574 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 63 



SOLAR SYMBOLISM IN BUDDHISM AND CHRISTL\NITY 



The solar nature of Christ and Buddha has already been referred 

 to in our examination of the "palliatus" type. Even more explicit 

 suggestions of solar symbolism in Buddhism and early Christianity 

 are worthy of more intensive exploration. 



Significant as at least partly explaining the mentality that led to 

 the eventual emergence of the Buddha and Sun myths is a passage 

 from the Buddhacarita in which Siikyamuni, on entering the "place 

 of austerities," is mistaken for the sun-god or the moon: "This is 

 Suryadeva or Canadradeva, coming down." 



This is enough to show that fundamentally the identification of 

 Buddha with the smi seems to have grown up within the complex of 

 Indian philosophic-religious ideas. The transformation of the 

 Buddha into the driver of the solar chariot is not markedly different 

 from the ideology that deified the Roman emperor as Helios-Kos- 

 mokrator, and Khosrau as the brother of the sun and moon: as an 

 example of this iconography vre may cite the portrayal of Caracalla 

 and other rulers as the sun-god Helios. Something of the same con- 

 cept is seen in the early Christian representations of Helios in con- 

 nection with figures of Peter, the Good Shepherd, etc.; Philo of 

 Alexandria saw the Logos in the rising sun ; in the poetry and exegesis 

 of Christian Egypt, the morning orb is Christ himself. The solar 

 character of Christ is, of course, symbolized in the feast of His birth, 

 supplanting the Roman festival for the New Year and the sun, a 

 means whereby the early Christians sought to rival the ancient pagan 

 holiday with their own. In the tympana of the cathedrals of Parma 

 and Piacenza the sun is included as a symbol of Christ as the Light 

 of the World ; the moon, the reflector of this light, as a symbol of the 

 church. 



An illustration of the Buddha's solar symbolism is provided by 

 a wall painting of the sun-god in a chariot on the vault of the niche 

 of the colossal 120-foot Buddha in the Bamiyan Valley of Afghani- 

 stan. The central figure in the decoration stands upon a crescent and 

 is inclosed in a huge sun disk. It is clad in a long mantle of the 

 Parthian and Kushan sovereigns and surrounded by a variety of em- 

 blems stressing the astral character of the decoration. This image 

 is a reference to the Buddha as another sun, rising to illuminate the 

 darkness of the world. A symbolic allusion to the solar nature indi- 

 cated by the Apollonian type of Buddha is discussed in an earlier 

 section. The painting is evidently intended to be read in context with 

 the giant statue beneath and the paintings of the Buddhas of past 

 eras represented on the haunch of the vault. Pictorially this is only 

 one of a number of such references in Buddhist art to Sakyamimi in 

 his solar aspect. 



