The Origin of the Buddha Image

Coomáraswámy, Ananda K.

doi:10.1080/00043079.1927.11409514

Cited by 34 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…In Foucher, The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology. Paris: P. Geuthner; [reprint, Varanasi/Delhi: Indological Book House, 1972), 111-137;Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish. 1927.…”

Section: Gandhāran Materials and Literary Culturesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks

Neelis¹

2011

106

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This work is published by Koninklijke Brill nv. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use and to authorize dissemination by means of offprints, legitimate photocopies, microform editions, reprints, translations, and secondary information sources, such as abstracting and indexing services including databases. Requests for commercial re-use, use of parts of the publication, and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the cc-by-nc License, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. More information about the initiative can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org.

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Section: Gandhāran Materials and Literary Culturesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks

Neelis¹

2011

106

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“…The western patterns found in this art style appeased European scholars, who were able to recognise familiar features in the astonishing and at the same time fearful Indian Art. Indian scholars, however, were sceptical about this interpretation of the Buddha origin (Coomaraswamy 1927) and later showed it to be to be misleading. Recent decades have witnessed a buddhological, historical and archaeological revision, whose aim was to understand the ways by which the study of this specific iconography has been so largely misinterpreted (Huntington 1985(Huntington , 1990.…”

Section: The Gandharan Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

Buddhism,Pax Kushanaand Greco-Roman motifs: pattern and purpose in Gandharan iconography

Aldrovandi¹,

Hirata²

2005

Antiquity

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“…The Buddha specified that his remains be handed over to devout lay worshipers, cremated, and placed in a large stupa where they could be worshiped. Scholarly interpretations (e.g., Coomaraswamy 1927;Irwin 1980;Lamotte 1988) of this passage suggest that the frrst response was intended for Buddhist monks and nuns. The second response was intended for the laity who, with their poorer grasp of Buddhist principles, required the aid of direct worship to ease them toward the path to enlightenment.…”

Section: The Historical Context: Early Buddhist History and Thoughtmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…through third century A.D., several centuries after the Buddha lived. Based upon readings of this literature some scholars argued that stupa worship was initially the exclusive domain of the laity (see Coomaraswamy 1927; Lamotte 1988). The establishment of stupa worship among monks and nuns, and eventually the worship of Buddhist images, was argued to be the result of the clergy's contamination by the vulgar practices of the laity.…”

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Ritual and Presentation in Early Buddhist Religious Architecture

Fogelin¹

2003

asi

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Asian Buddhists focused much of their ritual and worship upon stone or brick mounds, stupas, containing the relics of the Buddha. Some stupas were found in large, open-air complexes that were the focus of pilgrimage by the Buddhist laity. Other smaller stupas were located within the worship halls, chaityas, of Buddhist monasteries carved into the sides of cliffs. In each case, the people who created these temples had to decide how to present the stupa for worship. In both cases, the designers had to accommodate the highly individualistic nature of Buddhist worship while attempting to provide mechanisms to foster group cohesion within the developing Buddhist community. Monks designed their own ritual spaces with the goal of allowing for the mediation of worship by ritual specialists. In contrast, stupa complexes frequented by the laity were designed in a way that effectively limited the potential for ritual leaders and promoted a more egalitarian, spontaneous form of group worship. Further, the architectural layout of the different stupa complexes suggests that the laity, not the monks, were most interested in individual, meditative ritual. These conclusions stand in marked contrast to traditional discussions of early Buddhism derived from textual sources, which date from later periods.In this paper, the architectural plans of 13 Buddhist stupa complexes of the first century B.C. through the second century A.D. are examined in order to assess the nature of ritual presentation in two forms of ritual architecture, one focusing on the Buddhist laity and the other dominated by the clergy. This analysis presents a new theoretical and methodological tool for archaeological studies of ritual architecture, while exploring an issue central to contemporary Buddhist studies-ritual practice and the relations between monks and laity. Before turning to the specifics of this analysis, I first provide some background on early Buddhist history and thought, focusing on specific rituals and on the role of the stupa in Buddhist worship. This is followed by a brief summary of previous anthropological approaches to ritual and ritual architecture before discussing the architectural methodology used in this paper. The locations of the 13 complexes are indicated on Figure 1. This paper introduces a method, derived from theater and set design, forLars Fogelin is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. investigating religious ideology through architectural forms of presentation. Specifically, analyzing how someone or something is shown to an audience illuminates the goals of that presentation. This is accomplished by studying what is seen, how it is seen, and perhaps most importantly, what is hidden. In the case of early Buddhism, the architectural forms of presentation illustrate underlying tensions between the individual and group and between the clergy and the laity. While this paper presents an archaeological methodology for the examination of ritual architecture, it is strongly situated within the specific context...

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The Origin of the Buddha Image

Cited by 34 publications

References 0 publications

Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks

Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks

Buddhism,Pax Kushanaand Greco-Roman motifs: pattern and purpose in Gandharan iconography

Ritual and Presentation in Early Buddhist Religious Architecture

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