Two major schools of sculpture that flourished in the post-Mauryan and Kushana period (around the 1st to 4th centuries CE) and produced some of the earliest images of the Buddha in human form.
- Gandhara school: centred in the north-west (the Peshawar region and Afghanistan), it blended Indian themes with Greco-Roman (Hellenistic) style, using grey schist stone; Buddha figures are wavy-haired, muscular, and toga-like, with realistic folds.
- Mathura school: indigenous, centred at Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, using spotted red sandstone; figures are robust, energetic, and spiritually serene, and it sculpted not only the Buddha but Jain tirthankaras and Hindu deities.
- Both schools matured under the Kushanas, especially Kanishka, whose patronage of Buddhism (the fourth Buddhist council in Kashmir) coincided with the spread of Mahayana Buddhism and Buddha images.
- A third school, the Amaravati school (lower Krishna valley, Andhra), used white marble and was patronised by the Satavahanas and Ikshvakus.
- Gandhara is also called the Greco-Buddhist or Indo-Greek style of art.
School-to-material and school-to-style matching (Gandhara grey schist and Hellenistic, Mathura red sandstone and indigenous, Amaravati white marble), and the Kushana-Kanishka link are recurring art-history facts.
Gandhara (foreign-influenced, grey schist, north-west) versus Mathura (indigenous, red sandstone, doab); Amaravati uses white marble and lies in the south.
Earliest Buddha images; Gandhara (Greco-Roman, grey schist) and Mathura (indigenous, red sandstone), both flourishing under the Kushanas.