He made his first trip to northeastern
India in 1895. In 1910 he examined the
Great Zimbabwe and the
Khami ruins, proclaiming both were made by
Phoenicians. His views on ruins in southern Africa are not considered accurate by modern scholars. In 1922 he was asked by the governments of France and
Afghanistan to organize an
archeological co-operative which became the
French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan (DAFA). , in pure Hellenistic style and technique. Foucher considers such statues as Greek work of the 1st century BCE. Foucher's most famous work was ''L'Art Gréco-Bouddhique du Gandhara'' in which he described how
Buddhist art prior to
Pan-Hellenism was principally
aniconic, representing the Buddha by depicting elements of the Buddha's life instead of depicting the Buddha himself. Foucher argued that the first sculpted images of the Buddha were heavily influenced by Greek artists. He coined the term "
Greco-Buddhist art". Foucher especially considered Hellenistic free-standing Buddhas as "the most beautiful, and probably the most ancient of the Buddhas", assigning them to the 1st century BCE, and making them the starting point of the anthropomorphic representations of the Buddha ("The Buddhist art of Gandhara", Marshall, p101). Following the mid-20th century discovery of Roman trading posts in Southern India, Foucher's argument was revised in favour of
Roman influence, as opposed to Greek. 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. Nonetheless, his central
thesis that the Buddha was of
Classical origin has become established. For a compelling counter-argument to Foucher's essay, see
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, "The Origin of the Buddha Image". ==Works==