Classical Art and Ancient India

This volume explores India’s connections with the Mediterranean and Western Asia during Graeco-Roman history, highlighting artistic exchanges. Based on the 2023 Oxford workshop, it includes insights from international scholars, refining our understanding of cross-cultural artistic currents and questioning underlying assumptions.

Throughout the centuries of classical, Graeco-Roman history, India had strong connections with the world of the Mediterranean and Western Asia, sometimes by land or as a result of direct conquest, at other times through the maritime links of the Indian Ocean. In the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods (c. fourth century BC to fifth century AD) the movement of artistic ideas between these regions intensified. It appears to be vividly attested in the earliest cave-paintings at Ajanta in Maharashtra, for example, and in the Buddhist sculptures of Andhra Pradesh. In the first two centuries AD, when trade with India was central to Roman luxury consumption and brought colossal revenue to the Empire, Roman coins and other artefacts reached India in abundance and artistic connections are manifest, albeit often subtle and elusive. Building on the Classical Art Research Centre’s earlier Gandhara Connections project, Classical Art and Ancient India brings together research presented by international scholars at a workshop in Oxford in 2023. The papers, which include a keynote address by the historian William Dalrymple, seek to make sense of the cross-cultural artistic currents that joined India to the classical world. They offer new insights on particular topics and refine our picture of the broader cultural relationship. In doing so, they also question some of the assumptions that underpin it.

Preface - Peter Stewart

From Berenike to Ajanta:The Romano-Egyptian Connection to the early Buddhist art of South and Central Asia - William Dalrymple

Greeks and the Art of India: Philosophy through Art - Richard Stoneman

Yavanas in Early Indian Inscriptions - Upinder Singh

Beyond Gandhara: Expressions of Art along Ancient Indian Trade Routes (3rd century BC to 5th century AD) - Sunil Gupta

Small Figurines Shaping the Ancient Global World across the Indian Ocean - Serena Autiero

Coining Koine: Reading Numismatic Images in the Context of Global Exchange - Jeremy A. Simmons

Exploring Navagrahas (the Nine Planets) in Indian and Graeco-Roman Art - Mandira Sharma

Reflections of Roman Art in Southern India: Amaravati and Nagarjunako??a - Elizabeth Rosen Stone

On Ivory and Theatre: The Exchange between Andhradesa and the West - Monika Zin,

Preface – Peter Stewart

From Berenike to Ajanta:The Romano-Egyptian Connection to the early Buddhist art of South and Central Asia – William Dalrymple

Greeks and the Art of India: Philosophy through Art – Richard Stoneman

Yavanas in Early Indian Inscriptions – Upinder Singh

Beyond Gandhara: Expressions of Art along Ancient Indian Trade Routes (3rd century BC to 5th century AD) – Sunil Gupta

Small Figurines Shaping the Ancient Global World across the Indian Ocean – Serena Autiero

Coining Koine: Reading Numismatic Images in the Context of Global Exchange – Jeremy A. Simmons

Exploring Navagrahas (the Nine Planets) in Indian and Graeco-Roman Art – Mandira Sharma

Reflections of Roman Art in Southern India: Amarāvatī and Nāgārjunakoṇḍa – Elizabeth Rosen Stone

On Ivory and Theatre: The Exchange between Āndhradeśa and the West – Monika Zin

Peter Stewart is Director of Classical Art Research Centre and Professor of Ancient Art at the University of Oxford. He has worked widely in the fields of Graeco-Roman sculpture and ancient world art. His publications include Statues in Roman Society: Representation and Response (2003), The Social History of Roman Art (2008), A Catalogue of the Sculpture Collection at Wilton House (2020), and Gandharan Art and the Classical World (2023).

• Edited by Peter Stewart