Book review: Kazim Abdullaev,Buddhist Iconography of Northern Bactria

Since colonial times, Gandhara art tradition has acquired a significant place in the art historical analysis of ancient India. Today, Gandhara is located in the North-West Frontier province of Pakistan, and excavations in the region have yielded considerable amount of antiquities. It attracted scholarly and public attention within Pakistan as well as Europe and America. While the post-Cold War era changed the dynamics of the geopolitics of the region, archaeological interest in the area remained, and explorations and mapping of the Buddhist past became an important part of many endeavours that resulted in the unearthing of numerous archaeological sites in the area. Bactria is located in the Valley of Oxus River and once was part of Achaemenid Empire in the fifth–fourth century bc. It is located in the present-day northern part of Afghanistan and southern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The area also constitutes part of the Silk Road. In his book Buddhist Iconography of Northern Bactria, Kazim Abdullaev has explored many facets of the cultural dimension of this area, where Buddhist past was foremost religious expression in early historical time. It is a gigantic task to make such an assemblage of many archaeological finds in the art historical framework.

It is generally observed that the Hellenistic tradition was highly dominant in the area and was mixed with the local tradition. The confluence of this historical matrix resulted in the development of the local traditions existing in those areas. Interest in the Hellenistic tradition was integral to the European quest to explore and study the historical past of India and its frontier regions, whereas in later times, the concerns have been that of mapping the cultural past of the present-day political boundaries within respective territories. Research in these areas started in the early twentieth century, but the real impetus came from 1960 onwards. In the introduction to the book, the author presents a small historiography. Though key archaeological sites have been mapped in Central Asia, it took a long time before systemic archaeological excavations unearthed many Buddhist sites. The book offers a very good treatise on the Buddhist past of Bactria.

The book attempts to explore the tradition of plastic art in the area and begins with the examples of anthropomorphic figurines dating to the second millennium bc. Many figurines are discussed with great detail along with their dates and possible chronological sequence of the development. The author contests the normative understandings that have grown over a period of time with regard to Hellenistic tradition, partly because it is no more confined to the central territory of Greece and spreads across the eastern parts along with Alexander’s military conquests. Hellenistic tradition, as it has been understood as mere derivation of what originally might have been practiced as pictorial conventions in the historical past by the Greeks. However, such ideas have always been a hindrance to the understanding of the creative realm of the Hellenistic traditions outside the territory of Europe. Peculiarities of local cultures are one of the aspects of integrated developments that happened in the region after the invasion of Alexander in the fourth century bc. The narrative of historical development has been studied on the basis of the body of material found through the archaeological excavations. While commenting on the Hellenistic tradition not being considered enough as a creative art, Abdullaev observes, ‘These traditions represent a sophisticated process relating to a specific historical situation and the peculiarities of the local culture.’ ¹ The author then analyses the evidence found in Ai Khanum dating to the Hellenistic period.

Throughout the discussion, formal aspects of the images are dealt with considerable care. Almost every small figurine found in the excavations is discussed. In describing the image tradition in Takht-I-Sangin, the author writes that ‘intermixing of the different faiths of gods constituted a temple building’ ² and further observed the importance of donors belonging to different ethnic groups. The discussion also extends to the idea of how formal plasticity is a combination of Greek and local traits; as the author says that ‘plastic images of clearly Greek appearance are found together with images showing traits of a local ethnos along with existence of common cult devoted to the deity of the Oxmus among the Bactrian population’. ³

One of the significant highlights of the book is a fine observation offered by the author in the material culture of each site along with its development. It not only traces chronology alone but also attempts to identify every possible figurine and its possible historical context in which images may have been produced. Thus, one of the significant observations emerges in the discussion is that of how the ‘repertoire of Bactrian artists included both images of deities and portraits of historic personalities’. ⁴

Often a work of this nature faces difficulty in tracing the antecedents of the art tradition, indeed a very huge task to fill the gaps. Continuity of production of images is difficult to trace due to lack of evidence in every cultural and historical region in South Asia as well as Central Asia. The core of the book begins from the Kushan period materials that are found extensively throughout the region. However, the ways in which the figure tradition is analysed, the discussion on the spread of Buddhism and its religious development remained a much-desired area to be explained in the light of the available archaeological evidences.

Aspects of multiculturalism have been constantly maintained; the author points out that ‘motifs and compositions appeared that are characteristic of a synthesized art, including anthropomorphic and zoomorphic representations, motifs of the lotus flower and other elements of the Buddhist figurative complex’. ⁵ Parallels are often drawn with pictorial conventions from different areas at several sites. While describing the Mithuna figures from Old Termez belonging to the second and third century ad/ce, parallels are sited from Mathura in Gangetic valley and other places. Many images are identified as Yaksha, Yakshini, Bodhisattava, donors, etc. Considerably large numbers of terracotta figurines are identified as donor figures, and such readings have emerged from the inscriptional sources. One may draw a parallel example from the Chinese tradition of paintings at Dunhaung, where donor figures are extensively identified and are represented in the cave paintings throughout its historical development.

Fayaztepa is one of the important sites that revealed architectural remains as well as some wall paintings. They are all preserved today in the Museum of History of the People of the Uzbekistan. ⁶ The collection consists of images of Buddha as well as donors. One such painting has an inscription mentioning the name ‘Pharro’. The author explains how the inscription was wrongly understood as the name of a Zoroastrian deity and instead argues that it was the name of a donor. ⁷ The Karatepa rock-cut temples are discussed very briefly as a part of monastic complex along with the existence of the stupa complex. It is reminiscent of an early historic site like Guntapalle where caves and stupas exist simultaneously. The technique of clay sculptures of Karatepa as described by the author— ‘[t]he majority of fragments are in alabaster, clay and stone and are covered by polychrome paint and gilding’ ⁸ —who also observes that there is a Gandhara connection, with peculiarities from the local tradition and that ‘these peculiarities were later incorporated in the art of Chinese Turkestan, disseminated along the Great Silk Road by Buddhist and other pilgrims, missionaries and artists, who spread these ideas and doctrine’. ⁹ This appears to be a very important observation, and indeed the Chinese Turkestan and Xinjiang frontier regions of China have many such traits. Sculptural modelling of the figurine in the Bactrian area has great plastic quality of the Hellenistic kind of modelling blended with the local conventions, and therefore, every site in the Bactria shows minute differences with each other. Nevertheless, the sculptural art of Karatepa, according to the author, exhibits ‘high quality of Bactrian clay plastic modeling’. ¹⁰ Many sites are described in successive order that show strong Buddhist presence in the region. One of them, Airtam, becomes important as the earliest building in the complex goes back to the second century bc. ¹¹ The archaeological date is a very important indicator for the spread of Buddhism in the area as far back as the second century bc, and hence, the dates are being redefined in the Silk Road archaeology with regard to the spread of Buddhism in the area as well as neighbouring China. It may be observed that Yar city in the Xinjiang province in China is dated to the first century bc, has a Buddhist temple and the entire city is built with mud walls. Many figurines discovered in this area have high quality of plasticity in their treatment of volume and protruding planes of the ornaments and garments. Conventions developed in the respective areas also travel outside their territory and give rise to new pictorial conventions. The book has many illustrations and image photographs, almost every image found is considered and described in the analysis with an index and glossary of terms. However, at the end, the reader is left wanting a discussion in the form of epilogue or a postscript. Nevertheless, the book is an important landmark in understanding various Buddhist traditions in the Bactria and how it absorbed Hellenistic conventions into their own local traditions in terms of pictorial conventions and manufacturing techniques.