FOUCHER, ALFRED (1865–1952), was a French Indologist and specialist in Buddhist archaeology. Alfred C. A. Foucher studied in Paris, under the guidance of Sylvain Lévi, and in India (1895–1897), where he combined philosophical training at the Sanskrit College of Banaras with "militant" archaeology through extensive pilgrimages to several places of historical interest.

Foucher was a pioneer in the area of religious archaeology with his study of the relation between artistic representations and their doctrinal and literary background. His field of predilection was the area known as Gandhara (roughly, those portions of Afghanistan and Pakistan between the Hindu Kush mountains and the Indus River), where the Indian and Greek worlds had been in contact at around the beginning of the common era. The publication of Foucher's L'art gréco-bouddhique du Gandhâra: Étude sur les origines de l'influence classique dans l'art bouddhique de l'Inde et de l'Extrême-Orient...