Buddhist Art

Art, whatever you  may personally define it as, is always a beautiful thing to reflect on, I've found.  It's a medium by which people from virtually all cultures and societies can relate to.  It is a medium by which ideas, stories, feelings and emotions can be expressed and interpreted, in a variety of ways.

Religious art, in particular, is a fascinating 'grouping', if you may, of art that I've particularly enjoyed examining.  I've just always found myself quite intrigued by the manner and style by which many of these are produced - in particular, Buddhist statues...vast ones, built upon mountain sides through primitive means many years ago.  From this week's readings, I was quite surprised to see that the Buddha is actually portrayed in a number of different 'styles' from the one that I am used to.  In my house, when I was growing up, my parents had a miniature jade Buddhist statue, that looked much like this:

It was my impression that this was the 'only' representation of Buddha - a large, jolly, laughing bald man.  How utterly wrong I was!  Not only from the fact that this is not the only representation of Buddha (there being much smaller versions of him), but the fact that there is not just 'one' Buddha per se, as I generalized.  I suppose that'd partly explain why I soon found myself looking at very different images of a Buddha:

It was only after further reading into the week's assignment that I saw how the spread of Buddhism into different countries and cultural groups soon found itself being influenced, in no small ways - including the very portrayal of the Buddha.  In particular, the Kushan portrayal of the Buddha - fully attired in the traditional attire of the particular cultural group - is quite different from the large laughing Buddha (which is, in fact, not technically a portrayal of the Buddha himself - a common misconception that I've been a victim of!)

Still, I found it quite interesting to see, further on on my own research, the different ways by which various cultural groups will interject their own cultural 'imagery' into a, once, foreign religion.  I suppose it's just one of many ways by which a new religion can be made into a more 'acceptable' thing within a new society - inter-graining it somehow with an already existing culture so that it appears more common than 'outsider'.