Art historians generally credit the sculptors of Gandhara with the first representations of the Buddha in human form. Previously, the Buddha was represented in symbols derived from episodes of his life, such as a wheel, a footprint, or a tree, symbolizing respectively his teachings, his travels, and his achieving enlightenment as he meditated under the Bodhi tree. The region of Gandhara, located in areas of modern Pakistan and Afghanistan, bordered the Silk Road that ran from northern China to Mesopotamia and the Greco-Roman empire. It is thought that the figure of the Buddha originated from representations of Greeks and Romans as they appeared on coins used along the trade routes. The Buddha is draped in a cascade of pleats, much like the togas of Roman emperors.

Representations of bodhisattvas, enlightened disciples of the Buddha who chose to forge the final step to Buddhahood in order to preach the Buddhas’ doctrine on earth, appeared around the middle of the third century. Carved from the soft bluish slate or schist quarried from the hills north of Peshawar, this figure is adorned like a prince in order to remind worshipers of the bodhisattva’s earthly nature as opposed to the supernatural aspect of the Buddha. His jewels may have been fashioned after representations of Persian and Sassanian deities.