While it is tempting to see Buddha images as indicative of the advent of Mahayana Buddhism in India, evidence from the Northwest of India challenges this simple understanding (Behrendt 2007; Leidy 2008). The earliest Buddha images in India were sculpted in Gandhara and Mathura in the second and third centuries GE. From this location in the northwestern periphery of India, the tradition of Buddha images spread across other portions of India and beyond. The earliest Buddha images, however, did not depict Mahayana figures—they were depictions of biographical events in the life of the historical Buddha (Lamotte 1960; Leidy 2008; Schopen 2005:11-12). These early images were consistent with the theology and doctrines of early Buddhism. While these images demonstrate that the earlier taboo on depictions of the Buddha was being challenged, they do not signify the advent of Mahayana Buddhism. This is not to say that the origin of Buddha images and Mahayana Buddhism are unrelated. They both testify to a shift the practice of Buddhism between the first and fifth centuries GE. Both Buddha images and Mahayana Buddhism signify a greater emphasis on the person of the Buddha. By the fifth century GE, Mahayana elements first begin to appear in Buddha images.
Among the earliest Buddha images from Mathura are a series of larger-than-life standing Buddhas that were erected at Shravasti,
Figure 5.1: Early Buddha image from Sarnath (second century ce)
Courtesy of the Digital South Asia Library and the American Institute of Indian Studies (Accession No. 28775).
Kausambi, and Sarnath (see Figure 5.1). Inscriptions on these images record that they were commissioned by a small number of interconnected people, primarily a monk named Bala and a nun named Buddhamitra (Schopen 1997:Ch. 11). In the inscriptions, Bala and Buddhamitra are described as knowing the three Pitakas, a phrase intended to convey their great learning. Finally, these inscriptions record that the images were made in the early years of the Kushan Emperor Kanishka’s reign, about 130-135 ce. As summarized by Schopen (1997:248),
The earliest cult images at three of the most important Buddhist sites in the Ganges Basin—Kausambi, Sravasti, and Sarnath—almost certainly came from Mathura, where scholarly opinion is more and more inclined to locate the production of the first Buddha images. The production, transportation, and installation of all these images—again, the first at these sites—was effected by at least two monastics who knew one another in one or more capacities. And both of these individuals were, in their contemporary idiom, very learned. All of the evidence suggests that these learned monastics were, in Basham’s
(1981:30) words, ‘propagandists for a new cult,’ and that this propaganda was effected in a systematic manner.
Stylistically, the earliest Buddha images from Gandhara (c. second-fourth centuries Ce) are distinct from those in Mathura. First, Gandharan images have more Greek influence, particularly in the way the artists carved the folds in the Buddha’s robes. Second, in Gandharan images there is a greater emphasis on depictions of the Buddha’s life and previous lives. Thus, various early Gandharan Buddha images depict the Buddha’s birth, his gaunt form after practicing austerities, his first sermon, and his death. In this sense, early Gandharan images have more narrative elements than their Mathuran counterparts.
The earliest images with Mahayana elements may date as early as the second or third century ce, with Mahayana images becoming common only in the fifth and sixth centuries CE (Bareau 1985; Leidy 2008; Schopen 2005:11-12). In Mahayana Buddhism, the pantheon of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas was large and complex. Artistic representations of Bodhisattvas were differentiated by the use of standardized signs of their identity. Avalokiteshvara, for example, was typically depicted as a king holding a lotus bud. Maitreya, on the other hand, was often depicted as wearing elaborate jewelry and holding a water jar in his left hand. These standardized depictions of the Buddha and Bodhisattvas varied geographically and temporally, allowing researchers to roughly date and provenance their carving.
Traditional academic scholars viewed Buddha images as a degradation of early Buddhism through the gradual incorporation of lay Buddhist ritual practices (Coomaraswamy 1927; Lamotte 1988; Tambiah 1976). That is, between 500 bce and 500 ce, Buddhist monks and nuns progressively adopted the "vulgar” practices of the laity in order to gain their material support—initially through the worship of relics within stupas and subsequently the worship of Buddha images. As argued in Chapters 3 and 4, based on the archaeological evidence, it appears that monks and nuns participated in stupa ritual with the laity from at least the third century bce—the earliest period for which there is any direct archaeological or inscriptional evidence (Fogelin 2003, 2006; Schopen 1997; Strong 2004; Trainor 1997). Similarly, Schopen (1997:ch. 238) has argued that in the second through fifth centuries CE the sangha initially and disproportionately promoted Buddha images, with the laity only adopting the practice later. Of the eighteen inscriptions on early Buddha images at Sarnath from the Kushan and Gupta periods that list the occupation of the donor, fifteen list the donor as a member of the sangha while only three list the donor as a layperson (Schopen 1997:240). At Ajanta, in the fifth century
CE, of the thirty-six donation inscriptions on Buddha images, thirty-three name members of the sangha and only three name laypeople (Schopen 1997:241). Schopen identifies similar percentages of image donation by the sangha at other sites in western and northwestern India (Schopen 1997:241-244).
Taken together, it appears that the Buddhist sangha was "vulgar” right from the start and, in the case of Buddha images, led the way. To these revisions of Buddhist history I add another. Traditional historians see early monasteries as isolated retreats and later monasteries as corrupted through their regular contact with the laity. In contrast, I argue that Buddhist monasteries were actively engaged the laity from the start, only becoming isolated retreats in about the fifth century CE (Fogelin 2008c). This new isolation is shown by the abandonment of chaitya halls and the stupas they contained, the only spaces at Buddhist monasteries open to the laity. The question remains, however, why Mahayana Buddhism and the image cult emerged between the first and fifth centuries CE—and what, if anything, monastic architecture had to do with it.
World History
