3. Non-Buddhist Customs of Buddhist People: Visual and Archaeological Evidence from North-West Pakistan

Abstract

In the rich repertoire of the Buddhist art of Gandhāra, 1 a special place is occupied by what we usually call "Dionysiac scenes," where different characters are portrayed in the act of drinking, dancing, performing more or less explicit erotic gestures that are a prelude to sexual intercourse, or engaged in social ceremonies of unknown nature. When considered together and analysed more closely, these scenes reveal a typological variety that no doubt reflects different layers of meaning. Besides not fitting into any unitary picture, such themes cannot be easily reconciled with our idea of ancient Buddhism. Nevertheless, the association of Buddhist Note: An abridged and slightly different version of this paper was published in French (Filigenzi 2016). The contents were first outlined in the framework of the workshop At the Foothills of the Hindukush: Art and Archaeology of the Swat Valley, Pakistan (Drexel University, Philadelphia, May 7, 2011), and further developed on the occasion of the International Symposium Buddhism and the Dynamics of Transculturality (Internationales Wissenschaftsforum Heidelberg, 11th-13th June 2012). I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the organisers of these events, Pia Brancaccio and Birgit Kellner respectively, for encouraging this line of research and providing the best opportunity to discuss it with colleagues from different disciplinary fields. My deepest gratitude also goes to Pierfrancesco Callieri and Luca Maria Olivieri for their scientific advice and suggestions, as precious as ever. I am also indebted to Lorenzo Costantini for helping me to address specific palaeo-bothanic issues, and to Laura Giuliano for her kind assistance at the Museo Nazionale d'Arte Orientale "Giuseppe Tucci," Rome. Special thanks go to Max Klimburg, who generously gave me access to the pre-print version of his article (Klimburg 2014). His presentation at the conference Wine Culture in Iran and Neighbouring Countries (Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, 16th-17th September 2010), on which that publication is based, was indeed revelatory of the connections between the iconographies discussed here and the Kafir folklore. 1 The term "Gandharan art" is used here in its historicised meaning, which is purely conventional and traditionally accepted by scholars as the more adaptable to an artistic phenomenon that has been recognised, although with distinct regional characteristics, in wider territories than the Peshawar Valley. In this usage (which, I would like to clarify on behalf of nonspecialists, was adopted with full consciousness and not without criticism) "Gandharan art" includes art from neighbouring regions such as Swat, Panjab and Eastern Afghanistan, and is roughly encompassed within the Kushan time frame (1 st to 3 rd century CE). I refer the reader to the brilliant synthesis in Zwalf (1996, 11-19).