Gandhara

For a long time, Buddhism did not depict the Buddha in human form. His presence was shown instead through the dharma wheel, the bodhi tree, a footprint. Buddha images in human form appear around the 1st century CE, in two places: Gandhara, in what is now northern Pakistan, and Mathura, in northern India. What's interesting is that the two seem to have arisen almost at the same time, independently of each other. Which came first is still undecided. Gandharan Buddhas show drapery folds and facial features that echo Greek sculpture. Alexander the Great passed through this region around 327 BCE, about four hundred years before the Buddha image appeared. So saying "the Greeks made the Buddha image" is too rough. It is more accurate, and to me far more interesting, to say that a vocabulary of form running from Greece through Rome settled into this land over centuries, and at some point met the shape of Buddhism. At the very top of this map, west and east had already shaken hands.