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Dionysus and drama in the Buddhist art of Gandhara*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2009

Pia Brancaccio  and
Xinru Liu
Pia Brancaccio
Affiliation:
Department of Art and Art History, Drexel University, 101 North 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA E-mail: pia.brancaccio@drexel.edu
Xinru Liu
Affiliation:
Department of History, The College of New Jersey, P.O. Box 7718, Ewing, NJ 08628-0718, USA
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Abstract

This essay examines the relationships existing between Dionysian traditions of wine drinking and drama that reached the easternmost part of the Hellenistic world, and the Buddhist culture and art that flourished in Gandhara (Eastern Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan) under the Kushan kings between the first and third centuries CE. By piecing together archaeological, artistic and literary evidence, it appears that along with viniculture and viticulture, Dionysian rituals, Greek theatre and vernacular drama also became rooted in these eastern lands. Continuous interactions with the Graeco-Roman world strengthened these important cultural elements. At the beginning of the Common Era Dionysian traditions and drama came to be employed by the Buddhists of Gandhara to propagate their own ideas. The creation of a body of artworks representing the life of the Buddha in narrative form along with the literary work of Ashvaghosha, may be an expression of the same dramatic format that developed locally along with a strong Dionysian ritual presence.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , July 2009 , pp. 219 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

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32 Callieri and Filigenzi, Il maestro di Saidu Sharif, pp. 167–8, nos. 70, 71.

33 In most of the two-tier narrative friezes from Gandhara, the lower register is devoted to the representations of scenes from the Buddha’s life while the upper register depicts devotees, genre scenes, or ornamental motifs.

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58 See, for example, Lexicon iconographicum mitologiae classicae, 9 vols. (Zurich and Munich: Artemis Verlag, 1981–99), vol. III, part 2, figs. 136, 138, 180, 201a, 223, 235.

59 Gupta, S. P., Kushana sculptures from Sanghol, New Delhi: National Museum, 1985Google Scholar, fig. 22. This vedika pillar, carved in the Kushan style of Mathura is perhaps the most relevant example of the connection between Buddhism, Dionysian elements, and theatre coming from the site at Sanghol. There are a number of Buddhist sculptures carved in Mathura during the Kushan period that make reference to Dionysian practices: the most well known are the two examples illustrated by Stan Czuma in Kushan sculpture, nos. 41 and 42.

60 Maurizio Taddei, ‘Arte narrativa tra India e mondo Ellenestico’, in Giovanni Verardi and Anna Filigenzi, eds., On Gandhara: collected articles, Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 2003, p. 377. This statement does not at all imply that Indic cultures lacked a sense of time and history but rather that, in the Buddhist art of Gandhara, artists showed a greater interest in representing the unfolding in time of life events.

61 A detailed analysis of different modes of narration in Indian art can be found in Vidya Dehejia, Discourse in early Buddhist art: visual narration of India, Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1997.

62 Taddei, ‘Arte narrativa, p. 377.

63 For a complete translation of all Chinese references to Asvaghosha’s relationship with Kanishka, see E. Zurcher, ‘The Yueh-chih and Kanishka in the Chinese sources’, in A. L. Basham, ed., Papers on the date of Kanishka, Leiden: Brill, 1968, pp. 384–5; also P. C. Bagchi, ‘Sangharaksa, the chaplain of Kanishka’, in Commemoration essays presented to Professor Kashinath Bapuji Pathak, Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1934, pp. 94–9.

64 Bhattacharji, Sukumari, History of classical Sanskrit literature, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1993, p. 35.Google Scholar

65 Pierfrancesco Callieri, ‘Buddhist presence in the urban settlements of Swat’, in Brancaccio and Behrendt, Gandharan Buddhism, p. 79.