578 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 63 



It is safe to say that the concept of Biiddhas as Mahapurusa, present 

 even in Hinayana texts, and the role of Lokottara^ assigned to him in 

 the Mahasanghika sects, can be seen as working together to produce 

 these first colossi of the Buddhist world. The giant statues of Yun 

 Kang and Lung-men are the full development of this ideology and 

 show us the Universal Lord of the Lotus Sutra and the Avatamsaka- 

 Buddha as Brahma, the Father of the World. 



THE TRANSCENDENTAL CHRIST AND BUDDHA 



Related to the idea of the colossus as a supernatural portrayal of 

 divinity are certain types of Christian and Buddhist art in which 

 various other iconographical devices are employed to suggest the 

 supernal nature of the divinity. Again, one of the more striking ex- 

 amples may be found at the great monastic site of Bamiyan. 



Group E is the designation given a small complex of caves about a 

 hundred yards to the west of the smaller colossal Buddha at Bamiyan 

 (pi. 3). The only surviving painted decoration in these caves is a 

 bodhisattva painted on the soffit of the niche that shelters the smallest 

 statue of a seated Buddha at Bamiyan. The divinity is ensconced 

 under a blunted pediment and wearing a costume that recalls the dress 

 of the Gandhara bodhisattvas. The right hand is raised in vitarka 

 mudrd. A necklace and heavy scarves are the only ornaments of the 

 upper part of the body. In the headdress are fluttering ribbons con- 

 ventionalized in the shape of French horns. The bodhisattva is repre- 

 sented seated on a rainbow of seven colors that at the same time serves 

 as the aureole of the sculptured figure below it. This conception is 

 strangely suggestive of the vision of the Apocalyptic Christ seated on 

 the rainbow above the firmament. In St. John's description, the rain- 

 bow is a familiar natural phenomenon employed in the mystic's vocab- 

 ulary to suggest more tangibly the transcendent beauty of the Lord, 

 and by its position spanning the heavens to place the pantocrator 

 vividly above the sky beyond the world. Besides its appropriateness 

 as a glory or throne, the rainbow is probably intended as a symbol of 

 the Lord's mercy, an illusion to his compact of Genesis 9 : 13-17. 



A painting of the Last Judgment from the circle of Guido da Siena 

 in the Church of the Misericordia at Grosseto (pi. 4) is illuminating 

 with regard to the function of the rainbow in the iconography of the 

 Revelation : The Pantocrator is seated on an arc of spectral colors that 

 bisects his enframing mandorla ; another smaller rainbow serves as a 

 footstool, and below this is the Cross supported by angels, rising like 

 the cosmic tree to the top of the sky and suggestive of Christ's earthly 

 body and sufferings, as the Buddha in the niche may be the nirmdn- 

 skdya of the vision above. 



Anyone looking at the Grosseto icon would have been reminded that 

 Christ by his cross brought peace as the rainbow symbolized the peace 



