This paper examines the extent to which the construction of these Big Buddhas represents the appropriation of Buddhist RCR (Rock-Cut Religious) sites by non-local political and religious elites as a form of social control, and it is herein proposed that these social and religious elites commissioned and maintained such projects to reinforce authority and integrate local religious practices into institutional Buddhism. Since the construction of Big Buddhas required vast resources, labour and coordination, this paper examines those Big Buddhas which were left unfinished in order to understand the criteria for both success and failure, while also considering how these sculptures, as acts of social appropriation, mediated between the mundane and the divine, the imperial periphery and the centre, functioning as both spiritual symbols and political instruments.

From small-scale shrines to handheld icons and votive tablets, portability has long factored into the design and reception of Buddhist art.

The article first examines the circulation of miniature icons that served as diplomatic gifts in the sixth and seventh centuries. It then turns to figurative plaques from Tang-dynasty China (618–907) that were modified for votive and architectural uses in early Japan. Lastly, the article examines the reasons underlying the enduring popularity of portable shrines in the [Japanese] archipelago.

This chapter discusses a little-known Buddhist scripture, the Sutra of the Questions by Druma, King of the Kinnara (Daiju kinnara-ō shomon-gyō), translated into Chinese by Kumārajīva in the early fifth century. This sutra is unique in that it proposes a powerful, and sympathetic, philosophy of music rooted in the Mahayana doctrines of emptiness; it also offers a template for Buddhist rituals involving music and dance that have been performed in Japan since the eighth century as part of the Gagaku and Bugaku repertory.

The article outlines some of the ways in which professional musicians and music virtuosos among the aristocracy conceptualized gagaku and bugaku instrumental music in Buddhist terms between the eleventh and the sixteenth centuries. In addition to providing doctrinal justifications for artistic endeavors, they also contributed to the development of new ritual forms, such as bugaku hōyō and kangen kōshiki. This article explores influential Buddhist canonical ideas about music and shows how they were developed by musicians in medieval Japan.

Tathagata Buddha songs, which this paper studies, has been specifically enabling for Dalit women as it gives them not only a sense of religiosity but it also opens them to the possibility of rationalizing their beliefs and practices. The paper will bring up an ethnographic account of some of these Dalit women singers and look into some of their composition and songs that have a specific invocation to Gautam Buddha and of political icons like Babasaheb Ambedkar, whom they revere.

Buddhist art, if there is such a thing, is perhaps too important to be left to art historians

The Western category of “Art” asks us to appreciate the craftsmanship and aesthetic beauty of religious artifacts, but in doing so it deemphasizes their intended meanings and uses. In this essay, Bernard Fauré encourages us to look beyond the “art” (or even “anthropology”) of “Buddhist art” to see, if we can, its “aura.”

An unprecedented number of multilevel pagodas were built in China from the tenth through the thirteenth century. This growing emphasis on verticality, in contrast to the usual horizontal sprawl of China’s building tradition, raises questions about what “height” meant in the history of Chinese architecture. This essay argues that the height of the multilevel pagoda was necessarily performative: not so much because the pagoda served as a means of ascending to that height, but because it drew the attention of the faithful.

Where earlier stupas were icons and indexes of the Buddha encased within indexes of his presence, later stupas were symbols of the Buddha and Buddhist theology. This change in the material practice of Buddhism reduced stupas ’ emotional immediacy in favor of greater intellectual detachment. In the end, this shift in the meaning ascribed to stupas created the preconditions from which the Buddhist image cult and Mahayana Buddhism emerged in the first through fifth centuries A.D. The development of Mahayana Buddhism and Buddha images signified a return to iconic worship of the Buddha.

Because of the war, the mission of the Shōjuin bell swung drastically…

During the Asia-Pacific War, as metals grew scarce, temple bells became a material resource for munition production. Why were temples and shrines convinced to give up their bells that embodied the hopes and vows of past donors? What was the process of transformation from a religious instrument used to comfort the dead into an object that would destroy life?

Miracle tales from medieval China recorded the ability of Buddhist statues to walk, speak, emit light, and even feel pain. Consecration ceremonies, however, emphasized the sense of vision and the agency of the ritual practitioner over the agency of the statue. This essay argues that by underscoring the corporeal agency of animated sculptures, which was manifested both in their extraordinary qualities and in their vulnerability to damage, the circulation of miracle tales enabled a participatory practice in which devotees, monks and laypeople alike, were able to engage in the performative act of writing statues into life.

Ritual theories almost always assume that ritual is a kind of human action, which makes it impossible to explain ritual spaces or objects that were designed to enact the ritual without human participation. The relic depository of Chaoyang North Pagoda was a completely sealed stone box that was clearly designed as a ritual space for chanting the Uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī. This ritual space—occluded from human access—contradicts contemporary understandings of ritual. By illuminating the relic depository from the emic perspective of medieval Buddhists and applying anthropological theories, this paper offers theoretical explanations for conditions in which religious rituals were primarily enacted through non-human agency.

The celebrations, you can see, were not subdued meditation events. Dancing, instruments being played and so on. This is hardly restrained. This is extatic worship.

1. South Asian Drumming Beyond Tala: The Problem with “Meter” in Buddhist Sri Lanka
2. On the Sonic Materialization of Buddhist History: Drum Speech in Southern Sri Lanka
3. along with numerous Audio and Video examples.

In this way, we should view Sri Lankan Buddhist drumming not as a simple application of pre-Buddhist rites to a nominally Buddhist context but rather as a unique, and uniquely Buddhist, art form in its own right.

It examines how the fascination with marble, which is vernacularly categorized as ‘white jade’ in Chinese, motivated such endeavors and how these icons shaped the perception of a developing Buddhist cosmopolis among Chinese Buddhists by helping them locate Burma in the Buddhist world in a spiritually and materially meaningful way.

The underlying idea of improving and extending through time (xiū 修) linked renovations and rituals. Managers viewed both as ways to renew the temple community, to protect temple buildings, and to pass liturgical and craft knowledge to future generations.

deathbed practices in nineteenth-century Siam were structured to flow seamlessly from chanting for the dying to chanting for the dead, a sequence reflected in the physical layout of the manuscripts themselves.

mGur (pronounced gur) denotes a specific type of religious poetry that has played an important role in the expression and transmission of Buddhism across the Tibetan cultural world. The term mgur is usually translated as ‘song’ and it has been used to refer to a wide variety of oral and literary creations.

Tibetan Buddhism has historically included non-monastic practitioners who used religious poetry (mGur) to share their spiritual teachings. Through the life and works of Milarepa and Tsangnyön Heruka, this work explores how wandering yogins revitalized Buddhism by presenting it in accessible, creative ways beyond traditional institutions.

To learn more about Yuki Kawae and his approach to Zen gardens and art see his 2021 interview with Whitewall.

There are 400+ deities herein, and 4,000+ photos of statuary from Kamakura, Nara, Kyoto, and elsewhere in Japan.

The site also includes an extensive bibliography of other resources useful for researching Japanese Buddhism.

This surprising fact shows that the abbot was likely more interested in courtly trends than in Buddhist piety and was perhaps appointed for political reasons: a trend all too common in places where the state is entangled with the monastic Saṅgha. These panels also demonstrate how trends in non-Buddhist art and fashion can come to influence Buddhist temple art proper.

Yellow Bull: ‘Didn’t you tell me you were a ghost?’
Ghost: ‘People can be afraid of other people. And dogs can be afraid of dogs, can’t they?’

A collage of characters from street dogs to a hand model, from an amputee to religious statues all find themselves lost in Saṃsāra.

In Tibet sounds can heal, make ill, protect, challenge, appease, defile, purify, seduce or even liberate from worldly attachments. Sounds of the natural environment merge with human-made music and chanting in soundscapes that are intimately interconnected. While the spiritual features and healing powers of Buddhist ritual music have been often described, what is perhaps less known is the kaleidoscope of natural and human sounds against which it has been developed and performed for centuries. In this portfolio we explore some of these sacred soundscapes, their history and impacts.

To this day it is not unusual in Japan for the scholar to be a fine calligrapher and an accomplished poet in addition to possessing the pertinent intellectual abilities.

​This encyclopedia entry explores Japanese aesthetics, highlighting concepts such as mono no aware (the pathos of things), wabi (subdued, austere beauty), and sabi (rustic patina), which reflect a deep appreciation for impermanence and nature. It also examines the integration of art and self-cultivation in Japanese culture, emphasizing that artistic practices are often seen as paths to spiritual and personal development.

Even as Vajirayan criticized the supernaturalism of indigenous Siamese religious forms, certain ideas and practices were left intact. In particular was a focus on karma or merit and morality…

The Western-style murals adorning the walls at Wat Bovorn Niwet reflect Prince Mongut’s vision for a reformed Thai Buddhism that would adopt the rationalism and advances of the West but still place the Buddha at its center.

a concise history of amulets and an overview of amulet culture in Thailand.

The general introduction to the Siam Society’s special issue all about the topic.

When explaining their reasons for using such peculiar statues at their temples, the abbots state that these images brighten the atmosphere…

Jizō is a savior of beings suffering in the world without buddhas

Women bundled together and stitched their hair into the most sacred parts of the image—the deity’s hair or robes and Sanskrit seed-syllables—as a means to accrue merit for themselves or for a loved one.

This paper focuses on a set of embroidered Japanese Buddhist images said to incorporate the hair of Chūjōhime (753–781), a legendary aristocratic woman credited with attaining rebirth in Amida’s Pure Land. Chūjōhime’s hair embroideries served to show that women’s bodies could be transformed into miraculous materiality through corporeal devotional practices and served as evidence that women were capable of achieving enlightenment.

Despite the decimation of traditional culture during the Khmer Rouge period (1975–1979), Dharma songs remain an integral facet of Buddhist life among Khmers in Cambodia and in diaspora.

This article examines the role of Dharma songs in contemporary Cambodia, highlighting how their texts, melodies, and performances evoke the aesthetic experiences of saṃvega and pasāda, central to Buddhist art and practice. It emphasizes the significance of music in expressing and living Buddhism within the Khmer tradition.

This essay explores the image-text relationship between the ca. 12-century monumental Maitreya bodhisattva sculpture within a narrow tower in the village of Mangyu and passages from the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra.

It is the human need to express devotion to and adoration of the Buddha and his teaching that manifests itself in the act of building pagodas and in making ceremonial offerings before shrines.

This illustrated book is a journey through Burma’s legendary and renowned pagodas and other famous places, sharing the myths and stories tied to each site—legends that are deeply ingrained in the hearts and minds of every Burmese.

The need of the Romans for Chinese silk urged the extension of trade through Central Asia, while at the same time Buddhism spread, first from India northwards, picking up classical elements, and then gradually via Central Asia and China to Japan.

This book explains how artistic patterns from ancient Greece found their way into Japanese designs.

We very much doubt that most Thai Buddhists would be bothered by any need to distinguish a “miraculous” category. Their traditional religion teaches that at the highest level of enlightenment all forms are illusions; thus the whole world and everything in it can be interpreted as metaphors or “names” ultimately. Nothing in such a world can, in essence, ever be real or unreal, illogical or logical in the Western Aristotelian sense.

The murals are an assertion of certain core values expressed in ancient Buddhist symbols as a defense of the totality of the religious system against perceived threats from competing modern values.

[These] murals help to make Buddhist ideas concrete

Our observations demonstrate that ancient Indian artists of the Gandhara region had a basic knowledge of human anatomy, especially surface anatomy and musculoskeletal features. They also possessed knowledge of the approximate size and position of the bones, joints and muscles, including their approximate origin and insertion points. However, certain errors of anatomical knowledge including an extra number of ribs and a segmented sternum were noticed.

An anatomical review of a few Gandharan “Fasting” Buddha statues, including this one:

… wearing only a saṃkakṣikā, because the latter appears not to cover the breasts completely, but only providing some support

A Gandharan stucco figurine of a female Buddhist monk in the Civico Museo Archeologico in Milan, likely from Hadda around the second century AD, providing rare evidence of female monastics in Gandhāra and their attire.

The Taliban were by no means the first people to try to destroy the Buddhas. Islamic iconoclasts had been hacking away at them for centuries. The Emperor Aurangzeb ordered cannons to blast the statues, as did a Persian king in the 18th century. Both attempts damaged but did not destroy the statues.

This essay is a brief history of and reflection on the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan.

To see the image strictly as something to be seen is, in Skilling’s Buddhologist eyes, nothing less than to manifest ignorance…

This book chapter examines the concept of “icons” within Theravāda Buddhism, drawing on narrative depictions. It argues that debates in art history regarding insider (emic) and outsider (etic) interpretations are crucial for understanding Southeast Asian perspectives on the Buddha. These perspectives grapple with the Buddha as both a historical figure and a representation of transcendent ideals.

The decision of a Buddhist council in favor of extensive missionary work outside India and the dispatch of monks to Afghanistan and Kashmir launched Buddhism’s development into a world religion. Thus, at the beginning of our era, Buddhist monks were wandering as missionaries through Central and Far East Asia.

This is a catalog of a 1982 exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the pieces themselves dating from the 3rd century CE to the 10th century CE and now housed in the collections of the West Berlin State Museums. Also included is a scholarly introduction, giving a background to both the Silk Road and the movement of Buddhist art (and therefore Buddhism itself) through Central and East Asia.

For an academic discussion of this Mahayana Sutra and its parallels, see Levman’s 2005 article in CJBS.

Now, what we can say is that, it is within these spaces of practices of mental cultivation that poetry, in the Buddhist world, takes its place, as well as being part of literary culture; as well as being part of religious culture. But, it has a central place in the practice of mental cultivation. 

In this lecture, Professor Charles Hallisey describes how Buddhism has historically used poetry as a vehicle for its teachings. Further, through various examples, he offers the idea that, in the Buddhist world, scholatiscism and poetry are forms of mental cultivation as much as meditation and ritual and have always been so. 

Not just a catalog of sculptures, the included essays by leading scholars explain much of what is known about the early history of Southeast Asian polities and their Indic religions.

… this paper explores the processes by which he was transformed into a saintly figure. The manifold images of Xuanzang reflected the interaction and synthesis of Chinese and Indian Buddhist traditions that began during the early medieval period, further transformations when transmitted to other cultures, distinctions between elite and popular worship, and the intertwining of visualal and literary forms of [Buddhist] art.

Two of these carry extracts from the Abhidhamma; the third gives a syllabary followed by the recollection formulas of the Three Gems. The other two epigraphs are written not on stone slabs but are inscribed on small gold leaves; they contain the heart formulas of the books of the Tipiṭaka and the qualities of the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha.

I suggest that they are the products of widespread and enduring Buddhist cultures of inscription, installation, and consecration, as well as of customs of condensation and abbreviation that have have been intrinsic to Thai liturgical and manuscript practices up to the present.

To present slowness and simplicity as prophetic counterpoints against the dizzying excesses of the contemporary metropolis; and to offer contemplative attentiveness as a therapeutic resource for life in the modern world.

This paper studies the ways that Walker, a short film by the Malaysian-Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-Liang, visualizes the relationship between Buddhism and modernity.

You can also watch on YouTube:

• a clip from the film discussed in this article
• a sped-up version of another film from the series
• and an interview with Ng about this article

Ethnobotanical surveys were conducted in six provinces of China to investigate and document Bodhi bead plants.

Forty-seven species in 19 families and 39 genera represented 52 types of Bodhi beads that were collected. The most popular Bodhi bead plants have a long history and religious significance. Most Bodhi bead plants can be used as medicine or food, and their seeds or fruits are the main elements in these uses.

Dōgen’s calligraphy is a carefully orchestrated performance. That is, it does precisely what it asks its readers to do: it sits calmly, evenly, and at poised attention in a real-world field of objects. The manuscript’s brushstrokes and entire aesthetic layout enact seated meditation.

The Fukanzazengi falls into a completely different genre of Zen writing from the sorts of expressive and creative manifestations, much-favored in museum exhibitions, in which dynamic interpretation is paramount. Instead, the Fukanzazengi is a pedagogical and didactic guide in which legibility is crucial, the function being to teach adherents, clearly and methodically, how to do seated meditation. In support of this assertion, I offer an extended visual analysis of the performativity of the manuscript’s calm and measured calligraphy.

Beginning in the northwestern region of India, and spreading through Central Asia and the rest of Asia along the Silk Road, the making of colossal Buddha statues has been a major theme in Buddhist art. The colossal Buddha statues predominantly feature Śākyamuni (the Historical Buddha), Maitreya (the Future Buddha), and Vairocana (the Transcendant Buddha), and they were fashioned out of religious devotion and frequently in conjunction with notions of Buddhist kingship. This paper examines the religious, social and political circumstances under which these colossal statues were made, focusing on examples from Central and East Asia made during the first millennium CE. Beginning in the 1990s, there was a revival of making colossal Buddha statues across China and elsewhere. The paper also briefly compares the current wave of building colossal Buddha statues with historical examples.

Despite being cultural aliens, the nomads were aware of the superior literary and cultural tradition of the Chinese with whom they came into contact. Accepting the Confucian tradition and Chinese ways, however, would have meant subsuming their military superiority to and separateness from those they conquered. Instead, most nomadic rulers chose to adopt Buddhism as an alternative cultural policy.

May the Buddha not be hot or cold, nor be bothered by flies …

Shortly after the Buddha’s awakening, Nāga Mucalinda protects him from a storm—a striking image that would inspire artists for thousands of years.

They had come to him glittering with beauty—
Taṇha, Arati, and Raga—
But the Teacher swept them away right there
As the wind, a fallen cotton tuft.

Depressed, Māra laments to his three daughters of his failure to distract the Buddha. So they take on the task themselves and assume a variety of sensuous forms to tempt him. But they fail too, and Māra castigates them for being so presumptuous

There is no story of Gotama having touched the ground before his awakening in the earliest Buddhist texts describing these events

The Lalitavistara sutra is one of the central texts in the Mahayana tradition and it describes the life of the Buddha.

Deals with the various species of plants found in the Borobudur releifs, showing the care and detail taken in including aspects of nature in Buddhist reliefs.

… the history, myth and cult of a Burmese Buddha image standing in the middle of the [Shan] city of Chiang Tung and the ways in which religious visual culture expresses ethnic-religious identity.

Religious art, as a symbol of culture, is inevitably political. And yet, for whatever reasons an icon might be installed, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes adopted by its hosts.

As a sacred site for pilgrimage, Bodhgayā became even more prominent from the sixth and seventh centuries onward, when the rebuilding of the Mahābodhi Temple coincided with the installation of a Buddha statue with the earth-touching gesture, symbolic of the Buddha’s calling upon the earth to bear witness to his victory over evil. Miracles enshroud the creation of the image itself, and later it became a famous icon widely copied throughout the Buddhist world.

This essay investigates the image’s origins and its dissemination to China. Further, it argues that the legends surrounding the image that developed in China contributed to Chinese pilgrims visiting India to pay homage to the site and the sacred statue, and to seek experiences of the numinous and validation of their piety. In turn they brought replicas of the statue back to China, contributing to the spread of the image type. Pilgrims’ accounts of miracle-performing images and their depictions in visual forms affirm, to the pious, the efficacy of the divinities, not seen as separate from their material forms

This interview explores David Max Moerman’s study of the largely unknown history of Japanese, Buddhist world maps. His work uncovers an alternative history of Japanese Buddhism shaped by a Buddhist geographic imaginary that engaged multiple cartographic and cosmological worldviews.

Because he’s neutral. I mean if we threw Christ up there, he is controversial. Everybody has got a deal about him. But Buddha, nobody seems to be that perturbed about a Buddha.

What can one possibly say about [this painting]? One can only sit in front of it, gazing at it in silent wonder.

A scholar of Chinese painting attempts to explain this famously ineffable Ch’an still life.

Tantric Buddhist art helps people to imagine a world they do not yet experience and to jolt them out of their habitual experience of the world

An introduction to Tantric Buddhist art and how tantric practices connect to the Buddhist path.

Buddhas and Bodisattvas and frequently other deities are shown with their hands forming a number of different ritualized and stylized poses (Mudrās).

Up until the middle of the first millennium, Avalokiteshvara consistently appeared in a magnificent, idealized body, yet one in accord with human norms. But sometime around the 6th century, an iconographic revolution occurred in Indian art, and he began to acquire additional arms, heads, and eyes.

An introduction to the history of Avalokiteshvara through Buddhist art.

This book describes the basics of Buddhist philosophy and practice within the contexts of a number of dramatic, not documentary, films. It introduces some of the main traditions of Buddhism. Little or no knowledge of Buddhism is assumed of the reader. Instead, Buddhist concepts, practices, and histories are presented in progression so that this might serve as an introduction to Buddhism particularly accessible to those interested in film.

Didn’t you know beforehand how the world of men is? Sometimes we have to let go of the things we like.

An orphaned boy is raised by an old hermit on a small barge in the middle of a scenic, mountain lake where he learns about the cycle of life and death.

For an overview of critical interpretations of the film’s symbolism, see Green and Mun’s 2019 article, “Representing Buddhism through Mise-en-scène, Diegesis, and Mimesis” (IJBTC 29.1).

This is the second painting that Seol Min has donated to the people of San Francisco.

There are many signs pointing to the Buddha-to-be’s special qualities.

… how the art world’s hunger for ancient artifacts is destroying a culture

Season 2, special episode i of The History of India Podcast.

We find a hidden stupa, search for the stories in the carvings, see through the invisible Buddha figures. And we see how this holy place fits into the lives of ancient Indians.

… the identification of Vairocana in these caves suggests that some form of the Tantric soteriological methodology explained in the Mahāvairocanasūtra was extant in the fifth century

… the alleged, extraordinary natures of such powerful relics and images compelled certain individuals to narrate and recount how they were found or made, where they traveled, and the various miracles they performed as a testament to their great power

[the Apadāna] does in fact include a Sumedha story which features the honoring of Dīpaṅkara Buddha with lotus flowers

On the many version of the Buddha’s prophecy across ancient Buddhist literature and art.

Notice in particular how the looting was worse during the Cold War than during the colonial period, with American-backed militias instrumental in the efforts on both sides of the border.

One of the most obvious fallacies of modern Theravāda Buddhism is the depiction of the Buddha with a full head of hair.

Since the footprints of the Buddha are understood to represent the physical presence of the historical Buddha, they are especially venerated in such Theravāda Buddhist countries as Sri Lanka and Thailand, although they also exist in other Buddhist countries.

… valuable material for the contemplation of the transit of ideas between South Asia and Korea

A Chinese monk visits medieval Sri Lanka and perhaps influences Korean sculpture, challenging our notions of nationalized Buddhisms.

… the deed in the early text [MN135] is simply stated to be the killing, or refraining from killing, of living beings, and so on. The specific types of actions, and their approval are not mentioned. In the [later] Sanskrit text we get a list of normally around ten causes that lead to the result, many of which are illustrated

In the centuries after the Buddha, many of the subtleties of karma were simplified for didactic expedience. This led to a formulaic, “if you do this, this will happen to you” understanding of karma (which the Buddha himself rejected as fatalistic). This model came to be repeated ad-infinitum in texts (such as the Karma-Vibanga) and in Buddhist art (such as at Borobudur) for millennia, perpetuating a simplistic, “popular” understanding of Karma which persists today.

The dhamma-cakka, the ever moving Wheel of Law, is the most prominent symbol of the Buddhists.

… literalism, if not originating from artistic representations, would certainly have been encouraged by them.

Venerable Anālayo makes a compelling argument that fire miracles in the Canon came from symbolism and early Buddhist artistic motifs that came to be taken too literally, showing one example of how early Buddhist art influenced the texts.