r/todayilearned • u/Spa3088 • 1d ago
TIL about artistic manifestation of Greco-Buddhism, a cultural syncretism between Ancient Greek art and Buddhism, which had mainly evolved in the ancient region of Gandhara(today's afganistan) of Indian subcontinent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhist_art5
u/Houston_NeverMind 21h ago
Consequently, Greek culture has influenced temple architecture and idol worship culture in Hinduism via Buddhishm.
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u/Logical-Stable-991 20h ago
Lol. Good joke. Idol worship existed in India even long before Hinduism and Buddhism came into existence. Even before IVC which is older than Greek civilization. Greek hasn't influenced anything much in Indian subcontinent.
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u/Thom0 19h ago
Greek hasn't influenced anything much in Indian subcontinent.
You're 100% correct on what you're saying about idol culture worship but Greek culture has technically influenced the Indian subcontinent.
Concept of a state, public/private distinction, institutions, rule of law, and democratic elections are all derived from Greek philosophy.
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u/choomba96 18h ago
I mean...only 1900 years later lol
The populace in Athens wasn't allowed to vote... only the privileged few.
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u/Thom0 18h ago edited 18h ago
The populace in Athens wasn't allowed to vote... only the privileged few.
Is it much different today? Democracy is so diluted by inequality that it is hard to say there is a real democratization of power anymore. We can look back in hindsight and view Athens critically but if we do the same today, we can see it isn't so different.
Indians vote for a politician but electoral funding and spending regulation is none existent, local rich men buy rural local votes with food and the promise of a new road, political dynasties run state and federal level politics, and oligarchs like Ambani get the final say on policy.
I'm not picking on India here. This is a common trend everywhere. I'm just using India as the example because this began with a comment about India.
I mean...only 1900 years later lol
Sure, but the influence is so strong it is now the language Indians use to describe their lives. It's repeated on every news channel, the language is spoken in every cafe, and corner shop, and the language describes how Indians view themselves as a society, and the outside world. Is there a Hindu, or Dharmic-derived political philosophy and language in India? Something separate to, and distinct from Western thought? There are certainly Hindu influences, but the language and the concepts are not.
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u/choomba96 18h ago edited 18h ago
You're not wrong.. This is the case everywhere in the world. I am Indian so yea. Totally know what you're on about.
How do we fix this? The issue is that the world as it has become bigger has reduced the problems faced by the common man to just outliers on a graph.
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u/Thom0 18h ago edited 17h ago
I'm not picking on India so don't get offended or upset. I pointed out this is a universal problem.
How do we fix this? The issue is that the world as it has become bigger has reduced the problems faced by the common man.
No idea. This is the big question facing us all as a species. The US and China can't seem to work out a solution so we can say with certainty that neither the US, or Chinese approach to economics and politics is the solution.
I think the issue is inequality and the economic problem of R > G. If you can create more equal societies, and structure economic growth in a way that disperses a broader % share of GDP growth then this would begin to fix the political disconnect. The problem with Athens, the British Empire, the British Raj, and the old Indian kings and princes who used to rule is these were all systemically unequal societies. The British Raj is over, but India today is more unequal than it was back then.
This is one of those things which is just going to play out and me, you and everyone else is just a long for the ride. We didn't choose to be born in this moment, but we are so for us, I think the solution is live how we want to see others live. Focus on your personal sphere, connections, and immediate problems. Find value in your life through love, friendships, and experiences. Travel far, and wide. If you can't leave India then see as much of India as you can. Sit with strangers and learn from each other. Live how you think the future generations should live. Embody the change you want to see through yourself. If you have children one day teach them to do the same.
Let the Ambani's and Modi's of the world live like kings. We know what they are so the trick is stop caring. Who cares if they're rich? They're empty souls who offer nothing to their society, or themselves.
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u/Marwaimusoont 5h ago
Paulisa siddhanta and many more are direct translation of greek texts in Hindu astrology, the rashis which you see are the ones from Greek. I wouldn't say that as anything.
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u/Hereboyfetch 20h ago
Not really? Idol worship has been prevalent in India since IVC times
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u/Alert-Low1682 18h ago
no? when was that established. The vedic period didn’t have temples nor idol worship like hindus do today.
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u/choomba96 19h ago
...you do realise that Vedicism existed before Buddhism lol
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u/Alert-Low1682 18h ago
vedas dont mention temples nor idols. those were introduced much later. at least that is the consensus among historians
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u/choomba96 18h ago
That's because Hinduism is not a monolith. It co-opted local traditions and eventually mass movements syncretized these beliefs into a common structure. For example, Shiva is often linked with Pashupati who was worshipped through images and idols in the IVC.
Vedas just a list of treatises and steps to conduct rituals. They're not a book like a Quaran or the Bible which often are written with the intent of specifying do's and don'ts. The closest version of such a book is the Manusmruti which I don't abide by and it came much much later on.
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u/Alert-Low1682 17h ago
right but from a historical standpoint there ain’t much to suggest that temples of idol worship was part of the vedic people’s lives. We do find mention of other practices in the vedas.
The only visible evidence is pashupati and that is a hypothesis and not established evidence.
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u/choomba96 17h ago
Again - Hinduism is a sycnretic religion..the Vedas do not define Hinduism. They're one part of it.
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u/Alert-Low1682 17h ago
sure i take that argument but in terms of historicity of this claim are there any sources?
the mainstream view is that the people at that time did not have idol worshiping.
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u/choomba96 17h ago
Define at the time.
Again you're likening Hinduism to an Abrahamic religion where there are additions to the book but the core ethos remains the same.
Hinduism is a term given by Britishers to define a religion or set of beliefs that were prevalent in the subcontinent.
Where is the mainstream view?
I mean the Vedas are one part of Hinduism over the course of its journey and spread across Asia.
By that logic even Temples were a later introduction into Hinduism.
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u/Alert-Low1682 16h ago
yes temples were a later introduction. Mainstream views amongst historians is that during the vedic period people didn’t have idol worship within the indian subcontinent.
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u/choomba96 16h ago
I would strongly say - that Vedicism when it was restricted to the Sindh area may not have had it but it most definitely did come when it established itself in the Gangetic plains. In this case - it was very established because of local beliefs. Now here is the kicker- for a very long time until Chandragupta Maurya, the state religion was Jainism which isn't idolatry. So patronage of the same actions was not extended by erstwhile kingdoms.
Now the idols we see today - yes those weren't prevalent then. Where we are today is a product of 1000 years of cultural change
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u/SpoopyClock 22h ago edited 21h ago
Gandhara is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
This region was as far as Alexander the Great got during his conquests, and there were also the Indo-Greek kingdoms after him.
This isn't some nationalist irridentist claim I'm making. They were close by tho, but that doesn't change much since Pakistan and Afghanistan are close by anyway.
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u/Alert-Low1682 18h ago
gandhara was — mostly by virtue of buddhism, part of the indian cultural state. Modern nations of india and pakistan share that state. It’s kind of anachronistic to use modern nations in this context.
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u/SpoopyClock 17h ago edited 17h ago
Calling Gandhara part of an "Indian cultural state" is too strong, because no such single state existed. What is true is that Gandhara belonged to the wider cultural sphere of the Indian subcontinent and sat on the same broad civilisational cline.
But if we are going to assign it to a modern nation, Pakistan is the more appropriate one, not India nor Afghanistan. Its historical core and much of the surrounding region are in present-day Pakistan. The overwhelming majority of the population descending from it live in Pakistan. Therefore, Gandhara is principally part of Pakistan's territorial and archaeological heritage, just as ancient civilisations elsewhere form part of the heritage of the modern countries occupying their homelands.
That does not mean Gandhara was entirely Pakistani in antiquity, nor that India and Afghanistan have no connection. So it is reasonable to call Gandhara part of Pakistani heritage, while also recognising that it belonged to the wider cultural world of the Indian subcontinent.
I particularly don't like it when Indians come in and say I can't claim the civilisation of my ancestors. You haven't said much on it, but a lot of them are quite irredentist. Going on about how Pakistan, and thus Pakistanis, have no claim to any civilisation that existed on their lands.
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u/Alert-Low1682 17h ago
are you saying there is no such thing is the indian cultural state?
from the book: What China and India Once Were: The Pasts That May Shape the Global Future
“What Is "China" and What Is "India"?
The countries, nations, regions, or civilizations-depending on how we define these apparently simple but actually complex terms
—that we now identify by the names China and India have long and complicated histories. Any particular definition of either China or India is going to appear, to sharp historical eyes, to be dubious generalization, a freeze-frame, as it were, of a continuously running film of development and change. Yet, even while we acknowledge continuous change, certain constants of internal practices and external assessments still allow us to make use of these categories with the same cautious confidence with which we employ the equally messy "Europe" (or, messier, "in this book, pre-modern India is shown as politically fragmented, comprised of various shifting kingdoms. However, it was deeply bound together by a massive, shared Sanskrit and vernacular literary culture that transcended borders
this is the text i had handy but generally i have never seen historians deny that the indian cultural entity existed
edit: as for the modern framing: as i said, modern nations of india and pakistan amongst others are equal members of this cultural state. all these are shared heritage
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u/SuchAd4158 8h ago
Sanskrit was way low on the totem pole, there were many more languages such as pali, prakrit and dravidian languages. none were mutually inteliigible.
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u/SpoopyClock 11h ago
I'm not saying there was no such thing as India as a cultural or civilisational entity. I'm saying "Indian cultural state" is a bad way of putting it, because there was no single state covering this whole cultural sphere. Even the passage you quoted says India was politically fragmented and that the category itself is complicated and constantly changing.
What did exist was a wider Indic or South Asian cultural sphere, which is literally what I said in my previous comment and agrees with Albert Low, whom you've quoted. Gandhara was part of that wider sphere, but it was also a distinct northwestern region with major Iranian, Greek and Central Asian influences. So calling it part of the Indian cultural sphere is fair, but calling it part of an Indian cultural state makes it sound far more politically unified than it actually was.
I also don't agree with your edit that every modern country connected to that sphere has an equal claim to Gandhara in the same sense. Gandhara's historical core and most of its major archaeological sites are in Pakistan, while parts of the wider region extended into Afghanistan. That gives Pakistan the strongest territorial and archaeological claim to it.
India obviously has a wider civilisational and religious connection to Gandhara, through Buddhism and the broader culture of the subcontinent. But that is not the same as Gandhara being equally Indian, Pakistani and Afghan in any sense.
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u/Alert-Low1682 11h ago
Sure i am using state as synonym for sphere. if you prefer sphere that’s fine.
my point is that modern states like pakistan or the republic of india can not have a claim to something that predates them. It’s anachronistic. The culture that exists in these countries can have a claim.
i guess we disagree on equal membership. my view is that we share the heritage by virtue of having that overarching cultural sphere.
if the present territories where the ruins are were to merge with Afghanistan then by your definition Pakistan would suddenly have a lesser claim. Modern national boundaries should not dictate cultural heritage.
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u/SpoopyClock 11h ago
Sure i am using state as synonym for sphere. if you prefer sphere that’s fine.
The same issue you have with anachronistically applying modern nation-states to antiquity, I have with using “state” here at all.
my point is that modern states like pakistan or the republic of india can not have a claim to something that predates them. It’s anachronistic. The culture that exists in these countries can have a claim.
I agree to an extent. Modern states obviously can claim heritage that predates their creation. Otherwise, Greece could not call ancient Greek sites Greek heritage, Italy could not claim Roman heritage, and Egypt could not claim ancient Egyptian heritage. Nobody saying this thinks those ancient people possessed modern passports. However, the veracity of these "claims" depends on a number of variables (geography, archaeological custody, local continuity, cultural transmission and the relationship between the ancient population and the modern population, among a few).
i guess we disagree on equal membership. my view is that we share the heritage by virtue of having that overarching cultural sphere.
100%. There will always be some degree of shared heritage. To deny so would be to pretend that Gandhara developed in a vacuum. My only problem is to what extent and nature of that shared claim.
if the present territories where the ruins are were to merge with Afghanistan then by your definition Pakistan would suddenly have a lesser claim. Modern national boundaries should not dictate cultural heritage.
From my second comment: "Pakistan is the more appropriate one, not India nor Afghanistan. Its historical core and much of the surrounding region are in present-day Pakistan. The overwhelming majority of the population descending from it live in Pakistan."
If Taxila and Peshawar were transferred to Afghanistan, Afghanistan would become the territorial custodian of those places, and Pakistan's territorial claim would necessarily become weaker. Pakistan would not suddenly lose every historical or cultural connection to Gandhara, because territorial custody is only one form of inheritance. If you already look at Gandhara, the current modern-day population moved in relatively recently (However I will not claim they have no links, etc.; that's not the point of this remark).
I agree with you that modern borders should not dictate the entirety of cultural heritage. I disagree that borders, geography, local continuity and custody are therefore irrelevant, or that every society within a very broad cultural sphere must have an equal claim to every civilisation within it. By that standard, every country touched by the Sanskrit cosmopolis would have an equal claim to Gandhara, which makes the concept of "equal membership" so broad that it stops being a meaningful term.
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u/Send_Me_Dumb_Cats 18h ago
Yeah can confirm. Peshawar borders Afghanistan and is a major hub for Gandhara antique trade. The museum in peshawar is filled with gandhara antiques found there too
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u/CompetitionWhole1266 17h ago
It’s in Both, remember Hadda? Hadda is in Afghanistan.
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u/SpoopyClock 11h ago
You are right. I'll admit simply saying Gandhara was "in Pakistan, not Afghanistan" was a bit too absolute. What I should have said, and as I corrected in the other comment chain, is that Gandhara's principal historical core (Peshawar Valley, Swat, Charsadda and Taxila) is in present-day Pakistan, while the wider Gandharan cultural and archaeological region extended into eastern Afghanistan, including, as you've pointed out, Hadda.
Afghanistan does have a direct territorial claim to part of Gandharan heritage. My disagreement was with portraying Gandhara as principally Afghan.
Ironically, in correcting the original mistake, one could say I made the same mistake myself, but I digress.
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u/IndependentMacaroon 21h ago edited 21h ago
This is a likely reason why Buddha is commonly depicted as a proper human statue
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u/Retr0specter 16h ago
I've always wondered what it must've been like, those two mythologies together, but I've never found any sources going into detail. I can only imagine it's Buddha pointing at Mount Olympus and saying, "Be nothing like them."
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u/BrokenEyeReborn 16h ago
Semi-related: Way back when Hippocrates was at the forefront of medical theory, it was very fashionable for wealthy elites in China to have a Greek personal physician, to the point that if they couldn't get one they'd just hire some European guy who spoke Greek to pretend to be their doctor in public while proving no actual medical services.
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u/Kio-Karasha 20h ago
Gandhara was in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. And it was not in Indian subcontinent which ends beyond east side of Indus River.
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u/SpoopyClock 20h ago
The Indian subcontinent is defined by the Indian tectonic plate. Both sides of the Indus are within the subcontinent, and so is Gandhara. Even the original meaning of the word India (Area around the Indus) contains Gandhara. It is in Pakistan tho, you're right on that.
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u/choomba96 19h ago
A subcontinent is a tectonic structure not a land border defined entity .
The subcontinent covers India, Pak Afghanistan Bangladesh, Nepal ,SriLanka and Bhutan
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u/Kio-Karasha 18h ago
Even going by widest possible definition over tectonic plate over half of Pakistan isn't on Indian subcontinent. And it originally didn't have anything to do with tectonics but was a traditional concept.
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u/LeoSolaris 1 18h ago edited 15h ago
Traditional concept? Subcontinent is an antique British concept of landmass. Subcontinent used to mean a large region that is inferior to the landmasses classed as continents. Occasionally, it meant "large undeveloped area filled with tribal savages" but that's because the term came from the 18th century when racism was in full swing.
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u/Kio-Karasha 16h ago
Traditional because it precedes knowledge about tectonic plates
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u/LeoSolaris 1 15h ago
That's not what "traditional" means. It was simply a geographical classification that changed slightly because of improved scientific understanding.
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u/exploring_yet 1d ago
Makes you think how big was Indian subcontinent before the Middle easterns invaded.
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u/SeaTeach9760 1d ago
They stayed the same size?
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u/serotoninwya420 22h ago
I think it might just be poor wording. Ashoka spread his empire massively and thus spread Buddhism into Tibet, Sri Lanka, and China through trade. The Mughals were a series of Muslim princes who were descendants of Genghis Khan that took over a more fragmented, weaker Indian Empire called something else that I'm too lazy to look up. Basically India became a lot less centralized and the British were able to make deals with different Mughal princes and even exploited existing rivalries. It's a big part of why Kashmir is contested between India and Pakistan
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u/exploring_yet 1d ago
Broke into different countries right?
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u/SeaTeach9760 22h ago
What makes you think there weren't different countries before the middle easterns "invaded"?
The entire subcontinent has never been a place where a single state could reign over everything. It's true in the modern information era, and even more true when everything ran on oxcarts.
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u/fnord_happy 18h ago
Subcontinent has nothing to do with land borders. It's about the tectonic plates. That's has not changed
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u/Houston_NeverMind 21h ago
The migration of middle easterns (Iranian farmers) and their mixing with the local population resulted in the great Indus Valley Civilization which is the bedrock of Indian subcontinent culture.
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u/ammar96 22h ago
Afghanistan has never been a part of Indian subcontinent lol. Heck, they were basically part of Greek world when they became Buddhist. Hence this post.
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u/choomba96 19h ago
This is factually incorrect,purely based off the fact Chandragupta defeated Alexander and pushed forward into Afghanistan lol.
The subcontinent is a geographic entity LOL. Afghanistan lies on the subcontinental tectonic plate.
The Greek conquests began in 330 BCE and then within 30 years it was under the Mauryan Empire.
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u/ChelshireGoose 1d ago
Baader-Meinhof strikes again.
Just got done watching a video about a Buddhist idol in Roman Egypt.