An Illustrated Outline of Buddhism: The Essentials of Buddhist Spirituality (11 page)

in the beauty of nature. This amounts to a veritable natural sacrament,

and it is one to which the Buddhists of Japan—amongst others—are

particularly sensitive.

*

* *

Let us now come to the three important early schools of Buddhist art:

Between the 1st and 3rd centuries A.D., Mathurā (in Uttar Pradesh)

was a center of Buddhist art and culture. It was at Mathurā—and also

at Gandhāra—that the earliest extant stone statues of the Buddha were

found. Because of this, art historians have mostly taken the view that,

before this period, Buddhist art consisted only of symbols, such as a

wheel, a throne, a tree, etc. However, it is recorded that statues of the

Buddha were made from his life-time onwards, but being in wood,

these have not endured. In the art of Mathurā, the human form is ful ,

rounded, and fluid without being heavy.

In the fourth century B.C., the north-west Indian province of

Gandhāra was conquered by Alexander the Great. When, at the begin-

ning of the Christian era, the inhabitants of Gandhāra became Bud-

dhists, the artistic legacy of Alexander, coupled with continuing trad-

ing links with the Greco-Roman world, imposed on the Buddhist art

of Gandhāra, from the second to the fifth century A.D., a markedly

Hellenistic stamp—a strange anomaly in the history of Buddhist art.

The figures in the art of Gandhāra tend to be slender and elegant.

More important—and more seminal—in the evolution of Bud-

dhist art was the amazing flowering that took place during the long

Buddhist Art

25

Buddha seated on a lion throne, Mathurā, India, 2nd century A.D.

Scene from the life of the Buddha, Gandhāra, late 2nd to early 3rd century A.D.

26

An Illustrated Outline of Buddhism

Carvings from the Great Stūpa of Sānchī, central India:

Buddha represented as a
stūpa
(
left
), as the sacred tree (
center
), and as the Wheel of the Law (
right
) The Great Stūpa
of Sānchī, central India

Buddhist Art

27

Gupta Dynasty (fourth-seventh centuries A.D.) in the North Indian

kingdom of Māgadha and its considerable territorial extensions. Art of

the Gupta period is in evidence at Ajantā, Ellorā, Sānchī, and Sārnāth.

In a way it is a synthesis of the two earlier styles: in it fluidity and el-

egance are combined. Gupta art had a formative influence on virtual y

all subsequent developments in both Hindu and Buddhist art in India

and beyond.

*

* *

In Buddhist architecture, one encounters
stūpa
s
(memorials, tombs, or

reliquaries) and
vihāra
s
(resting-places or monasteries). The pagodas

of China, Korea, and Japan were developed from the original Indian

stūpa
s
.

An art form common in Tibet is that of the
t’hanka
,
a painted

scroll on cotton or silk. The paintings usual y portray Buddhas and

Bodhisattvas but may also portray a
mandala
,
a symbolic “diagram”