The flourishing international trade during the Kushana period gave tremendous impetus to the development of art. Discuss.

Answer:

The Kushana empire (c. 1st to 3rd centuries CE) straddled the great trade routes linking India with Central Asia, China and the Roman world, and the wealth and cosmopolitan contact generated by this commerce gave a powerful impetus to the two great art schools of Gandhara and Mathura.

The scale of Kushana trade

• The empire controlled the Silk Route between China, Central Asia and the western world.
• Indian exports of spices, textiles, ivory and gems drew in a large volume of Roman gold.
• Ports such as Barbaricum and Barygaza linked the overland routes to maritime commerce.
• Kanishka's abundant gold coinage, on a Roman weight standard, reflects this prosperity.

How trade stimulated art

• Merchant and guild wealth funded stupas, viharas and images as acts of religious merit.
• Royal patronage, enriched by customs and tribute, supported large building programmes.
• Contact with the Hellenistic and Roman world supplied new models, motifs and techniques.
• The demand for portable devotional objects along the routes encouraged image-making.

The artistic result

• The Gandhara school fused Greco-Roman naturalism with Buddhist themes, producing the earliest Buddha images in Hellenistic style.
• The Mathura school, in red sandstone, evolved an indigenous, powerfully modelled Buddha and rich yakshi figures.
• Both schools spread with the merchants along the Silk Route to Central Asia and China.
• Coin portraiture displayed an eclectic pantheon of Greek, Iranian and Indian deities.

A qualifying view

• Royal and religious patronage, not trade alone, drove the great building programmes.
• Indigenous artistic traditions at Mathura had roots reaching back to Mauryan times.
• The rise of Mahayana Buddhism, with its devotion to images, was an independent stimulus.
• Trade nonetheless supplied the wealth and the contacts without which neither school would have flourished.

International trade therefore acted as a genuine engine of artistic development under the Kushanas, supplying both the wealth and the cross-cultural stimulus. As art historians observe, the resulting Gandhara and Mathura schools not only created the Buddha image but carried it across Asia, making Kushana art one of history's great cultural exports.