The Role and Status of Women as Represented in Gandhāra Art

Abstract

I have been very eager when it comes to my studies and I have always tried my best to do well throughout my academic career. I am the only female in my family who moved to a city to pursue the undergraduate and graduate degree. In my culture sending females to school is an afterthought and priority is given to males.When growing up I have always wondered about inequality between males and females, why such a difference in our South Asian culture? My Master of Philosophy thesis was on violence against women: A case study of “Meerwala case” explored the injustice against a female, when a brother was accused of having an illicit relationship with a girl of a noble family and Panchyat (self-composed local village court) decided that his sister will bear the consequences of this illegal relationship which led to the rape of his sister by numerousmen. When I decided to enroll in the doctoral program, I wanted to further explore the role and status of women in a different context and religion other than Islam. Upon further exploration, I learnt that women had no status and respect before the arrival of Buddhism and history of Buddhism can be related to Gandhāra art. Buddhist art of Gandhāra has a very rich history in Pakistan. Even though, numerous scholars have written about Buddhism but none of them have tried to explore the role and status of women in Gandhāra art holistically. This increased my curiosity even further and I decided to write on this topic