Buddha Sculpture Analysis

Cultures are usually diffuse within close regions along with communication of travelers to local people. Just like the practice of Buddhism has travel through the silk road from India to many other countries such as China, Japan, Korea and even Thailand. Today, I will compare the Buddha sculpture from Indian culture to the Standing Buddha sculpture from the Thailand culture. Although both works of art are from different geography regions, we tend to think the two sculptures are very different in the way of the author portrays and depict the idea of Buddhism; however, these two arts have many similarities in forms, compositions and proportions. By identifying the similarities and differences, we can get a better understand on how do other regions in southeast Asia adopt the practice of Buddhism from India and merge …show more content…
Oppositely, Buddhism is an aniconic belief. In other words, they believe that creating images with human or even animal figure to represent the Buddha is offensive and the prohibited to use any figure of human an animal in spiritual practice. Therefore, in the early Buddhist history, they only use symbol like empty throne, Bodhi tree or dharma wheel to represent Buddha; however, Buddhism has changed as time goes by. During Gupta Period, Buddhism has become iconic which is the opposite of aniconic. They started to created sculpture of Buddha instead of using symbols to represent Buddhism. The Gupta period sometimes also well known as the Golden Age of Buddhism because it created the “ideal image” of Buddha by combining the selected traits from the Gandharan region with the Mathura’s sensuous emotions. The Buddha I have chosen today is one of the Buddha from the Gupta period. This Buddha is a typical Gupta type that includes both Gandharan and Mathura styles. The figure is standing on the plain road. The body is covered by a transparent drapery that comes with a lot of folds which adopted from Sarnath.