It is difficult to ascertain when exactly the first human images of the Buddha were created -
but scholars generally agree that it was not until about 500 years after his death that these appeared.
These earliest images that have been identified are dated to a period just before the beginning of the Christian era,
and were found to originate from two main centres:
Gandhara in what is today Pakistan's North West Frontier Province and the region of Mathura,
in what is now north-central India.