Figure of seated Buddha
Medium:Carved grey schist
Geography: Gandhara, Pakistan
Date: 2nd century AD
Period: Kushan Period
Dimensions:59.7 x 43.8 cm
Object number: 939.17.14
Credit Line: This purchase was made possible with the support of The Reuben Wells Leonard Bequest Fund.
Gallery Location:Sir Christopher Ondaatje South Asian Gallery
DescriptionThis unusual sculpture of a seated Buddha shows him looking straight out at the viewer with right hand raised in the gesture of dispeling fear (abhaya mudra). The hand appears webbed, a visual reference to one of the 32 primary marks that distinguish a Buddha, as described in Buddhist texts. Styllistic, it represents earlier modes of representing the Buddha that were likely transported as small sculpture to China in the 1st-3rd century AD and that appear in the Daoist context, as part of the spread of Buddhism outside of northern India.
