Gandhāra - A kind of new Hellas.

I.

Do you know where Gandhāra is? Probably not. You
may have seen the name on a label in some museum, but to
most of us it merely suggests some vague and eastern country.
Matters are not helped by the word being used for a country,
the district round Peshewar and the North West Frontier,
an art, about which a few experts wage furious battle, and
sometimes, though roughly, for a moment of history. The
subject is still relatively unexplored, and it is full of
problems that may remain unsolved unless an expedition can
be organised, and permission obtained, to do further excava-
tions in Afghanistan.

I knew nothing about Gandhāra myself, until I saw an
exhibition of photographs of Indian Art at the Victoria and
Albert Museum, London, during the early years of the last
war. All were interesting, and many very beautiful, but it
was not until I entered the last room and found a few pictures
of heads from Gandhāra, that I recognised that a subject that
was to affect me profoundly, had appeared for its first
welcome.

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There were other things to do during the post-war
period, and it was only after I had read W.W.Tarn's magni-
ficent book, *The Greeks in Bactria and India*, ( Cambridge
University Press) that I began to understand the meaning
of this strange and beautiful name. And here, before I
write further, I must explain something of the part played
in archaeology by both fashion and politics, because many
experts shrug their shoulders and smile, whenever one speaks
of Gandhāra.

Generations of small boys have learned Greek verbs
and Latin declensions painfully, the wrong way, and under
protest. The result has been the twentieth century repudia-
tion of the importance of classic thought. I have been told
that the Greeks were "undemocratic", although the original
conception of democracy was Greek, that their views were
not particularly original, (but compare most ancient writings
with Homer and Euripides) and that as they were aristocrats,
their views have no place in a modern state. I can say only
that having a period of forty years of historical study be-
hind me, I am convinced that the basis of western culture
to-day comes from Greece, although I am equally sure that
the Greeks were more influenced by eastern thought, possibly
from far away China, as well as from nearer Persia and India,

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than would have been conceded by specialists fifty years
ago. It must be remembered that our studies of the Orient
are comparatively recent, and that much of the present evi-
dence was not available before this century. It is important
to make this point, because what interested my two companions
and myself in Gandhara was that it was a mixture of West and
East, and one of the few places in the world where the cul-
tures of two continents not only met but mingled.

The modern trend in archaeology is also to push back-
wards. Both English and Pakistani students are far more
interested in the early Indus cultures of Mohendo-Jaro and
Harappa. It is easy to understand their desire to add a few
more names to a map that up to now has been largely a blank
page. We were artists, however, and were drawn by the drama
of the story, to the country below the Khyber pass, where
two thousand years ago, Greek sculptors, architects and poets,
had come by many painful marches to mingle their art with
the philosophy of the East.

First of all, a few lines of history are essential.
Some of the earliest records concern Alexander. He crossed
the Indus somewhere near the modern Attock, not many miles
from Peshawar, and all of the Gandhara country came under
the influence of his army. They were probably not the first

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Greeks to see the river. The cities below the passes were the natural market places where several caravan routes met. Men who had come from the plains and jungles were no doubt often afraid of the cold on the hills, but the Greeks were hardy and had had some experience in their own mountains, so it is likely that a few traders had already come from the Greek cities in Asia Minor, to return with spices and what must have seemed fantastic tales of monsters and towering trees. It is said that the climate at that time was a very different one, and much of what is now a desert, may then have been covered by thick jungle. Otherwise the many elephants shown on coins or modelled in clay, could not have existed.

After Alexander's death little is known for about a century and a half, until we reach the records of the Greek kings of Bactria, one of whom, Demetrius, conquered Kabul, the Punjab and Sind about 190 B.C. Some authorities consider that during this period Greek influence disappeared, but this seems improbable. Trade goes on along frontiers, no matter who rules them, sometimes hampered, sometimes encouraged, but usually continuous. Men cling together in groups, the merchants banded together against the hated toll-gatherers, irrespective of where a particular member happens to have been born. So it is probable that there was a fairly regular

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Greek influence in the North West, long after the Greek kings had been driven out by the Scythians, and after these in turn, had been conquered by the Kushans. In fact, as Tarn points out, isolated colonies of Greeks may have taken refuge in the remote hill valleys, from which they were never dislodged, and it is said that there are traditions and stories about Iskendar, (Alexander) and the Greeks alive to-day around Peshewar, and among the strange and primitive tribes in Waziristan.

There are, therefore, several different strands in Gandhāra art. There are some purely Greek pieces, some of which may have been brought by merchants, perhaps from Alexandria, to adorn their houses and remind them of their former homes, just as in centuries to come an archaeologist may find an English silver teapot at some "dig" in Pakistan. There is the Gandhāra art proper, this consists with very few exceptions, of scenes from the life of Buddha, done in Greek style in Schist and with the addition of Greek motives. There is also some mass produced pieces of poor workmanship and usually of a later period. And there is the famous "Battles of the Dates."

Buddhism came early to the Frontier. (Asoka converted much of the country about 250 B.C. but there must have been numerous groups there, long before he put up his famous

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inscriptions.) Tarn makes the interesting point that there
is some reason to believe that in its early form, Buddhism
was to some extent "the creed of a war-like aristocracy," and
that in the great struggle between the two "colors", that
of the Brahmin or priest, and the Kschatriya, warrior or king,
the kings enlisted the help of the Greeks. It is known from
certain inscriptions that some, but not all of the Greeks,
were Buddhists, and that their Indianisation proceeded rapid-
ly after the first century A.D. Much remains to be investi-
gated, or discovered, but at some moment about this time the
Greek artists were called upon to make statues for the hundreds
of stupas that were being built all over Gandhara, and they
produced what they knew, a classic head that combined the
Indian Buddha with some of the features of the young Apollo.

And now we must consider the "Battle of the Dates."
When I stood in the Buddhist monastery at Jaulien above Taxila,
I realised with astonishment that it represented a thousand
years of religious history, as long as the time between the
battle of Hastings to the present day in England. The tradi-
tional date of the birth of Buddha is usually given as 565 B.C.
The Jaulian monastery was destroyed by the White Huns about
450 A.D. During the first period of Buddhist teaching, Buddha
himself was represented only by symbols, a footprint, the
wheel, or an empty throne. At some moment two schools began

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to carve statues of Buddha in human form, one at Matura,
(the modern Muttra) in the middle of India, and one at Gandhāra.

It is natural that Indian archaeologists should wish to
claim that the first statues made were of purely Indian in-
spiration. Dr. Tarn gives what seem to me convincing reasons,
to prove that the Gandāra art was earlier than Matura. He
suggests that the earliest Buddhas were made early in the first
century B.C. and Foucher agrees with him. Most modern authori-
ties, however, place the Gandhāra sculptures second and assign
them dates between 200 and 400 A.D. I think Tarn is right
when he contends that the "wish" for the origin to be Indian,
has overruled probability. A couple of centuries may seem
short to a historian, but we are still talking about the
Elizabethan age in England, and perhaps assimilating its
lessons. There is evidence for some contact with the Greek
world from Alexander until probably the destruction of Taxila
by the White Huns, and it seems more likely that it would be
a Greek artist who would take the first, perilous step of
carving a statue rather than a symbol, than that it originated
much further south and was brought back to Gandhāra. It is,
however, a question that teems with difficulties, and we need
more evidence.

IV.

Peshewar was both the heart of Gandhāra and the end of our journey. Actually the ancient capital was at Charsadda, about twenty miles away, but it is doubtful if the atmosphere has changed much since the time of Alexander. It is possible that the plays of Sophocles were acted by strolling players before artists who came here on their way to build and decorate the temples. The streets were full of mercenaries and traders; to judge by the evidence of the portrait heads in the museums some from as far away as western Europe. To-day there are nomads and soldiers, Poles, Germans and Japanese, many of the inhabitants have European features and hazel, almost blue eyes. The bazaar talk, then and now, is probably identical.

There has been a change in the landscape, because there was more jungle then, and great trees. There are many legends, and some pictures, of enormous snakes, probably pythons, though the forests may have begun to disappear before Alexander crossed the Indus. Most specialists think it was due to a slight change in the monsoon.

The pronunciation of the town is tricky. It is "Pe-pshaw", (best-seller eighteenth century,) in what the tonga driver charmingly called, "British-Urdu," it seemed to be "Pesh-oh-a" in as near as our ears could catch the local

speech, and I took refuge in Persian and called it Pesh-e-war.
If you have not had the good fortune to stand on the airport
and see, very far off, the outline of the first Khyber fort,
what picture will it convey if I write that the place is at
the top of a saucer of land between high mountains? It may
make it more visible if I say that I sometimes called it
Brigue, not because it was really like that small Swiss town,
there are actually two wide-spaced cities on a sprawling plain,
greater in extent than anything we see in Europe, but it has
something of its character. Peshewar stands between two
civilisations, with the wild, active north beyond the hills,
and below it, the patient, stolid plains.

Every morning they brought us buttonholes. None of us
would have worn flowers normally, but it would have hurt the
gardener's feelings to refuse them. So when I think of Peshewar
I remember its violets more than the snowy peaks of a distant
(but ever present) Kashmir. The first time that the mali
handed them with dignity to the Bearer, who handed them with
even more dignity to me, (alas, I wasn't dignified at all!)
I supposed that they would droop at once. They survived a
day on my coat, and three more days in water, and I have never
known violets with such fragrance. In the East of dusty roads
and peculiar smells, scent has an importance that Europe has

forgotten. I have since read that Kabul violets are famous,
and that there was a garden there in their honor. We were so
close to Afghanistan, that we found the convoy loading up for
Kabul in front of our hotel.

Afghanistan seemed as mysterious as Tibet, although we
could have got there, we discovered, with comparative ease.
There were only two stumbling blocks, - time and season. A
visa took a week to get, and the voyage in and out had to be
made with the weekly or fortnightly convoy. "The only month
you can safely visit Afghanistan is August," the Lahore curator
had said with a shiver, and as the wind swept down apparently
from the Turkestan steppes right under our doors, perhaps our
enthusiasm was just that little blunted. We will not refer
to the road, though one of us heard a neighbouring diplomat
moan, "from the frontier on it is pure hell." There was said
to be no surface on it, and as we peeped at the battered trucks
outside, and the diplomatic knots being used to tie on the of-
ficial luggage, we sighed, thumbed our diaries and said to
each other, "ah, this modern craze for speed, if we had another
three weeks we could go to Kabul and Jallabad as well, that was
where I found the hoard, you remember, "then we glanced
from the date of our return flight thankfully to the logs burn-
ing in the hearth, and I ventured most bravely to remark,
"when we go to Further Gandhāra, it must be summer."