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Presenting the Buddha: Images and Conventions in Early Indian Buddhism

From Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia
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Juhyung Rhi (Seoul National University; Princeton Institute for Advanced Study)
"Presenting the Buddha: Images and Conventions in Early Indian Buddhism"
 

Following the creation of the Buddha image around the beginning of the Common Era, the most critical juncture in the history of Buddhist icons, at least within India, is probably the emergence of Buddha images displaying dharmacakra-mudra and bhumisparsa-mudra around the fifth to sixth centuries CE. These two image types presented the Buddha clearly as engaging in two important events from his life, the First Sermon and the Enlightenment. This is in a stark contrast to earlier presentations of the Buddha in icons, which apparently featured little distinct narrative association. From this time on, the two types, especially the bhumisparsa type, dominated iconic presentations of the Buddha through later Buddhist art in India while making a great impact on other parts of the Buddhist world as well. This phenomenon was presumably related at least in part to the rise of Sarnath and Bodhgaya, the holy places of the two great events from the Buddha's life, as important artistic and religious centers of Indian Buddhism. However, it could also have been due to the development of a new awareness of the doctrinal significances which cotemporary Buddhists attached to the two events. It has been suggested that the bhumisparsa type was possibly equated with the idea of pratītyasamutpāda or dependent origination, which the Buddha supposedly had attained at the time of enlightenment and which was expressed in a verse enormously popular as a votive formula commonly carved on visual images or clay tablets to be installed inside small stupas. Although I have not been fully convinced with this suggestion, I believe that the rise of the two types reflects the concern with the question of which moment in the Buddha's life matters most for qualifying the Buddha as such and that this also paralleled the predominance of another type from outside India, the image of the Buddha’s mahaparinirvana in Central Asia. This presentation will go back to the period before this important change took place in Indian Buddhism, i.e., several centuries following the creation of the Buddha image, and will explore the way the Buddha was presented as iconic statues and what significance we may be able to infer from their iconographic configurations. I will touch on all three major centers of Buddhist art in this period, Gandhara, and Andhra, the last comprising Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda, but focus will be inevitably laid on Gandhara where a more variety was shown in significantly large numbers.

Source

www.cbs.columbia.edu