THE GANDHARA SCULPTURES. 97 



After the time of Alexander the Great's invasion of India, 

 about 326 B.C., Greek kingdoms were founded in Persia, Baktria, 

 and Parthia, and Greek traffic was gradually extended ; and when 

 these principalities were overthrown by Skythian hordes from 

 Central Asia, who seem early to have accepted a later form of 

 Buddhism, traders and even travelling artists found their way 

 from Asia IMinor and through Palmyra to the region of the 

 Indus. 



The more primitive Buddhists had then become known as 

 followers of the Hinayana, or narrow way ; but another school 

 had brought in a large mythology with numerous grades of 

 supernatural beings and emanations. This Mahayana, or " wider 

 path," was the school accepted by these Skythian conquerors. 

 They felt the want of palpable forms for their quasi-divinitics, 

 and appear to have sought the aid of the clever-handed artists 

 from Ionia whom they met with about Peshawar and Swat. 

 These learnt the characteristics of the beings they were asked to 

 represent, and, taking their models from the gods of the Greeks, 

 they fashioned out corresponding forms for those of the Budd- 

 hists. Apollo may have served as the basis of the ideal Buddha, 

 Jupiter as that of Sakra — the bearer of the thunderbolt and 

 protector of the religion — and so on. The evolution of Buddhist 

 art from Greek ideals has been wrought out in detail in Prof. 

 Griinwedel's "Buddhist Art in India" (English edition). In 

 some such way we see how the sculptures in Colonel IMain- 

 waring's collection — as in all others from the North-West 

 Frontier of India — at once strike us as bearing the impress of 

 Greek art in an unmistakeable way. Very few, indeed, are 

 inscribed, and it was long a puzzle to what date they were to be 

 assigned. The few inscriptions we have as yet found date from 

 the time of a king Gondophares — to whom, it is said, the 

 Apostle Thomas went to preach the Gospel — about a.d. 50 till 

 the fourth century a.d., and to this age we must assign these 

 sculptures. 



Among Colonel Mainwaring's collection represented in the 

 plate there appear only two figures of the Buddha, viz., in the 



