Author: Ashwini Lakshminarayanan | AAV 37 (2024) | Pages: 85–122 | https://doi.org/10.60018/AcAsVa.roao7752 
Abstract
Gandhāran reliefs and pedestal images repeatedly show figures venerating the relics of the Buddha. While efforts have been made to study this group of images, the next logical step of analysis would be to conduct a more systematic and contextual analysis of the visual and religious content in order to understand how images communicated normative rituals. By giving primacy to images and its associated evidence, such as Gāndhārī inscriptions and Chinese travelogues, this paper, the first of a series, is a modest attempt to shed light on how images depicting relic veneration and dating from the second century onwards are part of a visual rhetoric of Gandhāran rituals. By doing so, this paper lays special emphasis on how seeing the relics was an important part of Buddhist rituals not only in Gandhāra, but in the wider Kuṣāṇa visual culture.
This article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
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