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It
was quite a long time after Gotama's death - about 500
years - before the first statues were made. Who would
decide what the first ones would look like? Without
cameras nobody would have any idea what he actually
looked like. Who would they use as a model? Gotama was remembered as being very special, very important. He was a prince before he was enlightened and he was a great spiritual leader after he was enlightened. He was a great conqueror (of ignorance), a spiritual warrior, a true hero. The nearest kind of person sculptors would have thought of was a king - there were a lot of these in India at the time. India already had a long religious history and gods and deities were nothing new, so existing ideas about 'supermen' would also have had an influence. |
 There is a passage in
the Buddhist scriptures listing 32 special marks found on
the body of a great being. These would have been taken
into account as well. And of course the sculptors would
have had to work according to their clients' ideas of
what a Buddha looked like.Let's look at an old style Buddha statue and see what we can notice.
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