Buddha in a Toga

The twangy strains of Pakistani music filled the galleries of Manhattan's Asia House last week, but the 65 stone heads, statues and reliefs on exhibit seemed to owe almost as much to the West as to the East. On loan from the government of Pakistan, these peaceful figures are the graceful legacy of an ancient civilization that to this day remains partially wreathed in mystery.

The Gandhara sculptures get their name from a small, hilly region around Peshawar that at the time of Darius I (522-485 B.C.) was a province of Persia. From that time until its final decline after the White Hun sacking of the 6th century A.D., Gandhara was swept from conqueror to conqueror. It was part of India for a while, and then came the Indo-Greek dynasties founded by the captains of Alexander the Great. The Scythians fought over it; Rome's Emperors Augustus, Trajan and Hadrian exchanged trade missions with it. Finally, in the 3rd century, the Persians took it over again. East and West clawed at Gandhara, and in the midst of the battles Gandhara's artists learned from both.

Buddhism was their religion; yet they also found much to love in the gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome. They were fascinated by centaurs and Tritons, and they could produce a handsome Athena or Roma, helmet and all. They dutifully gave Buddha's head the magic bump that marked his Buddhahood--though they were likely to disguise it under a mop of hair inspired by Apollo. Buddha himself often appeared draped in a Roman toga, and some of the men could have come straight out of the Roman Senate. But while the artists borrowed, they did not copy; the spiritual serenity of their work could have come only from the East.

The sculptures of Gandhara--a name that had long since vanished from the map--lay for centuries in forgotten ruins. It was not until the 1920s, when the great city of Taxila was excavated, that the happy fusion of East and West was generally recognized. Until then, Gandhara's modern British rulers were apt to look upon these remnants of a distant time as meaningless curiosities. Once, when soldiers of the Queen's Own Corps of Guides came upon some ancient reliefs, they decided to use them to decorate the fireplace of their mess hall at Mardan. As might have been expected, smoke begrimed the stones, so the ingenious Guides covered them with a coat of black shoe polish. Shoe blacking darkens some of them still.

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