Alfred Charles Auguste Foucher

Alfred Charles Auguste Foucher (1865–1952), was a French scholar, who argued that the Buddha image has Greek origins.

He has been called the "father of Gandhara studies", and is a much-cited scholar on ancient Buddhism in northwest Indian subcontinent and the Hindu Kush region.

Foucher argued that the first sculpted images of the Buddha were heavily influenced by Greek artists.

New archeological discoveries in Central Asia however (such as the Hellenistic city of Ai-Khanoum and the excavation of Sirkap in modern Pakistan), have been pointing to rich Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek civilizations in these areas, reviving the Hellenistic thesis.

For a compelling counter-argument to Foucher's essay, see Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, "The Origin of the Buddha Image".

One of the first representations of the Buddha, Gandhara , in pure Hellenistic style and technique. Foucher considers such statues as Greek work of the 1st century BCE.