"Gandharan Art in its Buddhist Context is the fifth set of papers from the workshops of the Classical Art Research Centre's Gandhara Connections project. These selected studies revolve around perhaps the most fundamental topic of all for understanding Gandharan art: its religious contexts and meanings within ancient Buddhism. Addressing the responses of patrons and worshippers at the monasteries and shrines of Gandhara, these papers seek to understand more about why Gandharan art was made and what its iconographical repertoire meant to ancient viewers. The contributions from an array of international experts consider dedicatory practices in monasteries, the representation of Buddhas, and the lessons to be learned from some of the latest excavations and survey work in the region."

Gandharan art is often regarded as the epitome of cultural exchange in antiquity. The ancient region of Gandhara, centred on what is now the northern tip of Pakistan, has been called the 'crossroads of Asia'. The Buddhist art produced in and around this area in the first few centuries AD exhibits extraordinary connections with other traditions across Asia and as far as the Mediterranean. Since the nineteenth century, the Graeco-Roman associations of Gandharan art have attracted particular attention. Classically educated soldiers and administrators of that era were astonished by the uncanny resemblance of many works of Gandharan sculpture to Greek and Roman art made thousands of miles to the west. More than a century later we can recognize that the Gandharan artists' appropriation of classical iconography and styles was diverse and extensive, but the explanation of this 'influence' remains puzzling and elusive. The Gandhara Connections project at the University of Oxford's Classical Art Research Centre was initiated principally to cast new light on this old problem. This volume is the third set of proceedings of the project's annual workshop, and the first to address directly the question of cross-cultural influence on and by Gandharan art. The contributors wrestle with old controversies, particularly the notion that Gandharan art is a legacy of Hellenistic Greek rule in Central Asia and the growing consensus around the important role of the Roman Empire in shaping it. But they also seek to present a more complex and expansive view of the networks in which Gandhara was embedded. Adopting a global perspective on the subject, they examine aspects of Gandhara's connections both within and beyond South Asia and Central Asia, including the profound influence which Gandharan art itself had on the development of Buddhist art in China and India.