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VII. Mahayana Buddhist Images from Ceylon and Java

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

Amongst the most beautiful and most technically perfect of small Indian bronzes are those Mahāyāna Buddhist figures which are known in considerable numbers from Java, and more rarely from Ceylon. The schools which these figures represent are evidently closely allied; but there has been hitherto little evidence to fix the exact date of particular examples, for Buddhist are extends in Java over the period from the seventh to the fourteenth century, and has, of course, a still wider range in Ceylon.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1909

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References

page 283 note 1 A beautiful Javanese Dharmapāla is figured by MrHavell, , Indian Sculpture and PaintingGoogle Scholar, pl. xvii. There are many Javanese Buddhist bronzes in the British Museum and at Leiden.

page 284 note 1 SirTennent, Emerson (Ceylon, 4th ed., p. 476Google Scholar) states that the early historians of China speak in raptures of statues obtained from Sinhalese sculptors in the fourth and fifth centuries. There is no reason to doubt that this admiration was well founded, to judge at least from the figure here spoken of.

page 284 note 1 In the list of illustrations, it is incorrectly described as being of copper.

page 285 note 1 Translation by Cowell and F. W. Thomas, p. 120. Contrast Grünwedel, , Buddhist Art in India, p. 33, 1. 14!Google Scholar

page 285 note 2 All the bronzes from the Nevill Collection in the British Museum are badly in need of cleaning, labelling, and rearrangement.

page 286 note 1 The Buddhist art of Java and Ceylon is, of course, an integral part of Indian art.

page 287 note 1 Beal, , Buddhist Records of the Western World, i, 60,Google Scholar n., and ii, 214, n., 225, n.

page 287 note 2 Ibid., ii, 233.

page 289 note 1 For a typical sādhana of corresponding age, describing Jambhala, see Foucher, , op. cit., pt. ii, p. 51.Google Scholar

page 289 note 2 Marshall, , JRAS., 1908, p. 1104,Google Scholar and Pl. V, fig. 2.

page 289 note 3 Indian Sculpture and Painting, pl. xliv.

page 289 note 4 Cf. for an example from Gandhāra, , Journ. Ind. Art and Industry, No. 63, 07, 1898, pl. xiv, 3.Google Scholar

page 293 note 1 Rājāvaliya, , translation, Colombo, 1900, p. 48,Google Scholar and de Silva, W. A., Ceylon National Review, January, 1907, p. 341.Google Scholar

page 294 note 1 Cf. the opening paragraphs of MajorWaddell's, L. A. paper on “The Indian Buddhist Cult of Avalokita” in JRAS., 1894. 51.Google Scholar

page 294 note 2 The development of this idea is not well expressed by the phrase “deification of Buddha”. The process is quite other than that of the elevation of a hero to the heavens.

page 294 note 3 This is of course a large exception in Ceylon; see Mediœval Sinhalese Art, pp. 250–1.Google Scholar

page 295 note 1 See old engraving reproduced in Rouffaer, & Jouynboll's, Indische Batikkunst, vol. iii;Google Scholar and in my Mediœval Sinhalese Art, pl. xxii.

page 295 note 2 See Mediœval Sinhalese Art, pp. 70–5.Google Scholar