Non-Buddhist Customs of Buddhist People II: A Shifting Perspective on Wine, Goat Deities and Connected “Dardic” Themes in Gandharan Art

Some of the visual themes that appear in Gandharan Buddhist art and how the Buddhist culture patterned them bear indirect—and yet substantial—witness to the existence of a diversified religious landscape in historic Gandhāra. This is particularly true with regard to revelry and erotic scenes and popular deities, whose core meanings can be explored in light of recent discoveries, data reassessment, and new interpretative schemes. Together with a rich set of archaeological and ethnologic evidence, they open a window to the local “Dardic” substratum and its system of beliefs, codes, and rituals in the North-West of the Subcontinent in the first half of the 1st millennium CE.