His Image is So Commonplace, But How Did the Buddha Get His Face?

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Aatish TaseeR

A 19th-century Burmese illustration on parchment paper depicting the Buddha seated in padmasana, or lotus position.

For the first six centuries after his death, the Buddha was never depicted in human form. He was only ever represented aniconically by a sacred synecdoche — his footprints, for example; or a parasol. How did the image of the Buddha enter the world of men? “In the omission of the figure of the Buddha,” writes Coomaraswamy, “the Early Buddhist art is truly Buddhist: For the rest, it is an art about Buddhism, rather than Buddhist art.” It begins with the Kushans, descendants of pastoral nomads who emerged like a wind out of the Eastern steppe around the second century B.C. They were heirs to a dazzling hybridity, which included the first ever confluence of Greece, China, Persia and India. [More]

A headless seated Buddha, from approximately A.D. 200 to 300, made in Mathura, in what is now central India. Mathura was one of the earliest and most important sites for the development of the Buddha’s image. Artisans there often worked in red sandstone with white spots.Credit...Buddha, circa 200-300, sandstone, Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, India, Asian Art Museum, the Avery Brundage Collection, photo © Asian Art Museum of San Francisco