When Alexander the Great fought his way into India in 326 BC, he didn’t just come for conquest. He also took a considerable scientific staff with him to study Indian nature and culture. Most intriguing was his encounter with what the Greeks called the “gymnosophists,” or the “naked sages” of India, who spend their day motionless in various postures. One of these sages decided to join Alexander, but not long after placed himself on a funeral pyre and sat motionless as the flames consumed him.
Alexander was forced to retreat from India after just eight months, but this was enough time to found various full-fledged Greek cities in India, which he populated with retired soldiers. After Alexander’s retreat, the Jain King Chandragupta took over the area, but the Greek population persisted. The Greeks also placed an ambassador at the Indian court, named Megasthenes, who wrote a book about his stay at the Indian capital Pataliputra. And Chandragupta’s grandson, the great Buddhist King Ashoka, wrote edicts to his Greek subjects and even managed to convert some of them to Buddhism.
And then, around 180 BC, the Greeks from neighboring Bactria invaded and established the Indo-Greek kingdoms of India, which would last for about 200 years.
Contact between Greece and India can be traced to the 6th century BC, when both Ionia, where the first Greek philosophers were born, and North-West India became part of the Persian Empire in respectively 546 and 518 BC. And this is why, on the Apadana Reliefs at Persepolis, the Persian capital, we see depicted both the Greeks and the Indians (see Fig. 260). In 517 BC, a Greek named Scylax of Caryanda was commissioned by the Persian King Darius to sail down the Indus River in order to explore the possibility of sea-trade between India and Persia. Scylax even wrote a book about his journey, the first Greek book about India. Unfortunately, the book is lost, yet a few fragments remain in later works. Interestingly, he wrote of people who lived outdoors and only ate wild grains. These must have been Indian ascetics.
The second Greek book on India was written by Ctesias (5th century BC), a physician who worked for 17 years at the Persian court. Ctesias didn’t travel to India but got his information from Bactrian and Indian merchants and diplomats. Based on the information he gathered, he wrote the books Persica and Indica. This book today also only exists in the form of quotations in later works.
Fig. 260 – The Apadana Reliefs at Persepolis, showing at the top Greeks and at the bottom Indians bringing tribute (5th century BC) (A.Davey, CC BY 2.0)
The next contact between Greece and India came with Alexander the Great (356–323 BC). After his victory over the Persians, he developed the ambition to reach “the end of the world,” which the Greeks of the time believed to be India.
When he entered India in 326 BC, he was welcomed without resistance by a small kingdom centered around the city Taxila, an Indian center of learning. The next king, Porus, was prepared to fight, resulting in Alexander’s last major battle, fought in the drenching rain along the River Hydaspes. Porus had an army of not only infantry, cavalry, and chariots, but also elephants.
It was the first time the Greeks encountered them on the battlefield. Each elephant had on top a rider and soldiers with bows and javelins and they were used to crush through the Greek infantry. The Greeks shot the riders and wounded the elephants at the knees. Alexander finally won, after which he restored Porus as king, who remained a loyal ally.
Alexander thought Porus would be his last enemy at the edge of the world, but he soon found out he had only discovered the first part of a much larger subcontinent. This was a great disappointment to Alexander and also to his men, who hoped to be able to finally go home after eight years of war. Alexander tried to convince his men to continue, but they started to openly protest. Alexander was deeply disappointed, but eventually gave in. At the furthest distance, he erected twelve altars, or, according to other sources, twelve statues of gods, which were, unfortunately, never found.
Besides conquest, Alexander also had a deep interest in nature and culture, which he shared with his teacher, the great philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC). Pliny wrote about them:
King Alexander the Great, being fired with a desire to know the natures of animals and having delegated the pursuit of this study to Aristotle as a man of supreme eminence in every branch of science, orders were given to some thousands of persons throughout the whole of Asia and Greece, all those who made their living by hunting, fowling and fishing and those who were in charge of warrens, herds, apiaries, fishponds and aviaries, to obey his instructions, so that he might not fail to be informed about any creature born anywhere. [90]
We even read Alexander paid Aristotle in order to “perfect” his work on biology called History of Animals, the earliest work of biology.
In line with this, Alexander also took a considerable scientific staff with him to India. There were historians who recorded his deeds and philosophers who investigated the surroundings. The philosophers included Callisthenes, Anaxarchus, and according to later sources also his student Pyrrho, the founder of Skepticism. The generals Ptolemy and Nearchus also wrote significant works on their journey through India, as did the navigator and Cynic philosopher Onesicritus and the architect Aristobulus.
We read in Strabo that on arrival in Taxila, Alexander was intrigued by a group of naked ascetics he observed in a grove outside the city, practicing various yoga postures (see Fig. 261). He sent Onesicritus to interview them:
He found fifteen men at a distance of twenty stades [c. 4 km] from the city, who were in different postures, standing or sitting or lying, naked and motionless till evening. [A yogi named] Calanus [aged 72] was lying on stones when he first saw him. [90]
The stones, we read, were so hot that none of the Macedonian soldiers could step on them without shoes.
Onesicritus approached them politely and inquired about their beliefs. Calanus responded dismissively, claiming no one wearing the elaborate clothing of the Macedonians could be taught philosophy. They should instead be naked and learn to sit peacefully on a broiling rock:
Calanus […] bade him, if he wished to learn, to take off his clothes, to lie down naked on the same stones. [91]
Fig. 261 – Alexander meeting the gymnosophists, from History of Alexander the Great (13th century) (Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique)
Calanus, as it turned out, was an ascetic of the extreme kind, practicing mortification of the body, or “seeking pain,” which reminds us of the Indian Ajivikas. But another milder philosopher, Mandanis, “the oldest and wisest of the philosophers,” “rebuked Calanus as a man of arrogance”, and told him he should be more accommodating to a king who wished to learn wisdom. He expressed admiration for Alexander as a “philosopher in arms” and then apologized for the fact that because of the language barrier, despite having three interpreters, the chance of his message being fully understood would be “like expecting water to flow pure through mud.” Onesicritus only managed to understand that “the best teaching is that which removes pleasure and pain from the soul”:
Man trains the body for toil in order that his opinion may be strengthened, whereby he may put a stop to conflicts and be ready to give good advice to all. [90]
Mandanis also advised Taxiles, the king of Taxila, to receive Alexander.
In another Greek source, Arrian, we read that Mandanis told Onesicritus that he needed little material goods, living only on what the earth offered freely, and he expressed the opinion that Alexander’s adventures were pointless. Here, we also read that Mandanis was a vegetarian of an extreme kind, eating only fruit, which is common among Jains, and he also spoke of death as a release from the body. Mandanis concluded that the Greeks are “sound-minded in general, but wrong in one respect, in that they prefer custom to nature; for otherwise they would not be ashamed to go naked, like himself, and live on plain food.”
After the encounter with Onesicritus, Calanus, the first gymnosophist, proved willing to visit Alexander. The rest of the ascetics disapproved of this, claiming he got seduced by the pleasures of Alexander’s table. But Calanus ignored the criticism and even decided to join Alexander’s retinue back to Persia in 324 BC.
Once in Pasargadae, a city close to Persepolis, Calanus got a stomach problem, which led him to an extreme act. Believing sickness to be a disgrace, he sought to die by fire and requested that Alexander build him a pyre. In Strabo, we read:
At first Alexander tried to dissuade him from this plan, but when he was unsuccessful, he agreed to do what was asked. […] The pyre was erected and everybody came to see the remarkable sight. True to his own creed, Calanus cheerfully mounted the pyre and perished, consumed along with it. Some of those who were present thought him mad, others vainglorious about his ability to bear pain, while others simply marveled at his fortitude and contempt for death.
And in Arrian:
He climbed the pyre and lay down with decorum in the sight of the whole army […] when the fire was lit by those detailed for the task, the trumpets (says Nearchus) sounded, as Alexander had ordered, and the whole army raised the shout they would raise when entering battle, and the elephants trumpeted their shrill war cry, in honor of Calanus. Calanus bade farewell to Alexander, remarking that they would meet again in Babylon. He remained motionless as the flames consumed him. [90]
The news of Calanus’s suicide eventually reached Taxila and we know the other sages did not approve of it, perhaps showing a difference in opinion between the Jains and the Ajivikas.
Speaking of suicide, Onesicritus also added that the wives in some Indian communities burned themselves alongside their deceased husbands—a practice called sati. We also read a similar ritual took place at the death of the Macedonian general Ceteus, who had married two Indian wives. When he died in battle in 317 BC, his wives vied for the honor of being burned alive along with him. The younger wive claimed the elder one was pregnant and therefore could not be burned, while the elder demanded that she had the right to be burned, being the senior wife. Mid-wives determined the elder was indeed pregnant, on which she “departed weeping, tearing the wreath on her head and her hair’. The younger wife rejoiced and mounted the pyre dressed as if for a wedding, with ribbons in her hair. Then the army marched three times around the pyre and then she submitted herself calmly to the flames. Again, the onlookers were both shocked and moved by the ritual.
A few centuries later, around 19 BC, we read that another Indian sage, named Zarmanochegas, came all the way to Athens. “Zarmano” is likely the Greek version of “sramana,” meaning “ascetic.” He also burnt himself to death. According to Plutarch (c. 40-120 AD), he was then buried in Keramikos cemetery in Athens, in a tomb that still existed in Plutarch’s day. The tomb read:
Zarmanochegas, an Indian, a native of Bargosa, having immortalized himself according to the custom of his country, here lies.
This act was then repeated by the Greek Cynic philosopher Peregrinus Proteus (c. 95–165 AD) who wanted a spectacular ending to his life. He read his own funeral oration and burned himself on a funeral pyre at the Olympic Games of 165 AD.
As mentioned before, the sages met by Alexander were likely Jains and Ajivikas. There seems to have been no Buddhist around, as they oppose both self-mortification and nudity. Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador at the Indian court, also recognized the Brahmins, who were brought up from birth by learned men and were prominent at the royal court of Chandragupta. He contrasted them with the Sarmanes, who included the Hylobioi, or forest-dwellers, who are homeless and live outside the city and who abstain from sex and wine, who live on fruits and leaves, who do not marry, and who clothe themselves with the bark of trees. He adds:
Among the Indians are also those philosophers who follow the precepts of Boutta, whom they honor as a god on account of his extraordinary sanctity. [90]
This is the first reference to the Buddha in the West. He then wrote that “the Semnoi [meaning “holy”] among the Indians, go naked their whole lives long; they cultivate truth, make predictions about the future, and pay reverence to a certain pyramid, under which they consider the bones of a certain god to lie.” The pyramids, here, likely refer to Buddhist stupas (although nudity is not a characteristic of Buddhism).
Megasthenes also attempted to tell something about Indian religion, but he does so through such a Greek lens, that the information is of no use. He claimed the most prominent Indian gods were the Greek gods Heracles and Dionysus. And it can’t be a coincidence that these were also the gods Alexander most associated with his conquest of India and thus wanted to encounter in India. For Alexander wanted to outdo Heracles, who, according to legend, had been to the Caucasus, which he strangely identified with the Hindu Kush. And Dionysus was said to have been born in Nysa, a city Alexander claimed to have found in Gandhara, India. In this city, they found ivy, which was associated with Dionysus. And when they heard a god was born in the city with a roughly similar name, they were convinced of the identification. Unfortunately, Megasthenes tells us little else about Indian religion. It seems he skipped all ideas that didn’t in some way already resemble ideas in Greece. No meditation, no identification of the self with the universe, and so on. This was typical of the Greeks. They looked for similarities, not differences.
When Alexander the Great entered India, he didn’t just take soldiers, but some soldiers also took their wives and children, and Alexander also brought merchants, philosophers, teachers, artists, prostitutes, and so on. According to the sources, Alexander brought over a total population numbering in the many thousands. These people were meant to settle in various cities which Alexander founded in Bactria and India. Most of these cities he named Alexandria, among them Alexandria-in-the-Caucasus, Alexandria-in-Arachosia, and Alexandria-on-the-Indus. In each of these cities, he gave thousands of discharged Greek soldiers plots of land so they could maintain long-lasting settlements. Alexander also encouraged single Greeks to marry local women and he even encouraged his subjects to adopt some Indian customs and even some elements of Indian religion (he had done the same after conquering the Persians). For Alexander hoped for a culture-merging process, based on his concept of homonoia, or like-mindedness between different peoples. This was cheered on by a new branch of Greek philosophy that saw foreigners not as barbarians, but as part of a cosmopolitan brotherhood.
Fig. 262 – One of Ashoka’s pillars (mself, CC BY-SA 2.5; Bpilgrim, CC BY-SA 2.5; Wikimedia; CC BY-SA 3.0)
Alexander himself left India after just eight months and didn’t seem to have made much of an impact on the Indians, since he isn’t mentioned in Indian texts until the 7th century AD. And, only a few years after his departure, the Jain king Chandragupta Maurya (reigned c. 320–298 BC), the founder of the Mauryan Empire, jumped into the power vacuum that Alexander had left behind, and recaptured North-West India. Yet, many of the Greeks continued to live in India.
To the surprise of many, Chandragupta eventually gave up his throne to become a Jain, perhaps after realizing the horrors of the wars he had waged. Tradition has it that he then ended his life by fasting to death to burn off his bad karma.
Alexander died shortly after his departure from India, after which his empire got involved in various civil wars that cut up the empire in various pieces. General Seleucus (c. 358–281 BC) managed to control the areas to the north and west of India, including Bactria. Chandragupta eventually reached an agreement with Seleucus, allowing the Indian king to extend his empire all the way up to Kandahar, while in exchange, Seleucus was presented with five hundred elephants. There was also an intermarriage, although the details here are not clear. Possibly, the daughter of Seleucus married Chandragupta, making it possible his successor was part-Greek.
Chandragupta’s son Bindusara also maintained good relations with the Seleucids. We know that at one point he requested Seleucus for “figs, wine and a philosopher.” He received the first two, but Seleucus responded they did not trade in philosophers.
Seleucus also placed a Greek ambassador Megasthenes at the Mauryan capital Pataliputra, who lived there for four years and who wrote an influential book about India based on his first-hand experience. Unfortunately, the book has been lost, but parts of the text were paraphrased by others. Bindusara also had a Greek ambassador called Deimachus, who also wrote a book, and his son, the great Buddhist king Ashoka (c. 304–232 BC), had ambassador Dionysius.
Ashoka, like his grandfather Chandragupta, also started out as a victorious conqueror but then experienced a religious conversion after which he became dedicated to non-violence and benevolence. To communicate his insights, he famously wrote edicts on stone pillars and rocks across his kingdom (see Fig. 262). And these messages form some of the earliest found writing in India after the fall of the Indus Valley Civilization. Exceptions are some pottery graffiti from the 5th century BC and General Nearchus, who travelled with Alexander, wrote a few years earlier “that the Indians write letters on linen cloth.” And another Alexandrian source claimed they wrote on bark. Megasthenes, however, during the rule of Chandragupta, clearly states the Indians used no writing. He said:
[They are] a people who have no written laws, are ignorant of writing, and must therefore in all the business of life trust to memory.
These sources can all be true if we allow for regional differences, with writing at Taxila, a learning center, but not at the court.
In his rock and pillar edicts, Ashoka did not speak of nirvana, but he did talk about protecting the poor and the weak. He also made the site of his bloodiest battle a center where Buddhists could assemble and pray and send out missionaries to persuade his people to follow the Buddhist dharma. And Ashoka also sponsored the Third Buddhist Council, organized by the Buddhist monk and philosopher Mogaliputta Tissa, at which the standard Buddhist text, which was later written down as the Pali Canon, was codified.
Ashoka also communicated directly to the Greek population in his own kingdom. Rock Edict II refers to the establishment of Indian medical institutions “in the territories of the Yavana [Greek] king Antiochus.” And we read some of Ashoka’s missionaries were planting medicinal herbs in the neighboring country. The word “Yona” and “Yavana,” by the way, means “Greek,” coming from the word “Ionians,” the name for the Greeks living in modern-day Turkey.
Rock Edict V tells of Mahamatras, or wandering Buddhist missionaries, who were sent “even among the Yavanas, […] dwelling on the western boundaries.”
Surprisingly, the edict even proclaims that Ashoka’s missionaries went as far as “six hundred yojanas [a few thousand kilometers], where the Yavana king named Antiyoka [Antiochus] is ruling and where beyond the kingdom of the said Antiyoka four other kings named Turamaya [Ptolemy], Antikini [Antigonus], Maka [Magas of Cyrene] and Alikasundara [Alexander of Epirus] are also ruling.” These are the actual contemporary Greek kings ruling different parts of Alexander’s broken empire at the time. Unfortunately, these missionaries were not mentioned in Greek sources.
Interestingly, one version of Rock Edict XIII was found as far west as Kandahar, Afghanistan, and was written in Greek (see Fig. 263). And Minor Rock Edict IV, also from Kandahar, was written in both Greek and Aramaic. Both these edicts are written in good scholarly Greek.
Fig. 263 – Rock Edict XIII from Kandahar, written in Greek (3rd century BC) (Schumberger, 1963)
The Mahavamsa, a Pali text from Sri Lanka, also describes Greek involvement in Buddhist missionary work, here related to the Third Buddhist Council. One of the missionaries sent out was a Greek named Dharmaraksita. He was said to have converted thousands to Buddhism. And we read that Maharaksita was sent to “Yonacountry” and Mahyantika was sent to Gandhara, where many Greeks were residing. And the Greek teacher Mahadharmaraksita led 30,000 monks from Alexandria-of-the-Caucasus, one of Alexander’s new cities, to the opening of the great Ruanvalli Stupa. Ashoka also appointed Greeks to high government ministries. His viceroy of Saurastra was a Greek, and he had a Greek governor in Kathiawar.
Around 250 BC, Bactria, which had been part of the Greek Seleucid kingdom, revolted and gained its independence. And then, around 180 BC, Demetrius I (early 2nd century BC), assisted by the legendary future king Menander, recaptured a large portion of North-West India, where they founded even more Greek cities. In Fig. 264, we see King Demetrius on a coin with an elephant scalp on his head, celebrating his invasion of India.
King Agathocles became the first Greek king to rule Taxila again, and also the first to mint bilingual coinage. These coins include images of Indian deities (see Fig. 265) and also Buddhist symbols, such as arched hills (possibly a stupa) and a tree in a railing. King Menander (died c. 130 BC) extended the Indo-Greek kingdom even more, conquering even more land that Alexander had held in India. After Menander, the territory was divided into separate Indo-Greek kingdoms, which we only know about from coin evidence.
Fig. 264 – Coin of Demetrius I wearing an elephant scalp (early 2nd century BC) (The Greek Experience of India, R. Stoneman)
Fig. 265 – Coins stating in Greek (left) and Brahmi (right) “King Agathocles.” The figures are the Indian deities Balarama / Samkarshana (left) and Vasudeva / Krishna (right) (early 2nd century BC)
Menander, who seems to have become a Buddhist, also stars in a Buddhist text written in Pali called The Questions of King Milinda (Milindapanha). In the text, we read that Menander, after completing a review of his army, felt the desire for philosophical discussion.
He consulted his entourage of five hundred Greeks, who suggested a number of philosophers. The first few disappointed him, but then he is introduced to Nagasena. The king posed him a series of questions about Buddhism:
Master of words and sophistry, clever and wise Milinda tried to test great Nagasena’s skill. Leaving him not, again and yet again, he questioned and cross-questioned him, until his own skill was proved foolishness. Then he became a student of the Holy writ. [90]
According to Buddhist tradition, Menander even built a stupa at Pataliputra, the Maurya capital. And one of his coins was found in the second building phase of the Butkara stupa in Swat. And when he died his relics were treated with a reverence somewhat similar to those of the Buddha, being distributed among stupas across his realm.
During this period, the Greek cities in India blossomed. Archeological research has confirmed the existence of full-blown cities of the Greek type in both Bactria and India. For instance, in 1958, Alexandria-of-the-Arachosians was found, in what is now Kandahar, which was at the time part of the Indian empire. The site Sirkap, close to Taxila, also had a Greek city plan and in Pushkalavati, in Gandhara, we find the remains of a Greek street plan from about 150 BC, with in the middle a large Buddhist stupa. Coins in Brahmi and Greek extend here down to about 40 BC, almost three centuries after Alexander entered India.
The site Aï Khanoum, in Bactria, which likely was Alexandria-on-the-Oxus, is especially impressive. The remains show a clear Greek town layout, including a theater for about 5000 spectators, a stadium, a gymnasium, and three temples (see Fig. 267). There also was a large public building with colonnaded covered walkways and next to it a large hall with eighteen Corinthian columns (see Fig. 266).
Fig. 266 – Corinthian columns at Aï Khanoum. Corinthian capitals can be seen in the middle. (1960s, Musée Guimet)
Fig. 267 – The foundation of a Greek temple at Aï Khanoum (Bernard, La campagne des fouilles de 1970 à Aï Khanoum)
Fig. 268 – Statue of a philosopher at Aï Khanoum (200–150 BC) (National Museum of Afghanistan)
The items that were found there are equally impressive. Archeologists have found a bronze Heracles-figure, a statue of a philosopher (found in the gymnasium, see Fig. 268), a statue of a nude man with a cloak over his shoulder, various beautifully made faces, and a beautiful sculpted foot with a sandal. In one of the temples, archaeologists have also found the base of a stele with a text that came from the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, near Athens, the most sacred place of Greece, where a priestess foretold the future. We read the name Klearchos, who claimed to have copied the text in Delphi and brought it here. We read:
These wise sayings of men of old, the words of famous men, are consecrated at holy Delphi, where Klearchos copied them from, carefully, to set them up, shining from afar, in the sanctuary of Kineas.
And then there is Jandial, near the city of Taxila, where Alexander camped for two months in 326 BC. Here, archeologists have discovered a Greek street plan and a temple with Ionic columns (see Fig. 269). Stupas belonging to this city were also found, indicating a prosperous Greek Buddhist community. The same temple may have been the one visited by Apollonius of Tyana, who according to Philostratus visited India in the 1st century AD. We read:
Taxila, they tell us, is about as big as Nineveh, and was fortified fairly well after the manner of Greek cities; and here was the royal residence of the personage who then ruled the empire of Porus. And they saw a temple, in front of the wall, which was not far short of 100 feet in size, made of stone covered with stucco, and there was constructed within it a shrine, somewhat small as compared with the great size of the temple which is surrounded with columns, but deserving of notice. For bronze tablets were nailed into each of its walls on which were engraved the exploits of Porus and Alexander.
Fig. 269 – The remains of a temple with Ionian columns at Jandial (2nd century BC) (Usman.pg, CC BY-SA 3.0)
There also was an inscription on a vase from Swat that names a Greek Buddhist governor called Theodorus:
Governor Theodorus has enshrined these relics of Lord Shakyamuni [the Buddha], for the welfare of the mass of the people.
And a Greek man named Heliodorus erected a pillar around 110 BC, not far from Ashoka’s Great Stupa at Sanchi, which still stands today. We read on this pillar in Brahmi script that Heliodorus was born in Taxila and that he became an ambassador of the Indo-Greek king Antialkidas to the Indian King Bhagabhadra. The text identifies the pillar as a “Garuda pillar of Vasudeva, the god of gods,” and Heliodorus calls himself a Bhagavata, meaning a worshipper of Vishnu, one of whose titles is Vasudeva:
This Garuda-pillar of Vasudeva, the god of gods was constructed here by Heliodora [Heliodoros], the Bhagavata, son of Dion, a man of Takhkhasila [Taxila], the Yona [Greek] ambassador who came from the Great King Amtalikita [Antialkidas] to King Kasiputra Bhagabhadra, the Savior, prospering in [his] fourteenth regnal year.
Eventually, the Indo-Greek kingdoms came under pressure from various nomadic tribes in the north, which weakened their power. The Greek rule came to an end in 10 AD, after 200 years. From this moment, Greek rulership was over, but Greeks continued to live under Saka and later Kushan rule and continued to exercise influence for at least two more centuries. For instance, in the 2nd century AD, five centuries after Alexander’s visit, Greek donors left inscriptions on various buildings they helped finance. And also in the 2nd century AD, the name of a Greek artist named Agisalaos appeared on a reliquary. We read:
The servant (dasa) Agisalaos, the superintendent of works at the monastery of [Emperor] Kanishka.
If you open art history books on India, something strange is going on. There are some great pieces from the ancient Indus Valley Civilization, as we have seen, but from its collapse in 1900 BC until the arrival of Alexander the Great in 326 BC almost nothing can be found. Archeologists have only found a few simple figurines and bronze shapes, and no architecture, since houses were made of perishable material. But then, quite suddenly during the Maurya dynasty, art and architecture sprang into being. This was just a few years after Alexander the Great arrived, with sculptors and architects among his men.
Fig. 270 – Procession with King Ashoka paying homage to a stupa at Sanchi (Photo Dharma, CC BY 2.0)
Fig. 271 – Musicians at Sanchi. The third person from the left shows a Greek instrument called an aulos, a double flute (Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, CC BY 2.0)
Early Maurya art, however, is still stylized and somewhat simple. We often see depictions of divine beings such as nature spirits called Yakshas (male) and Yakshis (female), and also protection deities and river goddesses. Later Maurya art was more impressive, with among its greatest pieces the beautiful lions that top the pillars of King Ashoka (see Fig. 262). Ashoka also commissioned the Great Stupa at Sanchi, one of the oldest stone structures in India. Stupa 1 at this site was originally a simple hemispherical brick structure built over the relics of the Buddha. Starting in the first century BC, four tall gateways were added, covered with beautiful sculptural decorations. Many relief panels depict scenes from the life of the Buddha, with the Buddha not depicted for religious reasons. We might for instance see an empty seat under a tree, where we would expect the Buddha and sometimes only his footprints are visible.
The reliefs also show various scenes of a king in procession, often interpreted to be Ashoka himself. One scene depicts the king paying homage to a stupa (see Fig. 270). And interestingly, one relief also shows a musician with an unmistakenly Greek instrument, namely the aulos, the double flute (see Fig. 271 and compare to Fig. 435).
The Maurya capital Pataliputra has been described by Megasthenes, which he claimed was made entirely of wood, including 570 towers, fortified gateways, and a wooden palace. Arrian cites him as follows:
Those [cities] on the rivers or on the coast are built of wood; if they were built of brick, they could not last long because of the moisture due to rain, and to the fact that the rivers overflow their banks and fill the plains with water. The greatest of the Indian cities is called Palimbothra [Pataliputra], […] at the confluence of the Erannoboas [Sone] and the Ganges; the Ganges is the greatest of all rivers, while the Erannoboas may be third of the Indian rivers […]. And Megasthenes says that the length of the city on either side, where it is longest, extends to eighty stades [14.5 km], its breadth to fifteen stades [2.5 km], and that a ditch has been dug round the city, six plethra [183 m] wide and thirty cubits [13.7 m] deep; the wall has five hundred and seventy towers and sixty-four gates. [90]
Strabo added that the city had “the shape of a parallelogram, surrounded by a wooden wall pierced with openings through which arrows may be discharged. In front is a ditch, which serves the purpose of defense and of a sewer for the city.”
Fig. 272 – Corinthian-inspired capital from Pataliputra (Nalanda001, CC BY-SA 4.0)
The wooden wall mentioned might be the wooden palisades identified during the excavation of Pataliputra. Wooden drains were also discovered.
Not much later, perhaps under King Ashoka, the city also got some stone architecture, of which only the foundations remain. The roof of a huge hall was supported by eighty sandstone pillars treated with the beautiful Maurya polish. And we also find here a Greek-inspired capital of the Corinthian type (see Fig. 272).
The 2nd century BC also marks the start of Indian painting. At Ajanta, there are thirty caves filled with Buddhist paintings and sculptures, made over several centuries. It is curious that these paintings sprang into existence with no prior tradition of painting, unless we assume Greek influence. Interestingly, some architectural elements in the paintings show semi-correct perspective that reminds us of Greek and Roman paintings (see Fig. 273 and compare with Fig. 474). And drapery is also painted in a Greek manner (see Fig. 274).
Fig. 273 – Semi-correct perspective from the Ajanta caves (Photo Dharma, CC BY 2.0)
Fig. 274 – The Buddha with Greek-style drapery from the Ajanta caves (Photo Dharma, CC BY 2.0)
Mathura sculpture started in the 2nd century BC and continued for a few centuries. Typical of this style are sculptures of red sandstone which are found all over India. Starting around 150 BC, we also see perspective applied to reliefs in this style (see Fig. 275).
Fig. 275 – Perspective applied to a Mathura relief (50-20 BC) (American Institute of Indian Studies; Sonya Rhie Quintanilla, History of Early Stone Sculpture at Mathura)
Fig. 276 – Hercules-figure (left), called Vajrapani, in contrapposto holding a thunderbolt. (c. 2nd century AD) (Musée Guimet)
The next phase of Indian art history is the marvelous Gandhara art, which peaked in the first centuries AD and which shows the clearest Greek influence, giving us a beautiful mix between Greek elegance and Indian spirituality. Gandhara art often features classical proportions and poses, including contrapposto, and also Greek drapery and hairstyles (see Fig. 276). Here, we also find the first surviving depictions of the Buddha, which wasn’t allowed in earlier times. Especially impressive is a graceful standing Buddha with a Greek-influenced mantle and halo (see Fig. 277). And there even is a Greek-style capital with a meditating Buddha (see Fig. 278).
Fig. 277 – A statue of the (1st-2nd century AD) (World Imaging; Tokyo National Museum)
Fig. 278 – The Buddha depicted within a Greek Corinthian-type capital (J. Craddock)
In Gandhara art, we also often see a Heracles-figure, often complete with club and lion-skin and sometimes engaged in a fight with a lion. He is identified as Vajrapani, the muscular protector of the Buddha, holding a vajra, or thunderbolt (see Fig. 276). The same character also appeared in the Tapa Shotor sculptures in Hadda, Afghanistan, which were unfortunately destroyed by the Taliban (Fig. 279). Another sculpture at the site even shows an onlooker of the Buddha who seems to bear the features of Alexander himself (see Fig. 280)!
Fig. 279 – Vajrapani, to the left of the Buddha, holding a thunderbolt, from the now-destroyed Tapa Shotor sculptures in Hadda, Afghanistan (2nd century AD) (Louis Dupree).
Fig. 280 – An onlooker of the Buddha with the likeness of Alexander from the now-destroyed Tapa Shotor sculptures in Hadda, Afghanistan (2nd century AD) (Z. Tarzi).