RELIGIOUS ART EAST AND WEST — ROWLAND 575 



In a relief from Mathursi, we have a frieze with a series of events 

 from the life of the Buddha : in this arrangement, the place normally 

 occupied by the Nativity of Gautama is replaced by a representation of 

 Surya in his chariot. Below this band of carving is a zone with the 

 Buddhas of the past and Maitreya, so that, as at Bamiyan with the 

 painted representations of the Manushi Buddhas, the symbolical im- 

 plication is that, like these other teachers of other eras, Sakyamuni at 

 his birth dawned as another sun to illumine the world. In the same 

 way the many other portrayals of Siirya the sun-god at Bodh Gaya, 

 Bhaja, and elsewhere are allusions to the Buddha's solar nature just 

 as the cars of sun and moon at Parma are references to the celestial 

 light of Christ. 



THE COLOSSAL IMAGE IN BUDDHIST AND CHRISTIAN ART 



The enlargement of the earliest images of Christ and Buddha to 

 colossal size presents another problem of iconographic and stylistic 

 affinities in the two religions. This problem of the use of magnification 

 to suggest the supernatural aspects of the deity is one that concerns 

 both the iconography of Buddhism and that of early Christianity. 

 Everyone is, of course, familiar with the making of giant statues in 

 the ancient world and the transference of this concept to the statues 

 of the deified Roman emperors in the late Antique Period. In Bud- 

 dhism the earliest examples of the colossus in art are to be found in 

 the two giant Buddha statues carved in the sandstone cliff at Bamiyan. 



The larger of the two colossi at Bamiyan (pi. 2) is housed in an 

 enormous cusped niche at the western end of the great cliff. It was 

 carved presumably at about the same time as its smaller companion. 

 Although the hands are now broken off, it seems likely that originally 

 the right hand was raised in ''^dbhaya mudrd^'' and the left, as in so 

 many Buddha statues of Mathura and Gandhara, was shown holding 

 a fold of the robe. It is notable that, in his description of this statue, 

 Ilslian-tsang refers to it merely as "Fo hsiang" (Jap. hutsuso)^ or 

 "Buddha image," whereas he specifically designated the smaller idol 

 at Bamiyan as Sakyamuni. 



The scheme of painted decoration in the interior of the great vaulted 

 chamber originally was even more extensive and complicated than the 

 cycle in the niche of the smaller Buddha. We can see standing on the 

 head of the colossus, ornamenting the ceiling above, the images of nu- 

 merous enthroned bodhisattvas with attendants and musicians. On the 

 haunch of the vault at the right and left again are rows of these seated 

 deities. Immediately below are painted Buddhas in multicolored 

 halos and in various mudrds. Looking up from the feet of the giant 

 statue we can see that the under surfaces of the cusps of the arches are 

 painted with the representations of trinities of flying deities in medal- 

 lions. Below these again are the fragments of row upon row of Bud- 



