I've been listening to a course available from The Teaching Company called "The Big History of Civilization," by Craig G. Benjamin. In one of the lectures dealing with the original silk road, he says:
The sculptures produced in the Kushan cities of Gandhara and Mathura were created by the combined talents of Central Asian, Indian, and Hellenistic Greek artists. It is apparently they who were commissioned to create the first images of the Buddha for worship. Until this first silk road's era, the Buddha had never been depicted in human form, but instead had been represented by symbols including an umbrella, or footprints. The first representation of the Buddha was created in Gandhara, and was influenced by depictions of Greco-Roman deities.
I was pretty surprised to hear this, and it seems to indicate a fairly intimate exchange between Hellenistic and Indian regions, if they went as far as to take inspiration from each other's depictions of deities. Is it accurate, or at least plausible, to draw the connection between Greco-Roman sculpture and early depictions of the Buddha as a human figure?
Hi, you may be interested in a few more answers here
/u/artfulorpheus provides some cultural context in Was there any awareness of Buddhism in ancient Rome, Greece, Jerusalem and Egypt? When did Buddhist ideas first enter the West and Middle East?
/u/Siantlark on sculpture in How were the giant Buddha statues of the 7th century created, and why?
/u/ScipioAfricanvs in In what ways did the Hellenistic Greeks influence the development of Buddhism?
Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire brought a large part of Central Asia into the Hellenistic region, and make the Hellenistic and Indian regions neighbours. Cities such as Bagram, Ghazi, Herat, Kandahar (now in Afghanistan), Khujand, Merv (now in Tajikistan), and cities along the Indus and elsewhere in modern Pakistan were once "Alexandria" (founded, rebuilt, or re-named by Alexander). Bactrian was written in the Greek alphabet, Greek-style coinage was issued in the area of modern Pakistan and Afghanistan into the first millenium AD. For a snapshot of the eastern extent of the Hellenistic zone, consider the Greco-Bactrian kingdom, reaching from the Syr Darya (Jaxartes) to the Indus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Greco-BactrianKingdomMap.jpg
This region was under Hellenistic rule for centuries, and was strongly influenced by Greek culture. The break-up of Alexander's empire among his successors still left the region under Hellenistic rule and strong Greek influence (eventually eroded by the Parthian replacement of the Seleucids in Persia, which reduced links between the eastern Hellenistic world and the Mediterranean, and the replacement of Hellenistic dynasties by others).
It isn't that sculptors in Gandhara looked to a distant Greek world for artistic influence - Gandhara was a Greek kingdom and part of the Hellenistic world. Their first Buddhist ruler was Menander I, of Greek descent. It is not just plausible that they choose to depict Buddha in a Greek style, but something that should be expected.
