RELIGIOUS ART EAST AND WEST — ROWLAND 571 



ancient Near East. These parallels are not always contemporary 

 but often reflect the taking up of earlier artistic forms or beliefs by 

 one or the other religious system over a period of centuries. 



The nimbus is a common attribute of early Christian and Byzantine 

 art, as it is of Indian art from the first century A.D. onward. In this 

 case we are dealing with a common adaptation of the sun disk used as 

 a device to symbolize supraterrestrial splendor or divine light in the 

 Mazdean period or Achaemenid art in Iran. In the Iranian art of 

 this classical period a disk is set behind the personification of Ahura 

 Mazda as a symbolic reference to the sun and the celestial glory of the 

 supreme light. In this very simple example of the adaptation of older 

 emblems by later religious systems the sun disk of Ahura ^lazda was 

 transformed into the halo to denote the divine radiance emanating 

 from the persons of Christ and Buddlia. 



As will be seen, we also have to deal with the phenomenon in art 

 of separate religious systems literally inventing a new imagery based 

 on their common heritage from both the Asiatic and Hellenic past 

 and in each case modified by the requirements of a particular iconog- 

 raphy. Although the question of the independent evolution of ideas 

 and belief and their portrayal in art in widely separated places and 

 times is always within the range of possibility, it is logical to assume 

 that many of these parallels represent both developments from a 

 common source or borrowings by one religious system from another. 

 The examination of a number of these spiritual and artistic affinities 

 is a subject of vital importance both for the history of religions and 

 the history of art. 



The development of Christian and Buddhist art in the early cen- 

 turies of our era affords an opportunity for the study of certain 

 parallels in concepts and stylistic expression that are the result partly 

 of similarities in doctrine, and partly the result of common borrow- 

 ings from the tradition of classical pagan art. ISIost of the examples 

 chosen for comparison and analysis will be drawn from early Christian 

 sculpture of the third to the fifth centuries and from the semi-Roman 

 school of art that flourished in Gandhara, now northwestern Pakistan, 

 in the first five centuries of the Christian era. 



Among the parallels existing between Christian and Buddhist art 

 that are founded on common iconographical as well as doctrinal back- 

 ground are the first representations of Christ and Buddha in early 

 Christian art and the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara. 



GANDHARA AND EARLY CHRISTIAN ART: BUDDHA PALLIATUS 



The resemblance of certain Gandliara statues of the Buddha, such 

 as those excavated at Hadda in Afghanistan, to early representations 

 of Christ (pi. 1) has long been noticed, as has the fact that both 

 apparently spring from the Greek orator type as exemplified by the 



