Gandhara sculpture is eclectic, with a variety of "introduced" elements so obvious that the Buddhist art of Gandhara is sometimes called Greco-Buddhist and Romano-Buddhist. It is also generally accepted that Gandhara, like Mathura in northern India, was the center where the artistic style of Buddhist art was formed, including the canons of the anthropomorphic Buddha's image.
The artistic Gandhara tradition spread over vast territories - from Taxila, which is now in the territory of the east modern Pakistan, to the Bamyan Valley in modern Afghanistan in the west. Term "Greater Gandhara" is now used to define geographic boundaries territories where this pictorial tradition has flourished the most, while Gandhara is called the area with its center in Peshawar. Due to its unique position, in which India was in the southeast, Central Asia in the north, and Iran in the west, Greater Gandhara has been a crossroads of numerous trade routes since ancient times. Numerous foreign invasions into Greater Gandhara also contributed to the fact that the cultural development of this territory took on the features of eclecticism. The human flows active movement of the most diverse ethnic origins and religious affiliations has turned this region into an exceptionally cosmopolitan cultural center, which it has remained for centuries.
You can learn more about the topic in the book-album "Central Asian Heritage in the Collections of Cambridge University" (Volume XXVIII) in the series "Cultural legacy of Uzbekistan in the world collections".
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