Standing Buddha Shakyamuni
  See it in the Museum
India and Nepal
Orientation 3
Display 2

ABS 044

 Code: ABS 044

  Country: India (north-west)

  Style: Kashmir Region

  Date: 1000 - 1050

  Dimensions in cm WxHxD: 11.4 x 25.5 x 11.4

  Materials: Brass

Standing Buddha Shakyamuni

Standing in a slightly bent attitude on a circular stand, the Buddha raises his right hand in the protection gesture and holds the edge of his monastic robe with the left. The upper monastic garment covers both shoulders, falling in concentric folds and clinging to his body. The Buddha is endowed with all the distinctive marks and signs of a “Great being:” short curly hair, a cranial protuberance (ushnisha), a curl of hair between the eyebrows (urna), elongated earlobes, three marks on the throat, and so on.

The distinct nimbus and pointy aureole decorated with rays are characteristic for the late Kashmir style of the 10th/11th centuries making this statue a probable production of a Kashmir craftsman working for patrons of the Purang-Guge kingdom in Western Tibet.

A Buddha is an “Enlightened One”, awakened to the true nature of existence. He has transcended is human condition and is “no longer a man, nor a god”. He has reached nirvana – “the extinction” of desire and karma – and he is free from samsara, the endless cycle of existence and suffering. A Buddha generally appears as a renunciant, devoid of ornaments.