Period: 2nd century AD
Materials: Schist
Dimensions: 22 cm
Description
This schist hand of the Buddha, dated to the second century CE, comes from Gandhara. The outward-facing palm expresses abhaya mudra, the gesture of protection and fearlessness. The fragment preserves the religious meaning of the gesture even apart from the figure to which it belonged.
The modelling of the fingers, the proportions and the attention to the joints reflect the naturalism of Gandharan sculpture. Anatomical detail serves an iconographic language in which the hands convey the Buddha’s teaching and presence.
The open palm and arrangement of the fingers make the mudra immediately legible. The joints are defined through changes in volume without disrupting the continuity of the hand. Viewed in isolation, the fragment reveals both the carving and the importance of gesture in the sacred image. The sculptor concentrates in one part of the body a meaning that the devotee recognises even without the complete statue.
In the regions of present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan, Gandharan Buddhist sculpture adapted forms of Greco-Roman origin. This hand belongs to that tradition, shaped by encounters between Mediterranean and Asian cultures along the Silk Road.
