After the child is born, he is bathed by two streams
of water. In Indian depictions, the water comes either
from jars held by gods or from the trunks of elephants.
In Southeast Asia, the water flows from the mouths of
mythical serpents called nagas. In the Himalayas and
East Asia, dragons take over this role. The art of each
region uses whichever local creature represents the
power of water to confer royal status (the abhiseka rit-
ual) and to purify. In Japan there is an annual lustra-
tion ceremony of the baby Buddha called Kanbutsu.
The Buddha’s life as the prince Siddhartha Gautama
is depicted as one of sheltered dalliance and a time of
training in the skills needed to rule a kingdom. When
he was about twenty-nine years old, after he has had a
son appropriately named Rahula (fetter), Siddhartha
is motivated to leave the palace to seek an under-
standing of the suffering he sees in the world. This
event, which is frequently depicted in the art of South
and Southeast Asia, is called the “great renunciation”
because it represents the enormous sacrifice of his
princely lifestyle. Siddhartha rides out on a horse
whose hooves are supported by demigods (YAKSAs) so
that the horse makes no noise to wake Siddhartha’s
family. In aniconic representations the horse has no
rider, but a parasol above the horse indicates
Siddhartha’s presence. In South and Southeast Asia
the fact that the Buddha was born to be a prince and
renounced this privileged life is of great importance
because by this act he denied both caste and royal
obligations, and affirmed the value of seeking en-
lightenment.From the search for truth to enlightenment
Siddhartha practiced yogic austerities almost to the
point of death in his supreme effort to gain higher
states of consciousness. Artists in the Gandhara region
sculpted an image of this emaciated figure in what
would be called today a superrealistic style. Every bone,
vein, and hollowed surface of his body is shown in glar-
ing detail. The CHAN SCHOOLof East Asia also cele-
brates this stage of the Buddha’s life in paintings of a
scruffy figure emerging from the mountains and in
sculptures of an emaciated, bearded figure in deep
thought, although not in a traditional meditation pos-
ture. The THERAVADAand Chan view of the Buddha’s
life honors the extremes in his search for truth as he
pushed his body and mind to their farthest limits.When starvation did not reveal the truth to Sid-
dhartha, he took nourishment offered by a girl named
Sujata—an event sometimes shown in Indian reliefs
and Southeast Asian paintings, and he vowed to sit be-
neath a fig tree in meditation until he became enlight-
ened. Images of the Buddha S ́akyamuni seated in a
meditation posture, which appear throughout Bud-
dhist Asia, refer to this vow.While meditating beneath the bodhi tree, the name
it acquired after his enlightenment, Siddhartha was
assaulted by MARA, the Buddhist god of death and de-
sire. Called the Maravijaya, or conquest of Mara, this
event is a common subject of sculptures and paint-
ings in all parts of Buddhist Asia. Mara, often riding
an elephant, leads both his armies of demons and his
beautiful daughters in an effort to distract Siddhartha
from his vow. The Buddha is often shown seated in
meditation in the midst of these figures with his right
hand reaching down to touch the earth (bhumispars ́a-
mudra) as he asks the earth to bear witness to his per-
fection and utter commitment to becoming a buddha,
an awakened or enlightened one immune to death or
desire. Mara is thus defeated. The earth-touching ges-
ture alone also refers to the defeat of Mara and signi-
fies the moment when Siddhartha Gautama becomes
the Buddha. On aniconic monuments, the Buddha’sBUDDHA, LIFE OF THE, INART
The Buddha cuts his hair as he renounces the world. (Tibetan paint-
ing, eighteenth century.) The Art Archive/Musée Guimet
Paris/Dagli Orti (A). Reproduced by permission.