Classical Indian music meets metal

(Opalinskyband) Metal genres vs. metal fans - Five metalhead myths debunked in 30 seconds

Would Lord Ganesha approve? Goddess Kali?

Bloodywood is an Indian heavy metal band from New Delhi that formed in 2016. They began as a parody band that uploaded metal covers of pop songs on YouTube [1] and later wrote their own music. They have become India's first metal act to chart on Billboard [1]. HISTORY: Prior to forming the band, Karan Katiyar regularly uploaded parody metal covers of popular Bollywood songs on YouTube, but he had trouble finding a suitable vocalist. At a local gig... More

Bloodywood and Babymetal

Bloodywood with Babymetal on same stage - Bekhauf (Mohegan Sun Arena, June 27, 2025)

• Karl Rock, YouTube.com; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

The Buddhist art of Pakistan (Lahore Museum)

Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Team No Limit Creativity, Business Consultants (NLC360.com, facebook); LahoreMuseum.org (VIRTUAL TOUR)

Lahore Museum exhibits (lahoremuseum.org/No Limit Creativity/NLC360.com)

Lahore Museum Virtual Tour (No Limit Creativity, business consultants, NLC360.com)

 
The Lahore Museum (لاہور میوزیم لاہور عجائب گھر) was originally established in 1865-66 on the site of the hall of the 1864 Punjab Exhibition (Government of Pakistan).
 

Maitreya, 5th cent. BCE (MOW)

It was shifted in 1894 to its present site on The Mall in Lahore, in the Punjab region of India (which 1947's Partition became the country of Pakistan due to upheavals created by British colonial rule).

Rudyard Kipling's father, John Lockwood Kipling, was one of the earliest and most famous curators of the museum. Over 250,000 visitors were registered in 2005. The current building complex that houses the Lahore Museum was designed by the well-known architect Sir Ganga Ram.

Gandhara Buddhist art (WQ)

The Museum is the biggest museum in the new country and full of exquisite Gandhara (Greco-Indian fusion) art. Many rooms have been under repair for a long time, and others still show a rather old-fashioned and often rudimentary display of objects, with captions only in Urdu (the local language).

There are important relics from the Indus Valley Civilization (Indus River Valley), Ghandara and Greco-Bactrian periods as well as some Tibetan and Nepalese work on display. The museum has a number of Greco-Buddhist sculptures, Mughal and Pahari paintings on display. The Fasting Buddha from the Ghandara period is one of the most famous objects of the museum. More

What was Gandhāra?

Gandhāra (Sanskrit गन्धार, Pashto ګندارا‎, Urdu گندھارا‎) was an ancient kingdom in the Swat and Kabul river valleys and the Pothohar Plateau [that border modern Iran in the southwest in the province of Seistan-Balochistan west of ancient Mohenjo-daro].

These are in the modern-day states of northern Pakistan and northeastern Afghanistan (Gandhara Civilization). Its main cities were Purushapura (modern Peshawar), literally meaning "City of Men" (Encyclopædia Britannica: Gandhara) and Takshashila (modern Taxila). More

 

Lahore Museum: A Gallery of Our Culture, Guided Tour cover (library.tcdc.or.th)

View virtual tour properly using Flash Player Version 9.0.28 or later (NLC360.com).

First images of the Buddha, Gandhara, Lahore Museum, Pakistan (Bijapuri Ed Sentner/flickr)

The First Images of the Buddha (photos)

Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Editorial (dawn.com, 6-27-14); Wiki

The first anthropomorphic representations of the Buddha were Gandhara art (Boonlieng)

Priceless Buddhist treasures were intercepted while being smuggled out of Pakistan, part of Pashtun Afghanistan, in the region of ancient Gandhara, India (BigStory.AP org)

  

[Breaking the] Fasting Buddha

Kashmir on the Pakistan side (Vivek Aryan)

(Dawn) Truly is it said, reality is stranger than fiction -- especially here in Pakistan. Since 1894, when it was donated upon being discovered, the Gandhara-era statue of the "Fasting Buddha" has been considered the jewel of the Lahore Museum.

Museum Maitreya Buddha

Images of it adorn postcards and newsreels, and proud [Muslim] citizens make it a point to take visitors to see it as an indication that whatever else the country may be, a cultural wasteland it is not.

This statue, priceless in terms of historical significance, has for a long time had a crack on the left arm. Investigations by this paper [dawn.com], upon receiving a tip-off, have confirmed an unbelievable story:

Back in April, 2012, the crack widened while being cleaned and the statue was given over to the museum laboratory’s tender ministrations. But instead of the scientific, delicate, and professional handling that an artifact of this stature demands, an attempt was made to fix it by applying the common adhesive epoxy, which remains [shockingly] evident on the statue’s surface and has caused irreparable harm.

Where in the world is Pakistan? It only came into existence in 1947 after the colonial British Partition of India. Along with Afghanistan, it was formerly Gandhara, India. Then the U.S. started meddling; now we bomb it secretly.

 

One of the priceless Afghan treasures of Mes Aynak

The trail of destruction isn’t hard to trace, given the standards at the moment: The current lab technician worked earlier as a driver and gallery attendant, while the lab "conservationist" used to be a peon.
 
What can be made of this but the utter disregard Pakistanis tend to show towards history and culture? This is hardly the only example of this mindset. It turns out that 2012 was an inauspicious year for Gandhara-era [Buddhist] artifacts. That summer, the police intercepted a large consignment of such relics that had apparently been about to be smuggled out of the country [see photo of looted Buddhist art above].

Gandhara is full of earliest Buddhist treasures

But during the recovery process, the police ended up damaging many of them, unprepared perhaps for their weight and certainly unmindful of their value. In the case of the Lahore Museum, the qualified chemist employed at the lab was retired in 2009. No replacement has been found. This is unsurprising, given the importance attached to archaeology and history in the country.

Afghan Buddhist monastery statue 700 AD (Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara)

• The Greco-Indian art of ancient Gandhara:

First Buddhas, Gandhara

(Wiki) Greco-Buddhist art is the artistic manifestation of Greco-Buddhism, a cultural syncretism between the Classical Greek culture and Buddhism, which developed over a period of close to 1000 years in Central Asia, between the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC, and the destructive Islamic conquests of the 7th century AD. Greco-Buddhist art is characterized by the strong idealistic realism and sensuous description of Hellenistic art and the FIRST representations of the Buddha in human form...

Future Buddha Maitreya, Gandhara-style, Greco-Indian Buddhist fusion art of Afghanistan, Pakistan, ancient India, San Francisco Asian Art Museum (Boonlieng/flickr.com)

 
Ancient Greece (in India and Persia)

Kushan Maitreya, Greco-India

Bactria was under direct Greek control for more than two centuries from the conquests of Alexander the Great in 332 BC to the end of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom around 125 BC. The art of Bactria was almost perfectly Hellenistic as shown by the archaeological remains of Greco-Bactrian cities such as Alexandria on the Oxus (Ai-Khanoum), or the numismatic art of the Greco-Bactrian kings, often considered as the best of the Hellenistic world, and including the largest silver and gold coins ever minted by the Greeks.
 
When Buddhism expanded in Central Asia from the 1st century AD, Bactria saw the results of the Greco-Buddhist syncretism arrive on its territory from India, and a new blend of sculptural representation remained until the Islamic invasions.
 
The most striking of these realizations are the Buddhas of Bamiyan. They tend to vary between the 5th and the 9th century AD. Their style is strongly inspired by Hellenistic culture. More

Western China

"Heroic gesture of the Bodhisattva," the Buddha-to-be, 6th-7th century terracotta, Tumshuq (Xinjiang) where the Chinese empire extended from the Far East into Central Asia, the Land of Buddhism and the Buddha (wiki).

 

[WISDOM QUARTERLY EDITORIAL: Buddhism made it to ancient "Greece," the Hellenistic world as a vast empire encroaching into India and Persia, before it ever arrived in China. It co-originated in Afghanistan (the Buddha's likely birthplace according to Dr. Ranajit Pal) and "India" (the Kingdom of Magadha to be specific as there was no unified India at that time), where the Buddha had traveled to establish the Teaching and the first monastic Community, which was soon augmented by many Shakyan princes and princesses, relatives of the Buddha from the area of Gandhara, Afghanistan, Indo-Pakistan, Taxila (Takkashila), Indo-Iran, and lands (the modern "stans") likely under the influence of the capital of Kapilavastu, the Buddha's hometown, the kingdom he would have inherited somewhere between modern Bamiyan and Kabul, once a fabulously rich and cosmopolitan crossroads on the Silk Route.]

• BUST: The original representation of the Buddha in gray schist, currently dated to 2nd-3rd century CE showing Hellenistic influences characteristic of the Gandhara art of Afghanistan and Northwest Pakistan (British Museum/Britannica.com)

Maitreya in USA (Boonlieng)

The art of the Tarim Basin, also called Serindian art, is the art that developed from the 2nd through the 11th century AD in Serindia or Xinjiang, the extreme western region of China that forms part of Central Asia. It derives from the art of the Gandhara and clearly combines Indian traditions with Greek and Roman influences.
 
Buddhist missionaries travelling on the Silk Road introduced this art, along with Buddhism itself, into Serindia, where it mixed with Chinese and Persian influences.

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Taliban suffocate Pakistan-Buddhist heritage

Sajjad Tarakzai (AFP)
TAXILA, Pakistan — Archaeologists warn that the Taliban are destroying Pakistan's ancient Gandhara heritage and rich Buddhist legacy as pilgrimage and foreign research dries up in the country's northwest.

"Militants are the enemies of culture," said Abdul Nasir Khan, curator of Taxila Museum, one of the premier archaeological collections in Pakistan. "It is very clear that if the situation carries on like this, it will destroy our culture and destroy our cultural heritage," he told AFP.

Taxila, a small town around 13 miles (20 km) south of Islamabad, is one of Pakistan's foremost archaeological attractions given its history as a center of Buddhist learning from the 5th century BC to the 2nd century. More>>

Greco-Buddhism

Greco-Buddhism, sometimes spelled Græco-Buddhism, is the cultural syncretism between the culture of Classical Greece and Buddhism, which developed over a period of close to 800 years in Central Asia in the area corresponding to modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan, between the 4th century BC and the 5th century AD.

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Greco-Buddhism influenced the artistic (and, possibly, conceptual) development of Buddhism, and in particular Mahayana Buddhism, before it was adopted by Central and Northeastern Asia from the 1st century AD, ultimately spreading to China, Korea and Japan.

History

General area of Greco-Buddhism, and boundaries of the Kushan empire at its greatest extent around 150 AD.

The interaction between Hellenistic Greece and Buddhism started when Alexander the Great conquered Asia Minor and Central Asia in 334 BC, going as far as the Indus, thus establishing direct contact with India, the birthplace of Buddhism.

Alexander founded several cities in his new territories in the areas of the Oxus and Bactria, and Greek settlements further extended to the Khyber Pass, Gandhara (see Taxila), and the Punjab. These regions correspond to a unique geographical passageway between the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush mountains, through which most of the interaction between India and Central Asia took place, generating intense cultural exchange and trade.

Following Alexander's death on June 10, 323 BC, his Diadochi (generals) founded their own kingdoms in Asia Minor and Central Asia. General Seleucus set up the Seleucid Kingdom, which extended as far as India. Later, the Eastern part of the Seleucid Kingdom broke away to form the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom (3rd–2nd century BC), followed by the Indo-Greek Kingdom (2nd–1st century BC), and later still by the Kushan Empire (1st–3rd century AD).

The interaction of Greek and Buddhist cultures operated over several centuries until it ended in the 5th century AD with the invasions of the White Huns, and later the expansion of Islam. More>>