The emergence of a new tradition of asceticism is shown in diverse strands of textual, iconographic, and archaeological evidence from the second through sixth centuries CE. The rhetoric of Buddhist texts from this period, particularly the early Mahayana texts, show all of the hallmarks of the invention of tradition. Rather than arguing for a new tradition or a new set of Buddhist practices, the authors of early Mahayana sutras presented their work as the original teachings of the Buddha himself. The texts themselves were said to have been hidden for centuries—in caves, on the ocean floor, or wherever—only to be discovered by Mahayana scholars. In this sense, early Mahayana texts relied on “general links to a vague mythological antiquity” to buttress their claims to historical authenticity (Van Dyke and Alcock 2003:3). Similarly, the repeated calls to return to the life of forest found throughout early Mahayana texts rely on invocations of a past, real, or imagined, in which the Buddha and the early sangha lived a more truly ascetic lifestyle.
As discussed earlier, the advent of Buddha images can be understood, in a semiotic sense, as a return to the iconic, emotionally immediate worship of the Buddha by the sangha. Critically, between the second and sixth centuries, the tradition of Buddha images spread from Gandhara and Mathura throughout all of India. If anything, Buddha images appear earlier in the mainstream monasteries and pilgrimage sites in the Gangetic Plain than they do in the peripheries where Mahayana Buddhists may have originated. The earliest images at Sarnath, Kausambi, and Shravasti date to the second century ce, while the images at Nagarjunakonda date to the third or fourth century ce and the images at Ajanta date to the fifth
Figure 5.9: Relief at Bharhut (c. first or second century bce) and Mathura style Buddha image (c. second century ce)
Courtesy of the Digital South Asia Library and the American Institute of Indian Studies (Accession Nos. 34333, 44506).
Century CE. Thus, if anything, the adoption of Buddha images was initiated by mainstream Buddhist monasteries prior to the adoption of images by Mahayana Buddhists. However, like the rhetoric of the Mahayana texts, the form of the Buddha images favored by mainstream Buddhist monasteries emphasized the ascetic nature of the Buddha. Prior to the advent of Buddha images, Buddhist iconography commonly depicted crowds of people surrounding an empty throne, footprints, or other markers of the Buddha (see Figure 5.9). In contrast, with the advent of Buddha images in the second century CE, the Buddha was commonly depicted as a solitary, or near solitary, figure. As such, the incorporation of Buddha images in mainstream Buddhist monasteries served as an iconographic invention of tradition, similar in most ways to the textual invention of tradition by Mahayana Buddhists. Thus, whether fringe or mainstream, whether adherents to early Buddhism or Mahayana Buddhism, between the second and sixth centuries ce, the sangha sought a return to a long-standing tradition of asceticism, legitimized through the presentation, either textually or iconographically, of the Buddha as the prototypical ascetic—whether or not that tradition of asceticism ever really existed.
World History
