Hellenism on the Silk Road

A detailed Summary of Hellenism on the Silk Road

Along the Silk Road, merchants traded desirable wares from all over Asia and the Mediterranean. Gold, porcelain, spices, jewelry, textiles, and about anything else material that any civilization along this vast network of trade routes could create. Along with material concerns, however, came the much more lasting and intriguing effect of cultural exchange; religions, ideas, food, architectural developments, philosophy, and art all moved along the routes with these travelers from town to town. Some eventually spread all the way from the Greco-Roman world to China and Japan.

Alexander the Great was one of the foremost pioneers into the Middle Eastern world. Crossing as far as modern Uzbekistan, Alexander brought with him to every region Greek craftsmen, soldiers, and religion. One of the most profound and lasting impacts made by Alexander's forays into Asia was introducing the Greek tradition of sculpture, much admired by the Romans in the West, into the area known as Transoxiana, now Gandhara in North India. Much of early Gandharan Buddhist art bears witness to this transfer of aesthetic ideology. In a work recently acquired by the Freer Gallery of Art, a Head of a Buddha , one can see the Hellenis

Major, John S. The Silk Route: 7,000 Miles of History. USA:

tic tradition quite clearly. There are strong examples of realism in this Buddha head relatively unique to Greek art . The text of Jerry Bentley's Old World Encounters contends that Hellenistic tradition had a great impact on Buddhist art mainly due to the fact that earlier Buddhists thought it wrong to portray the Buddha as corporeal, but rather he should be shown by symbols. Their first influences to create figural images of the Buddha came from the Hellenistic invaders and their devotional practices. The hair of the Buddha is naturalistic, not the stylized snail curls seen in many statues of the Buddha. Each tendril of the hair is carefully chiseled out and moves gently over his head and ushnisha . The cheekbones are high and the chin is strong . His full lips are gently rested together, and his eyes look down, the lids half closed. The paint remaining on the eyes have them looking straight out and downcast. Slight traces of gold leaf cling to this head, which once was covered in gold (now only the brown ground is visible). The ushnisha and elongated earlobes are traditional parts of the iconography of the Buddha. In this statue, the ears are not exaggerated in length, but rather very natural in appearance. Except for the gold leaf the statue bears no ornament, also typical of the Buddha. The last element that betrays the statue as that of a Buddha is the stylized urna , shown sometimes as a literal third eye, and sometimes as a curl of hair between his brows. It is in this case a simple dot, almost like a bindi, a much more natural looking expression of the urna.

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Approximate Word count = 1257
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History