Hellenistic influence on Indian art and architecture reflects the artistic and architectural influence of the Greeks on Indian art following the conquests of Alexander the Great, from the end of the 4th century BCE to the first centuries of the common era. The Greeks in effect maintained a political presence at the doorstep, and sometimes within India, down to the 1st century CE with the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and the Indo-Greek Kingdoms, with many noticeable influences on the arts of the Maurya Empire (c.321–185 BCE) especially. Hellenistic influence on Indian art was also felt for several more centuries during the period of Greco-Buddhist art.
Historical context
Pre-Hellenistic influences (518–327 BCE)
Coin finds in the Kabul hoard in Kabul or the Shaikhan Dehri hoard in Pushkalavati have revealed numerous Achaemenid coins as well as many Greek coins from the 5th and 4th centuries BCE were circulating in the area, at least as far as the Indus during the rule of the Achaemenids, who were in control of the areas as far as Gandhara. In 2007 a small coin hoard was discovered at the site of ancient Pushkalavati (Shaikhan Dehri) in Pakistan, containing a tetradrachm minted in Athens c. 500/490 – 485 BCE, together with a number of local types as well as silver cast ingots. The Athens coin is the earliest known example of its type to be found so far to the east.
According to Joe Cribb, these early Greek coins were at the origin of Indian punch-marked coins, the earliest coins developed in India, which used minting technology derived from Greek coinage. Daniel Schlumberger also considers that punch-marked bars, similar to the many punch-marked bars found in northwestern India, initially originated in the Achaemenid Empire, rather than in the Indian heartland:
Hellenistic period (327 BCE onward)
The Greek campaigns in India under Alexander the Great were limited in time (327–326 BCE) and in extent, but they had extensive long term effects as Greeks settled for centuries at the doorstep of India. Soon after the departure of Alexander, the Greeks (described as Yona or Yavana in Indian sources from the Greek "Ionian") may then have participated, together with other groups, in the armed uprising of Chandragupta Maurya against the Nanda Dynasty around 322 BCE, and gone as far as Pataliputra for the capture of the city from the Nandas. The Mudrarakshasa of Visakhadutta as well as the Jaina work Parisishtaparvan talk of Chandragupta's alliance with the Himalayan king Parvatka, often identified with Porus. According to these accounts, this alliance gave Chandragupta a composite and powerful army made up of Yavanas (Greeks), Kambojas, Shakas (Scythians), Kiratas (Nepalese), Parasikas (Persians) and Bahlikas (Bactrians) who took Pataliputra.
After these events, the Greeks were able to maintain a structured presence at the door of India for about three centuries, through the Seleucid Empire and the Greco-Bactrian kingdom, down to the time of the Indo-Greek kingdoms, which ended sometimes in the 1st century CE. During that time, the city of Ai-Khanoum, capital of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, and the capitals of the Indo-Greek Kingdom, the cities of Sirkap, founded in what is now Pakistan on the Greek Hippodamian grid plan, and Sagala, now located in Pakistan 10 km from the border with India, interacted heavily with the Indian subcontinent. It is considered that Ai-Khanoum and Sirkap may have been primary actors in transmitting Western artistic influence to India, for example in the creation of the quasi-Ionic Pataliputra capital or the floral friezes of the Pillars of Ashoka. Numerous Greek ambassadors, such as Megasthenes, Deimachus and Dionysius, stayed at the Mauryan court in Pataliputra.
The scope of adoption goes from designs such as the bead and reel pattern, the central flame palmette design and a variety of other moldings, to the lifelike rendering of animal sculpture and the design and function of the Ionic anta capital in the palace of Pataliputra. After the 1st century CE, Hellenistic influence continued to be perceived in the syncretic Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara, down to the 4th–5th centuries CE. Arguably, Hellenistic influence continued to be felt indirectly in India arts for many centuries thereafter.
Influence on Indian monumental stone architecture (268–180 BCE)