Parul Pandya Dhar
University of Delhi (India)
Visual evocations of the Buddha’s life began to appear in Indian art from about the second century BCE. In the earliest sculptures, depictions of his past lives, embedded in the jātaka tradition, and portrayals of select scenes from Śākyamuni’s life are in evidence alongside each other. As the need for such visual renditions grew, the artists entrusted with the task of picturing the Buddha’s life evolved into refined suitable visual programmes. They achieved their objectives remarkably well by resourcefully drawing from the available verbal and visual imagery, while at the same time imaginatively fashioning newer iconographies and narrative devices.
Such fluid transactions in the visual sphere may, at least in part, have been linked to Buddhism’s ability to engage effectively with concurrent belief systems in India and across Asia, a recurrent theme throughout history. With time, even as newer visual modes and iconographic formulae for rendering the Buddha’s life in art were being perfected, canonized, and transformed, a vibrant dialogue appears to have continued between the artistic renditions of select themes and motifs found in Buddhist, Jain, Hindu, and popular belief systems. Such processes of iconographic transference crossed many cultural boundaries, specifically region, religion, and time. This talk will highlight some significant visual motifs, iconographies, and narrative strategies adopted by the ancient sculptors and painters to portray the Buddha’s life, which reveal thematic and representational links across religious, regional, and temporal boundaries.
(Presented in the International Conference on Buddhist Studies: Buddha's Biography – Buddhist Legends, 18-19 July 2015, Le Meridien Bangkok Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Department of Thai, Faculty of Arts, The Pali and Sanskrit Section, Department of Eastern Languages, Faculty of Arts and Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University)