess Hariti or Buddha’s mother Maya, both widely represented in Gandharan art. Different ethnic groups ruled Gandhara successively (Indians, Persians, Greeks, Sakas / Scythians, Parthians, Yuezhi / Kushans, Kidarite and Alchon Huns…), and each one of them had their own fashion. The Greek settlers wore tunics, short hair, and bare legs, Greek women wore the peplos; the Scythians wore pants, pointy caps, beards, and coats; and the Indians wore dhotis, sarees, turbans, shawls, and adorned their bare chest with heavy jewellery. This illustration represents the native Indian nobility during a time when Gandhara was part of a larger empire, whose rulers, the Kushans, descended from steppe nomads that took over the remains of a collapsed Hellenistic kingdom.
The core of GANDHARA was in the valleys of Peshawar and Swat, in what is now northwestern Pakistan, but its area of influence extended to modern-day eastern Afghanistan. Part of the area of ancient Gandhara is known today as “the Switzerland of Asia” because of its lush coniferous forests, green pastures and high mountains covered by snow and glaciers. The Buddhist art of this western Himalayan region received strong Mediterranean influences because of Alexander the Great’s invasion of India and the subsequent Indo-Greek kingdom, but contacts with the Roman Empire along the Silk Roads may have also played a role. The first anthropomorphic representations of the Buddha were made in a Hellenistic style in Gandhara around the 1st century, and from there, the image of the Buddha spread to the rest of Asia. At the same time, Vajrapani, protector of the Buddha, was given the appearance of the Greek Herakles in Gandharan representations, which spread to China and Japan with the expansion of Mahayana Buddhism.