Image Details

The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001, Dudley P. Allen Fund, 1930.328

Scenes from a bacchanalia? A procession for Siddhartha’s wedding? Scholars disagree about what is depicted on 16 panels of stair risers from a first-century C.E. Buddhist monument in the Buner region of Gandhara. This gray schist panel, 18 inches long and 7 inches high, shows musicians and wine servers. The men are dressed in central Asian military costumes—a tribute to the Kusanas, a people from central Asia who controlled Gandhara and parts of north India from the first to the third century C.E. The panel also shows a column with a very Corinthian capital—a clear indication of the influence of Greco-Roman art in Gandhara.