Gender in Gandhāran art: Representations and interactions in the Buddhist context (1st – 4th centuries CE)

Gandhāran art developed around the first century BCE till the fourth century CE in parts of present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan and has been the focus of intense scholarly debates in both Classical and South Asian Studies for many decades. In this book, Ashwini Lakshminarayan offers, for the first time, a specialized study on gender using Gandhāran visual culture and convincingly proposes new readings that go beyond Eurocentric and postcolonial interpretations. This book sets the stage with a detailed overview of the local context of Gandhāran art by analysing the gendered use of space, and the gender and roles of Buddhist donors. At its core, the book gives prominence to stone reliefs and statues from ancient Gandhāra and examines how male and female bodies are represented, how they interact, and how gender ideals and values were embedded in art. With an important comparative overview of the Gandhāran artistic production and new illustrations, this work is indispensable for all those interested in the study of gender in ancient art, the interaction between Graeco-Roman and Indic cultures, and the development of the early Buddhist artistic tradition in South and Central Asia that also shaped Buddhist visual culture eastwards in China.