The origin of the image of the Buddha dates back to the Kushana period. As a matter of fact Gautam Buddha rejected the practice of image worship. He propounded the theory of ‘No soul and No God’. As a result the practice of idolatry god was prohibited by the Buddha for his followers. However, it is an established fact that man is a worshiper by nature. Man worships someone or something out of the respect, regard and reverence. So the followers of the Buddha started worshiping the Buddha first in the form of symbolism. With the passage of time new ideas, innovations and assimilation of culture gave rise to the image making in Buddhism.
When Buddha died, his
body was cremated and divided into several relic caskets that were interred
within large hemispherical mounds known as stūpas. The relic of Buddha and
other holy figures were the first known examples of Buddhist art. These sacred
relics are divided into three categories: Saririka – the
physical relics of Buddha; Uddesika – the religious symbols
that include the image of Buddha, stupas, Dharmacakra (Wheel of the
Dharma); Paribhogika – the articles used by the Buddha. Such
stūpas constitute the central monument of Buddhist monastic complexes. Stūpas
are enclosed by a railing that provides a path for ritual circumambulation. The
sacred area is entered through gateways at the four cardinal points.
These early examples
belong to the category of the Pre-iconic phase of Buddhist art
that lasted from the 5th to the 1st century BC. In the earliest Buddhist art of
India, the Buddha was not represented in human form, he was represented through
the aniconic symbols such as the Bodhi tree, an empty throne, the
deer, the elephant, the lotus, the lion, the horse with no rider, Buddha’s
footprints, the bowl, and the Wheel of Dharma. According to Alfred A. Foucher,
these anthropomorphic images of the Buddha are considered a result of a Greco-Buddhist
interaction.
In the first century BC,
India’s artists, who had worked in the perishable media of brick, wood, thatch,
and bamboo, adopted stone on a very wide scale. Stone railings and gateways,
covered with relief sculptures, were added to stūpas. Favorite themes were
events from the historic life of the Buddha, as well as from his previous
lives, which were believed to number 550. The latter tales are called jatakas
and often include popular legends adapted to Buddhist teachings.
The process of image
making was state by the invasion by the Alexander of Macedonia. The Greek rule
was established in the north-west region of India before the christen era. As a
result of that intermingling of the Indian culture with the Greek culture. It is
important to note that the image making and image worship was too much prevalent
among the Greeks. This sort of dispensation cleared the way for image making
and image worship in Buddhism. Thereafter Gautan Buddha sculptured in a human
form during the reign of the King Kanishka of the Kushana Empire. In the first
century CE brought something completely new to the Buddhist art, the artist
started to depict Buddha in human form, and one of the first
examples of this was found in the North-West India in the area known as Gandhara,
the ancient name for Pakistan. The Gandhara artists combined the Buddhist
symbolism with the elements from the Hellenistic world and created a unique style.
They created young Buddha with curly hair that resembled the Roman statues of Apollo;
they dressed him in the robe that covered both shoulders with heavy folds that
reminded of the toga. There are also many representations of Siddhartha as a
princely bejeweled figure prior to his renunciation of palace life.
·
Gandharan artists made use of both stone
and stucco to produce such images, which were placed in niche like shrines
around the stūpa of a monastery.
·
Contemporaneously, the Kushan-period artists
in Mathura, produced a different image of the Buddha. His body was expanded by
sacred breath (prana), and his clinging monastic robe was draped to
leave the right shoulder bare.
·
A third influential Buddha type evolved
in Andhra Pradesh (Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda), in southern India, where
images of substantial proportions, with serious, unsmiling faces, were clad in
robes that created a heavy swag at the hem and revealed the left shoulder.
These southern sites provided artistic inspiration for the Buddhist land of Sri
Lanka, off the southern tip of India, and Sri Lankan monks regularly visited
the area. A number of statues in this style have been found as well throughout
Southeast Asia.
·
The succeeding Gupta period, from the
fourth to the sixth century CE, in northern India, sometimes referred to as a
Golden Age, witnessed the creation of an “ideal image” of the Buddha. This was
achieved by combining selected traits from the Gandharan region with the
sensuous form created by Mathura artists. Gupta Buddhas have their hair
arranged in tiny individual curls, and the robes have a network of strings to
suggest drapery folds (as at Mathura) or are transparent sheaths (as at
Sarnath). With their downward glance and spiritual aura, Gupta Buddhas became
the model for future generations of artists, whether in post-Gupta and Pala
India or in Nepal, Thailand, and Indonesia. Gupta metal images of the
Buddha were also taken by pilgrims along the Silk Road to China.
The history of the origin
and development of image of Buddha has been divided into three periods by the
great archeologist John Marshal by the following way:-
1.
Early Buddhist Art: - the early Buddhist
art is explained by the symbolical form of Buddhist art.
2.
Middle Buddhist Art: - the middle Buddhist
art is known as the fusion of Indian art with the Greek art. In this period the
image of the Buddha was sculptured and a new school of Buddhist art such as
Gandhara school of Buddhist art sprang into existence.
3.
Later Buddhist Art: - the later Buddhist
art witness the different school of Buddhist art such as Mathura, Amaravati and
so on. The development of the Buddha images is very important a large number of
images of the Buddha were produced in stones, wood, marbles, metals and so on.
In
Tantrik Buddhism several Buddhist god and goddess came into existence. It has a
well defined Buddhist pantheon. There are numbers of Bodhisattva namely Amitabha,
Amitayush, Tara, Matriya, Avalokiteśvara and so on depicted in the manifest of
the Buddhist paintings called Tankha. Over the following centuries there
emerged a new form of Buddhism that involved an expanding pantheon and
more elaborate rituals. This later Buddhism introduced the concept of heavenly
bodhisattvas as well as goddesses like Avalokiteśvara, Maitreya, of whom the
most popular was Tara. Buddhism evolved the concept of a Buddha of the Future,
Maitreya, depicted in art both as a Buddha clad in a monastic robe and as a princely
bodhisattva before enlightenment. In Nepal and Tibet, where exquisite
metal images and paintings were produced, new divinities were created and
portrayed in both sculpture and painted scrolls. Ferocious deities were
introduced in the role of protectors of Buddhism and its believers. Images of a
more esoteric nature, depicting god and goddess in embrace, were produced
to demonstrate the metaphysical concept that salvation resulted from the union
of wisdom (female) and compassion (male). Buddhism had traveled a long way from
its simple beginnings. Finally, the origin and development of the images of the
Buddha and Bodhisattvas is very important development in the history of
Buddhist art.
References
1.
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/budd/hd_budd.htm
2. http://factsanddetails.com/world/cat55/sub355/item1328.html
3. https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/history-of-buddhist-art
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