The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

ROMANO-INDIAN
122
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ART
had forced Alexander's successor, Seleucus Nicator,
to withdraw his garrisons beyond the
Hindu Kush, this withdrawal only made for an
even stronger consolidation of Hellenistic power
in the ancient province of Bactria, the territory
centred around the modern Afghan city of
Balkh. In about 250 B.C. the over-extended empire
of the Seleucids began to disintegrate. Iran
was claimed by a dynasty of obscure origin
known to history as the Parthians, and the province
of Bactria declared its independence under
a Greek prince, Diodotus. Now completely
separated from the Hellenistic world of the West
by the Parthians in Iran, the independent kingdom
of Bactria continued to maintain some
semblance of Hellenistic culture. Although its
rulers were perforce a military aristocracy, it is
extremely likely that this isolated Eurasian
Greek colony had much to
do with the perpetuation
of Hellenic artistic ideals in Asia and
also the minting of a magnificent series of coins
[65, a-c]. Its history is one of almost continous
warfare and displacement: Gandhara and the
Kabul Valley were reconquered by the grandson
of Diodotus, Demetrius, in about 190 B.C.; the
successors of Demetrius were almost immediately
dispossessed of Bactria and Gandhara
by Eucratides, the ruler of a rival Greek clan.
Although, following the establishment of a
dynasty by Eucratides, princes with Greek
names continued to hold these territories until
after the middle of the second century B.C.,
the years of this unhappy band of Hellenic exiles
were numbered. As early as 135 B.C. they were
driven out of Bactria by an invading horde
known as the Sakas. These people of Scythian
origin later became intimately associated with
the rulers of Parthia, and indeed, as early as the
first century B.C., seem to have displaced the
Parthians in eastern Iran and in the region of
western Afghanistan known as Sistan. A Saka
ruler by the name of Maues or Moga conquered
north-western India in about 90 B.C., thereby
constricting the rule of the last of the Greek
sovereigns to the Kabul Valley. 1
It was not long before the Sakas in turn were
forced out of Bactria by another race of Scythic
origin, the Yueh-chih, whose homeland was
originally in the province of Kansu in northwestern
China. These people, known in Indian
history by the name of the most powerful tribe,
the Kushans, gradually increased their power
until in the first fifty years of our era they made
themselves masters not only of the Kabul Valley
but also of the region of Gandhara. This conquest
involved the displacement of the Sakas
and the overthrow of the last of the Greek sovereigns,
Hermaeus. 2 The date of a.d. 64 is usually
accepted as marking the sack of the city of Taxila
and the final establishment of Kushan domination
in north-west India. The founder of the
line, Kujula Kadphises, is remembered not only
for his conquest of Gandhara and the Punjab,
but also for the establishment of an intimate
commercial and political relationship with the
Roman Empire of Augustus.
Of far greater import for the history of Gandhara
was Kujula's follower, Kanishka, the
most powerful and renowned of the Kushan
sovereigns, who made Peshawar his winter capital
and extended his conquests from central
Asia to Bengal. Kanishka is frequently referred
to as a second Asoka for his efforts on behalf of
the Buddhist religion. His foundations included
the great tower at Shah-ji-ki-Dheri, which,
from the accounts of the Chinese visitors of the
fifth and seventh centuries, must have been one
of the wonders of the Asiatic world. It was in the
ruins of this
monument that the reliquary of
King Kanishka was recovered in 1908. 3 Although
the Buddha himself never visited Gandhara,
the texts composed by Buddhist sages
under the Kushans made ofthe region a veritable
holy land of Buddhism by the association of
various sites with events in the previous incarnations
of Sakyamuni.