Gandhara, the Renaissance of Buddhism

[kirtu]

Eurasia: Gandhara, the Renaissance of Buddhism, or how the encounter between Buddhism and Greek Bactria changed Buddhism and world history. A French-Japanese co-production from Pont du Jour, France 5 and NHK, narration in English but with French, Japanese, Pakistani and Russian archaeologists none of which is translated or subtitled. My poor French followed the French dialog which was also mostly covered in the English narration.

phpBB [video]

[Wayfarer]

I studied the topic in Buddhist Studies.

A couple of things sprang out at me:

The account of the Enlightenment is given as 'He suddenly understood the origin of all things and became The Enlightened One'..this is usually given as 'understanding the origin of suffering, rather than 'all things'...likewise, regarding monks,'meditation enables them to seek for the essence of things'. whereas in Buddhism, things are generally 'devoid of essence'.....in the Ajanta caves the believers are praying 'in front of an image of Kalachakra'...'the Kalachakra' is a term associated with Tibetan Buddhism which belongs to a completely different epoch. (I think the word he was looking for was 'Dharmachakra' which is of course an ancient iconographical representation of Buddhism.)

In the section on the Ajanta caves, he says that the Buddha prohibited his representation in sculptural form, and that the early Ajanta caves reflect this, by depicting his presence indirectly, by way of symbols such as a tree or lotus-leaf - but that this 'prohibition on idolatry' was 'overturned several centuries later' by which time there are many images of the Buddha carved into the walls.

But in fact I don't think there is any such 'prohibition on idols' mentioned in the early texts. The notion that the Buddha was not depicted by an image for doctrinal reasons, as the result of a prohibition on idolatry, is unproven (even though it's a very attractive idea.)

There was a paper by an art historian named Susan Huntington which challenged the usual explanation of the absence of Buddha-images in the pre-Kushan period. She refers to discoveries consisting of a group of 22 sculpted Buddha images, carved from green, chloritized schist which had previously been associated with carvings from pre-Kushan Gandhāra, and were very early. Subsequent absolute dating located 17 of these works in the latter part of the first century BC or the very early part of the century afterwards. This supports the idea that Buddha figures were being carved in Gandhāra , prior to the Kushan empire, and indicates that anthropomorphic images of the Buddha were being produced during the period usually associated with the aniconic (= no icon) tradition.

Huntington says that the depictions of worshippers bowing next to empty spaces or unoccupied seats, were actually sculptures of people on pilgrimage to the early sacred sites of Buddhism - places where the Buddha had taught during his life. And the reason that he was not depicted in those images, is for the rather less romantic reason that he had passed on by then - he was not actually there. So she says they were images of pilgrims bowing and paying homage at the places where the Buddha had taught.

Also Coomaraswamy notes that one of the reasons Buddha images took some centuries to start appearing in any number, was because of the novel form of the Buddha, which was a huge challenge for a sculptural tradition that is based solely on the depiction of accepted iconographic conventions.

Overall, the script of this film could have used attention and editing by someone with specialised knowledge of the subject - it is a nice production and the images are beautiful, but the script has errors.

See Coomaraswamy, A. K. (1927). "The Origin of the Buddha Image." The Art Bulletin 9(No 4): 287-329.

Huntington, S. L. (1990). "Early Buddhist art and the theory of aniconism." Art Journal 49(4): 401-408.

[Grigoris]

Is it possible that Indians lacked the technology for large scale stone statues and learned it from the Ancient Hellenes (who, it seems to me, learned it from the Egyptians)?

Are there any large scale stone Indian sculptures/statues predating the Macedonian invasion of India?

Even the Ancient Persians didn't seem to get into large scale free standing statues.