The Greco-Buddhist art or Gandhara art is the artistic manifestation of Greco-Buddhism, a cultural syncretism between Ancient Greek art and Buddhism. It had mainly evolved in the ancient region of Gandhara, located in the northwestern fringe of the Indian subcontinent.

The series of interactions leading to Gandhara art occurred over time, beginning with Alexander the Great's brief incursion into the area, followed by the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka converting the region to Buddhism.^{[citation needed]} Buddhism became the prominent religion in the Indo-Greek Kingdoms. However, Greco-Buddhist art truly flowered and spread under the Kushan Empire, when the first surviving devotional images of the Buddha were created during the 1st-3rd centuries AD. Gandhara art reached its zenith from the 3rd-5th century AD, when most surviving motifs and artworks were produced.

Gandhara art is characterized by Buddhist subject matter, sometimes adapting Greco-Roman elements, rendered in a style and forms that are heavily influenced by Greco-Roman art. It has the strong idealistic realism and sensuous description of Hellenistic art, and it is believed to have produced the first representations of Gautama Buddha in human form, ending the early period of aniconism in Buddhism.

The representation of the human form in large sculpture had a considerable influence, both to the south in the rest of India, and to the east, where the spread of Buddhism carried its influence as far as Japan.

There has been disagreement among art historians as to whether Gandharan art owes more to the culture established immediately after Alexander's campaigns, or to a synthesis several centuries later between travelling Greco-Roman artists from the eastern Roman Empire in regions where Greek settlers were still important. Most of the considerable quantity of Gandharan art that can be dated comes from after about 50 AD, although some clearly was created earlier. For this reason, some scholars prefer to call this Romano-Indian art, or talk of an "Indo-Classical style".

The French scholar Alfred C. A. Foucher first identified the Western influences on Gandharan art at the end of the 19th century. He was initially a proponent of the continuity between the first Greek settlements and this art, and dated much of the art much earlier than more recent scholars do. However, he later revised his views and datings somewhat. His views as to dates and the crucial period of Western influence came to be widely rejected, but then received considerable support by the discovery of the important deserted city site of Ai-Khanoum (Alexandria on the Oxus), which was excavated in the 1960s and 1970s, where quantities of clearly Greek-influenced art were found, datable to the 3rd and (mostly) 2nd centuries BC.

Greco-Buddhist art originated after a series of cultural exchanges between populations. During the time of Alexander the Great's military campaign in the Indian subcontinent and South Asia, Buddhism was mostly limited to North Eastern India and not common in North Western India, where the Greek satrapies formed. Buddhism became widespread throughout South and Central Asia under the Maurya Empire. The Mauryan Emperor Ashoka converted his Greek subjects among others to Buddhism as mentioned in his Edicts of Ashoka.

Here in the king's domain among the Yavanas (Greeks), the Kambojas, the Nabhakas, the Nabhapamkits, the Bhojas, the Pitinikas, the Andhras and the Palidas, everywhere people are following Beloved-of-the-Gods' instructions in Dharma.