Essay name: Buddhist iconography in and outside India (Study)
Author:
Purabi Gangopadhyay
Affiliation: University of Calcutta / Department of Ancient Indian History and Culture
This work aims to systematically present the development and expansion of Mahayana-Vajrayana Buddhist iconography from India to other countries, such as China, Korea, and Japan. This study includes a historical account of Indian Buddhist iconography and the integration of Brahmanical gods into the Mahayana-Vajrayana phase.
Chapter 1: Introduction (History of Indian Culture)
10 (of 18)
External source: Shodhganga (Repository of Indian theses)
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- 10
of Buddhist icons can be realised from the following groups
of deities that enriched the religious art of India from the
2nd 3rd century A.D., while different schools of art
displayed their different characteristics in carving or
painting the images. From the Gandhara School to the Pala
School the Buddhist icons manifested various forms and features
reflecting the imagination and creative faculty of the artists
concerned and their skill in the art of image making. The
richness of Indian Buddhist (and also Brahmanical) iconography
can be well understood from the extent images in India and in
the neighbouring countries of the sub-continent.
There are a large number of Buddhist images belonging
to the Mathura, Gandhara and Gupta period¹. The artists of
the Mathura School of Art produced in the early centuries of
the Christian era the massive Bodhisattva images portraying
those as having extraordinary strength and energy'
±ð°ù²µ²â².
The Mathura and the Gandhara periods are notable for
the sculptural representations of several Buddhist and
Brahmanical deities. Buddhist deities belonged to the
sculptural repartories of the regions in question, while the
Brahmanical deities mostly remained limited to the numismatic
pieces of pre-Christian and early Christian eras.
Some of a few prominent Buddhist deities in sculp-
tures belonging to the above mentioned periods were found
1. 1) Gandhara School of Art
ii) Mathura School of Art
iii) Gupta School of Art
2. IS, pp. 60 ff.
= c.150 B.C.
c.150 B.C.
� 450 A.D.
c.200 B.C. - 600 A.D.
=
= c.320 A.D. - 659 A.D.
