Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c7.127

c7.127

Now Buddha, as we know, attained to his Buddhahood at the close of a prolonged fast; and, according to the canons of European art, he should have been represented in a state of extreme emaciation. The Gandharan sculptors did, indeed, occasionally represent Buddha thus; and, as they made no attempt to idealise, except in the Greek sense, they produced a horribly realistic type, evidently carefully studied from a human being reduced by starvation to a living skeleton. The Lahore Museum possesses one example of this, and the British Museum another.