User:PHG/Standing Buddha (Gandhara)

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One of the first known representations of the Buddha, Gandhara, in pure Hellenistic style and technique.
One of the first known representations of the Buddha, Gandhara, in pure Hellenistic style and technique.

The Standing Buddha at the Tokyo National Museum is an Hellenistic representation of the Buddha and an outstanding piece of Greco-Buddhist art.

Foucher considered such Hellenistic free-standing Buddhas as "the most beautiful, and probably the most ancient of the Buddhas", assigning them to the 1st century BCE, and making them the starting point of the anthropomorphic representations of the Buddha [1].

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "The Buddhist art of Gandhara", Marshall, p101