The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c8.31

c8.31

it not for the monastic cloak, you might be a little puzzled to distinguish the Perfect Buddha from the future Buddha, whenever the second is shown without a headdress, or even when the lips of the former continue to wear that little moustache which you still find on the remote Japanese images. But join together the two elements, however incongruous, a layman's head on the body of a cleric : and this combination will at once give you an individuality sufficiently marked to answer all the practical needs of iconography. The result has shown it well.