The Indian Buddhist Iconography, Mainly Based on the Sadhanamala and Other Cognate Tantric Texts of Rituals c9.4

c9.4

The problem of correct identification of images, therefore, presents a real difficulty which great scholars have more than once attempted to solve. Scholars of all countries, notably Waddell, Grunwedel, Foucher, Burgess, Getty, Coomaraswamy, Bhattasali, Rakhaldas Banerji and many others, have written useful and authoritative works, and collected together a considerable amount of information on Buddhist iconography. It is unfortunate, however, that the pantheon of the Indian Vajrayānists who were mainly responsible in building it up has so far been more or less neglected Getty and Deniker's 'Gods of Northern Buddhism', although a masterpiece, deals only with Tibetan, Chinese and Japanese gods but the purely Indian gods seem to have attracted little notice from them. It was Professor Foucher who by the publication of his 'Etudes sur l' Iconographie Bouddhique de L' Inde' in two parts published as early as 1900 and 1905, first drew the attention of scholars to this rich field of research. His curiosity was roused by a study of the miniatures appearing on such Buddhist manuscripts as the Prajñāpāramitā, and then he made a systematic attempt to identify the sculptures. For the purpose of recognising images he hunted out a number of Sādhanas from the manuscripts of Sādhanamālā, and he was surprised to find that the images tallied most remarkably with the descriptions given in the unpublished text of the Tāntric manuscript. Again, the images and sculptures supplied interesting details such as were not available in the Sādhana. Thus the Sādhana and the image mutually enlightened each other. Professor Foucher’s second volume embodies a critical, although partial, study of the Sādhanamālā and it was this book that first emphasized the necessity of referring to a Sādhana in order to make or justify any single identification of a Buddhist image. When the present author was studying at the feet of the illustrious savant, Professor Foucher, at the Indian Museum, Calcutta, he was advised to edit and study the different recensions of the Sādhanamālā before proceeding with the delicate art of identification of Buddhist deities.