Ca. 100-300 AD. Gandharan. A schist stone statue of a Buddha. He is depicted wearing a flowing robe (samghati) draped elegantly around his left shoulder and his right wrist, sagging over his waist with great detail in the motion of the fabric. Gandharan art styled the samghati to leave his right shoulder bare like this exclusively in depictions of a Buddha teaching. His torso is bare too and he has a plump frame with slight folds in the belly. He wears a topknot (ushnisha), with a large circular halo behind his head, and he is adorned with various items of jewellery like a collar, a necklace, and a bracelet. He has drooping eyes, characteristic of his depictions under the Kushan Dynasty, and his forehead is decorated with the dot called the Urna, which represented the third eye that saw beyond the material limits of the world. His left arm is laid across his lap and, though his right hand is now missing, the position of the arm shows his right hand was once held up with the palm facing outwards, in a gesture called Abhayamudra. This gesture symbolised peace and safety, and it was intended to dispel fear. He sits cross-legged on a plinth, the front of which is adorned with two figures in raised relief, perhaps monks, attending a stupa between them. Stupas were used as burial sites and/or receptacles for relics. The Buddha form was used to depict both the original Buddha Gautama as well as anyone who became a Buddha by achieving Nirvana. The Buddha was not expressed in sculpture in Gandhara before the 1st century AD, before which he was only alluded to with symbols. From this time though, Gandharan art depicted Buddhas with a captivating mix of traditional Buddhist iconography and style, and the naturalism and soft features of Classical art, since this region was greatly influenced by the conquests of Alexander the Great many centuries earlier and the subsequent Greek settlers. For more information on Gandharan art, see Jongeward, D. (2019). Buddhist Art Of Gandhara in the Ashmolean Museum. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Size: L:430mm / W:260mm ; 13.3kg.Provenance: From the collection of a London gentleman; formerly acquired in early 2000s in Belgium; previously in 1970s European collection.