The Meeting of East & West

Afghanistan today is known mainly for its hounds, carpets and pistachio nuts. Its rugged, ruin-strewn terrain is still strategically important, the geopolitical crossroads between China, Russia, India and Iran. But centuries ago it was a well-traveled highway. Remarked Hsuean-tsang, a 7th century Chinese Bud dhist pilgrim, of this 800-mile bridge between the East and West: "Here are found objects of merchandise from all parts."

Over the centuries the debris of a dozen cultures has piled up alongside its ancient caravan routes. In 1500 B.C., the Aryans swept through to invade India. In the 4th century B.C., Alexander the Great's phalanx conquered the land. In turn, the Indians bearing Buddhism, the Persians, the White Huns, the Arabs preaching Islam, the Mongol hordes led by Genghis Khan all used Central Asia as steppingstones to empire.

Behind them in Afghanistan's shattered citadels, they left one of the world's most amazing collections of syncretic, or fused, art. Peoples clashed, but their art combined. In Manhattan's Asia House Gallery, where they are on view for the first time in the U.S.,* more than 100 objects give evidence of how styles learned from one another.

Here, rather than in China, Buddha grew to his tallest: a 175-ft.-high statue hewn from a sandstone cliff in the Afghan valley of Bamian--a display of gigantism inherited more from the colossal marble Caesars of Rome than from the subtler Orient. It was also in this Eurasian melting pot that Buddha acquired his characteristic togalike robe, borrowed from Rome. Likewise Hercules (opposite) holds the hero's traditional club, but his head is crowned with Serapis' sacred basket of mysteries, symbolizing the Nile's fertility.

Many of these objects lay hidden in sealed chambers from the 3rd century until 1937 when French archaeologists excavated the crumbling city of Begram near the Hindu Kush, the mighty massif that barricades Afghanistan to the northeast. Roman glassware, Chinese lacquer work and Indian ivories were found together, revealing that the East and West were closer together in 300 B.C. than in the days of Marco Polo, 15 centuries later.

* The exhibition travels next to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, then to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, B.C.

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