Buddhism began in northern India with the teacher Siddhartha Gautama, called the Buddha, "the awakened one," who lived around the 400s BC. As it spread along trade routes to Central Asia, China, Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia, it carried its art with it, and each region gave that art its own look.
The first great Buddhist monuments are stupas: solid domes of earth and brick holding relics, which pilgrims walk around clockwise. The Great Stupa at Sanchi in central India was begun in the 200s BC, and its four stone gateways, carved around the 1st century BC and AD, are covered with stories of the Buddha's lives.
Key idea
Why it works
By the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, artists began to show the Buddha as a person. In Gandhara (in today's Pakistan and Afghanistan), where Greek and Roman art was known, sculptors carved him in gray schist with wavy hair and a monk's robe falling in heavy folds like a Roman toga. At Mathura in northern India, sculptors carved him in red sandstone, with a lighter, thinner robe and a rounder, fuller face. (We describe these in words; we do not have an approved picture yet.)
Looking closely: The Phoenix Hall. A powerful courtier, Fujiwara no Yorimichi, turned his family's country villa into a temple, and in 1053 built this hall for a gilded statue of Amida, the Buddha of the Western Paradise, carved by the sculptor Jōchō. The hall sits by a pond, with long open corridors spreading to each side like wings, and bronze phoenixes on the roof. Its reflection doubles it in the water. It was meant to look like Amida's palace in paradise, as described in Buddhist scriptures, made real on earth. It appears on Japan's 10-yen coin.
Worked example: Read the symbol
- Many scholars read the empty seat under the tree as the Buddha's awakening, shown by a symbol.
- Others read it as people worshiping at the holy site of the awakening.
- Either way, the Buddha himself is not shown in human form.
Answer: The Buddha's awakening by a symbol, or worship at its site; scholars debate which.
Common mistake