This co-authored book is in two distinct parts, the first by Gérard Fussman and the second by Anna Maria Quagliotti. The first part is the longest and deals with, broadly speaking, the cult and iconography of Avalokiteśvara in the early centuries ce, while the second deals with an iconographic form, the well-known “pensive Bodhisattva”, which shows the Bodhisattva seated with one hand either supporting his head or with a finger pointing to his temple. The book was prompted by two statues currently in the Pritzker Collection in America. How the book came to be written and published is explained by Fussman in his introduction.

Fussman's opening part is elegantly written and a pleasure to read. It is full of insights into and masterful summaries of a number of salient issues in the history of Buddhism in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan, the area generally referred to as “Greater Gandhāra”, a term coined, as Fussman notes, by Richard Salomon. In dealing with the cult of Avalokiteśvara, Fussman touches on some key points, notably the emergence of Mahāyāna and its relation to Hīnayāna, the presence of Mahāyāna in the Gandhāra region in the early centuries ce, and the development of Mahāyāna literature. The origin of images and the creation of a new Bodhisattva iconography are necessarily dealt with, as is the question of chronology (the latter still not entirely settled). As Fussman states in his delightful and disarming introduction, he is not a young scholar seeking to show us how many books he has read. Although this might prompt us to anticipate that the result will have many gaps and simply rework old debates, the discussion is entirely up-to-date and authoritative. In characteristic style, but only more so, Fussman engages with what is worth engaging with, for example the writing of Juhyung Rhi, the best recent work on early Indian and Gandhāra art; Rhi's “Reading Coomaraswamy on the origin of the Buddha image”, Artibus Asiae 70, 2010, seems to have come too late for inclusion. Fussman wears his learning lightly in this book to profound effect. We know exactly what he thinks, and we know it is based on a deep understanding of the historiography and the history of the period. His essay will, I think, have considerable effect. Fussman has extracted key themes from a huge corpus of data and a long series of tangled scholarly debates. We can only be thankful to him for that. And for those of us who know Gérard Fussman personally, I think we will find the book breathes his personality and presence: his great dedication to scholarship and his subject, his clear thinking, sharp wit and, above all, his incisive ability to go directly to the heart of the matter without making a fuss.

The second part of the book by Anna Maria Quagliotti has two sections. The first, entitled “Mahākāruṇika”, is reprinted without change from Annali dell‘ Istituto Universitario Orientale, 49, 1989, 337–70, while the second, entitled “‘Pensive’ Bodhisattvas on ‘Narrative’ Gandharan reliefs: a note on a recent study and related problems”, is reprinted without change from East and West 46, 1996, pp. 97–115. In these papers, Quagliotti shows that not every Bodhisattva in the pensive pose should be identified as Avalokiteśvara. Fussman has drawn these papers into the volume because they are directly relevant and because, as he notes in his introduction, iconography “… is not, by far, my favourite subject”. No doubt having the papers to hand in the volume is helpful, saving tedious cross-references and several trips to the library. Fussman concludes the book with a short note on a sculpture of a “pensive Bodhisattva” discovered in 2010 at Mes-e Aynak (in Afghanistan), the iconography of which supports Quagliotti's conclusions. A closely related sculpture, not illustrated in the volume, is the British Museum (number 1887,0717.45), acquired by Alexander Cunningham at Karamar Hill, Shahbazgarhi, Mardan District, Pakistan.

The book is beautifully produced with high-quality illustrations in colour and black-and-white. It will be essential reading for all historians and art historians of early Buddhism and should find a place in all libraries that seek to deal with these subjects.