Who made the first image of the Buddha?
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For a century scholars argued whether the first human image of the Buddha was made under Greek influence in Gandhara or in the Indian style at Mathura.
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Indian claim
The Buddha image was created by Indian artists at Mathura, growing out of older Indian sculpture of yakshas and kings.
Evidence for the Indian claim
- Ananda K. Coomaraswamy argued in 'The Origin of the Buddha Image' (1927) that every element of the Buddha's iconography already existed in earlier Indian art.
- Britannica credits the Mathura school with developing the cult image of the Buddha from Indian yaksha figures; the scholar J. E. van Lohuizen-de Leeuw later argued for Mathura's priority.
Commonly credited to
The French scholar Alfred Foucher argued that the Buddha image was invented in Gandhara (today's Pakistan and Afghanistan) by artists trained in Greco-Roman style, modelled partly on Apollo.
Evidence for the other claim
- Gandhara Buddhas show clear Greco-Roman features: wavy hair, Apollo-like faces and Roman-style robes.
- Some of the earliest human images of the Buddha, according to The Met, come from Gandhara.
What historians and scientists say
Britannica says the two schools seem to have developed their Buddha images independently at about the same time, in the 1st century CE, and that the question of who came first cannot be settled on present evidence.