Elements of Buddhist Iconography c4.55

c4.55

In actually surviving works of art we do not find representations of the Buddha supported by a lotus-throne before the second century A.D., viz. in the art of Gandhāra, and in late Āndhra works from Amarāvatī, nor, as we have already seen, of Brahmā *kamalāsana* before the Gupta period. A second century Kuṣāṇa example from Mathurā is reproduced by Foucher, *L’art gréco-bouddhique du Gandhāra*, Fig. 552. Long before this, however, at the very beginning of artistic history so far as it is recorded in permanent materials, we meet with the lotus-flower employed as a support in various ways, nor is it at all likely that these examples had not been preceded by others in evanescent material, or painted. The lotus is most conspicuously connected in this way with Śrī-Lakṣmī, viz. in representations dating from the second century B.C. onwards; I have shown elsewhere that these compositions are comprehensible only with reference to Vedic notions, and that early Indian art is essentially the continuation of a mainly aniconic “Vedic” style.⁴¹