Head of the Buddha, Hadda, 1st-2nd century CE

Hadda is a Greco-Buddhist archeological site located in the ancient area of Gandhara, inside the Khyber Pass, six miles south of the city of Jalalabad in today's eastern Afghanistan.

Background

A sculpture from Hadda, 3rd century CE

Numerous Greco-Buddhist sculptures (around 23,000 of them) in clay or plaster were excavated in Hadda during the 1930s and the 1970s. They combine elements of Buddhism and Hellenism, in an almost perfect Hellenistic style.

Although the style itself is typical of the late Hellenistic 2nd or 1st century BCE, the Hadda sculptures are usually dated, with some uncertainty, to the 1st century CE or later. This discrepancy might be explained by a preservation of late Hellenistic styles for a few centuries in this part of the world, of may indicate that the actual dates are the earlier ones.

Given the antiquity of these sculptures and a technical refinement indicative of artists fully conversant with all the aspects of Greek sculpture, it has been suggested that Greek communities were directly involved in these realizations, and that "the area might be the craddle of incipient Buddhist sculpture in Indo-Greek style" (Boardman).

Works of art

The Bodhisattva and Chandeka, Hadda, 5th century CE

A sculptural group excavated at the Hadda site of Tapa-i-Shotor, represents a Buddha surrounded by a perfectly Hellenistic Herakles and Tyche holding a cornucopia (See image: [1] (http://www.fao.org/afghanistan/Data/Mapsystem/Archeological_Sites/html/img/19.jpg)). The only adaptation of the Greek iconography is that Herakles holds the thunderbolt of Vajrapani rather than his usual club.

Some other attendants to the Buddha have been excavated which display manerist Hellenistic styles, such as the "Genie au Fleur", today in Paris at the Musee Guimet (See image: [2] (http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1906/19060665.jpg)).

Buddhist scriptures

It is believed the oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts -indeed the oldest surviving Indian manuscripts of any kind- were recovered around Hadda. Probably dating from around the 1st century CE, they were written in Gandhari language and Kharoṣṭhī script on bark, and were unearthed in a clay pot bearing an inscription in the same language. They are part of the long-lost canon of the Sarvastivadin Sect that dominated Gandhara and was instrumental in Buddhism's spread into central and east Asia. The manuscripts are now in possession of the British Library.

See also: Gandharan Buddhist texts

Desctruction

Hadda is said to have been almost entirely destroyed in the fightings during the Civil war in Afghanistan.

See also

• Greco-Buddhism
• History of Buddhism

References

"The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity" by John Boardman ISBN 0691036802

External links

• Vandalised Afghanistan (http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1906/19060660.htm)
• Oldest Buddhist bark texts (http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/s_scripts.htm)