Studies in Buddhist Art of South Asia (An Old and Rare Book)

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Buddhist art, by sheer amount of material spread over whole of Asia and because its cultural and religious impact and its bearing on the development of various national or regional art histories, has by now become an independent discipline in its own right. With the shrinking world in our times it is imperative to have a global perspective in our studies. There are some basic issues and minimum features which can easily be identified and can form the starting point of scholarly studies. With such goals in view after founding the International Association of Buddhist Studies on the occasion of the first International conference on the history of Buddhism in 1976, I organized panels and studies on Buddhist art at the University of Wisconsin. This book contains contributions from one of these panels along with an introductory article by me. I hope to publish other contributions in future.

As with everything else related to the Buddha and history of Buddhism, the Indian elements and beginnings in South Asia are vital for the understanding of the overall development of Buddhist art. For the first three hundred years after the passing away of the Buddha, i.e. until the end of the Maurya-Sunga period, its essential character in India remained symbolic and aniconic. This is followed by a period of transition extending for almost a hundred years when it passes through a phase of new experiments as a result of its interaction with diverse ethnic and cultural elements, both indigenous and foreign. By the end of the first century A.D. it finally emerges from its abstraction and takes more definite forms and acquires more popular and wider base. Although the outlines of the course of development are clear the details are still being debated. By the time these debates are over one finds oneself facing the beautiful synthesis of spirit and matter which took place in the Gupta period when the classical forms of Buddhist art in India were born and the impact was gradually felt Yar and wide in Asia. This period of acme leads to another phase of abstraction which, is impregnated with mystic meanings under a camouflage of a complicated concretisation of form which is at once mundane and sublime.

Out of the seven contributions presented here the first three deal with the origin and early history of the Buddha/Bodhisattva image. The remaining four touch upon issues of diverse nature of significance based on new discoveries and insights. While the first three along with the fourth cover between them the post- Asokan phase in which on the one hand the Buddha/Bodhisattva image was born, and on the other the Budhist narrative art received its definition.