Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c13.s5.11

c13.s5.11

There was, of course, the age-old interdiction against the depicting of the Buddha in human form. Very naturally such a position could not be maintained any longer in the face of the emperor's decision to broaden the scope of the religious motifs to be adopted on the coins which was an exclusive royal prerogative. None can argue that the decision to depict the Iranian deities came from any other authority except that of the emperor and the same should be conceded as an undoubted fact for the image of *BODDO* on Kanishka coins. The convention regarding the representation of the Buddha through symbols was then relegated to the background. And, thus the way was thrown open for the representation of the Buddha in human form. Why the Buddha figure was not carved before the time of Kanishka should not be attributed to any want of capacity on the part of the sculptors. As the available statuary shows that the Mathura artists were quite competent to fashion the statues of gods and men in any shape of form. Something else was restraining them so far as the Buddha image was concerned. The urge of the people to see Buddha in a concrete shape could no longer be satisfied with the mere sight of symbols but demanded to visualise the Master in all his resplendent glory as the *Mahāpurusha* whose body was radiant with 32 marks (*dvātriṁśata-mahāpurusha-lakshaṇa*). Such seems to be the whole position with regard to the origin of the Buddha image. This explains the emergence of the image in its full context of religious, social, political and art conditions. All of which became integrated in the new creation of the Buddha image. It cannot be accepted for a moment that the creation of the Buddha image would be the result of the vague caprice of an unknown artist in the Gandhāra school. It may be specially observed that none of the three factors in relation to the Buddha image existed in Gandhāra, e.g. there was no background of any Bhakti movement there as has been shown above for Mathura, secondly no representation of the Buddha on any coins or sculpture has been preserved prior to Kanishka in the Gandhara school, and thirdly none of those elements which contribute to the making of the Buddha image by combining Chakravartī and Yogī ideals had any meaning or background in the Hellenistic tradition in Gandhāra. To become acceptable to the people for whom such images were meant, the Buddha statue could only be the fruit of a purposeful design intended to satisfy the needs of a religious aspiration of the people in the form of the Bhakti discipline which was now an established fact at Mathura. The Brāhmanical sculptures and the images of the Jaina Tīrthaṅkara and, of course, also the figures of Greek and Iranian gods and goddesses on the coins were there but none of them would be complete and ideal for the representation of the Buddha. If we analyse the various elements of the Buddha's iconography we have to fall back not on one single image type but generally on the whole statuary that had been evolved during the course of centuries up to about the first century A.D. To trace the complete formula of the Buddha image to its various sources alone can furnish an adequate answer to the much debated problem of the origins of the Buddha image.