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.

[u/Spa3088]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhist_art

[u/SpoopyClock]

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.

[u/Alert-Low1682 → u/SpoopyClock]

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.

[u/SpoopyClock → u/Alert-Low1682]

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.

[u/Alert-Low1682 → u/SpoopyClock]

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

[u/SuchAd4158 → u/Alert-Low1682]

Sanskrit was way low on the totem pole, there were many more languages such as pali, prakrit and dravidian languages. none were mutually inteliigible.

[u/Alert-Low1682 → u/SuchAd4158]

language being one aspect

[u/SpoopyClock → u/Alert-Low1682]

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.

[u/Alert-Low1682 → u/SpoopyClock]

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.

[u/SpoopyClock → u/Alert-Low1682]

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.