Interesting books and a question about Buddhist archeology

The Watercooler
1

I was doing literature search about Buddhist archeology and came across some books on Internet Archive that might be of interest to some forum members. Especially @Khemarato.bhikkhu for OBU, and @sujato and @jonas because of the map-making— the first page of the last book has a map that might be of interest in case there is a need in the future to cite related maps.

  1. Buddha And Five Centuries After - Sukumar Dutt
  1. Early Buddhist Monachism 600 BC - 100 BC - Sukumar Dutt
  1. Buddhist Monks And Monasteries Of India Their History Contribution to Indian Culture - Sukumar Dutt
  1. Ancient Geography of India: The Buddhist Period - Alexander Cunningham

I am not making any claims about their content or standing in the field nor about the status of their copyrights (I don’t know about either of those two).

Anyway, I had a question I was curious about: Has there been any archaeological excavation where they found Buddhist artifacts in Greece? Anything really, coins, statues, manuscripts, pottery etc. I have never come across an instance of one. I mean surely they couldn’t have left everything in the Gandhar region— some of it must have been brought back to Greece and stashed, to be unearthed later. Just to clarify, I am asking out of curiosity, I don’t have a professional interest in it.
:pray:

1 Like
2

Thanks for the links. The first one was new to me.

I’m not aware of any definitive archeological finds… The early, definitively Buddhist art was mostly steles and such: not something that would have been easy to transport back to Europe until modern times. And the copies that artisans made were usually … eh… not very precise. So even if some artistic themes did make their way over to Greece proper, they’d probably have been so transformed as to be (let’s say) open to historical interpretation.

But here are some medieval finds: Caitlin Green: Indian silver coins in Viking-age northern Europe & Britain

1 Like