the Buddha as a human being could be shown in such
jatakascenes, he is not represented in any reliefs of this
period. The absence of the Buddha in anthropomor-
phic form is called aniconicin art historical literature.
How to interpret this absence is at the center of ex-
tensive scholarly debate, but the initial absence accen-
tuates the importance of Buddha images created later.
The early Buddhist sites in India clearly show that
the STUPA(and thus the relic enshrined therein) was
the focus of worship. Other symbolic forms, such as
the tree or the wheel, were also worshiped. There were
extensive narrative reliefs associated with these sites,
particularly with stupas. Eventually, anthropomor-
phic images began to be used in depictions of the Bud-
dha’s life stories. It appears that interest in the
anthropomorphic images lay more in their narrative
function, and not in their function as icons. The pop-
ularization of an icon cult may have been an innova-
tion of a few clerics, most particularly the monk Bala
and his associates, who placed enormous Mathura
Buddha images at several sites in northern India. Very
quickly, however, the Buddha image became wide-
spread in South Asia.
A single image, without any narrative context, is
difficult to “read.” Certain places and periods had fa-
vorite image types, and the different Buddhist schools,
such as THERAVADAand MAHAYANA, used and inter-
preted Buddha images in different ways. Nevertheless,
the actual images themselves remain iconographically
consistent.
For example, the favorite form that the Buddha im-
age takes, whether standing or seated, what arm posi-
tions are shown, and how the robe is worn, have been
shown to be determined not so much by religious con-
cerns but by artistic traditions. Various regions and pe-
riods favor certain dominant types of Buddha images,
with a limited number of secondary forms. Theravada
Buddha images are extremely limited in their iconog-
raphy. Almost all seated images in Sri Lanka, for ex-
ample, are in meditation. Mahayana Buddhism uses
the different hand gestures of seated Buddha images
to construct systems of five, six, and seven image
MANDALA. However, the fact that an image might be
in earth-touching gesture, for example, is not itself suf-
ficient to tell us whether it is S ́akyamuni at the mo-
ment of calling the earth to witness or rather the
Mahayana Buddha AKSOBHYA. There is no difference
artistically. This issue calls into question whether we
can even speak of Mahayana art, at least in terms of
Buddha images. Rather it is context, not iconography,
that defines the image. Likewise, the Buddha images
reflect no difference in the way the different bodies of
the Buddha (the trikaya) are represented. It is only
when we move to the VAJRAYANABuddhist systems,
such as those of Nepal and Tibet, with new definitions
of the Buddha and his body, that the art becomes
clearly differentiated.See also:Bodhisattva Images; Buddha, Life of the, in
Art; Jainism and Buddhism; Mudraand Visual Im-
agery; Robes and ClothingBibliography
Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish. The Origin of the Buddha Im-
age.New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1972.
Dehejia, Vidya. “Aniconism and the Multivalence of Emblems.”
Ars Orientalis21 (1991): 45–66.
Ghose, Rajeshwari, with Puay-peng Ho and Yeung Chun-tong.
In the Footsteps of the Buddha: An Iconic Journey from IndiaBUDDHAIMAGESStatue of the Buddha at the eighth-century grotto shrine of So ̆kku-
ram near Pulguksa, South Korea. © Carmen Redondo/Corbis. Re-
produced by permission.