The first to appear were Bodhisattva statues, and only later did Buddha statues appear. The deification of Buddha obviously took place in ancient northwest India, which is now the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, called Gandhara. The following is an introduction to the characteristics of Indian Buddha statues that I have compiled for you. Let us learn about it together.
Introduction to the characteristics of Indian Buddha statues 1: Symbolism
Especially in Hinduism, its plastic arts use symbols of life in the universe. It extracts some modeling elements from natural forms and then expresses them in supernatural forms. For example, multi-faceted and multi-armed, three-headed and six-armed, four-sided and eight-armed, half-man, half-animal, half-man, half-woman, etc., are all surreal shapes. Moreover, it jumps directly from the metaphysical form to the metaphysical concept, or expresses the abstract concept in a concrete form.
Introduction to the characteristics of Indian Buddha statues 2: Decoration:
Almost all art is decorative, and almost all oriental art is also decorative. So what are the distinctive features of the decorative nature of Indian art? It is particularly complicated. Many statues of Indian gods are very intricately decorated. The Song Dynasty's "Biography of Eminent Monks? Han Fang Zhuan" compared the translations between Chinese and Sanskrit and put forward the view that "Tianzhu prefers complexity, while Qin people prefer simplicity." Looking at our ancient texts, one word often has multiple meanings and the words are concise and comprehensive. Indian literature, especially poetry, is very complicated.
Introduction to the characteristics of Indian Buddha statues 3: Stylization
When we mention "stylization" now, we think it is a sign of rigidity. In fact, it is not the case. Program is a sign of artistic maturity. Art can only form a program when it reaches a certain mature stage. Whether it is an era, a country, a painter or an artist, he can create a new formula, which is a sign of his artistic maturity. But if this formula is fixed and repeated over and over again, it will of course become rigid.
The statues of Indian gods have formed a very obvious formula, which is relatively fixed and has even lasted for thousands of years. It often draws on dance, literature, especially poetry, and religious practices such as yoga. We now regard yoga as a fitness activity. In India, it is a practice method adopted by all religions. The original meaning of yoga is "containment", and its extended meaning is "combination and connection", which refers to the connection between the inner spirit and the outer spirit of a person.
The so-called "containment" is to control people's desires to achieve the unity of people's inner spirit and outer spirit. This is the original intention of yoga and the purpose of all religious practices in India. The statues of gods in India extract their modeling elements from literature, dance, yoga, various sister arts and even religious factors.
There are two important points here, one is gestures. "Buddhist Sutra" is translated as "yin", and the Sanskrit is mudras. When I was studying in India, I asked my tutor if the word mudras meant seal? He said no. I asked why in China we translated it as "seal", which means "seal". He said no, it means "gesture". Later I checked the Sanskrit dictionary and found that it has multiple meanings. The original meaning was "seal", and later the extended meaning was "gesture".
Perhaps our ancients took its original meaning when translating it. This "gesture" draws heavily on dance gestures and yoga gestures. Indian dance is particularly rich in gesture changes. Because gestures are the second expression of human beings. In India, they are called "flowers of the flesh" and are gestures of the soul. Therefore, one of the vocabulary of dance is eyes and the other is gestures. The previously mentioned "flower gesture" and "elephant trunk gesture" are different gestures. There is also a yoga gesture with both hands flat.
There is also "fearless momentum", which is to move forward flatly and let believers not be afraid. These gestures are drawn from dance and yoga, and all have specific symbolic meanings. There are also sitting postures, especially the postures of sitting statues of gods, such as meditation pose, lotus pose, and king's easy sitting posture, which means one leg is relaxed and hanging down. Various sitting postures also express different things.
There are three types of standing statues. The first is the upright posture, which is an image of sitting upright or standing upright, generally showing the frontal shape of the god; the second is the three-curved posture, such as the Yasha of the Sanchi Pagoda in the exhibition. Female, hanging diagonally in an S shape, is a formula that represents the beauty of the Indian standard female body.
Rudolf Arnheim's "Art and Visual Perception" said that when the human body's visual perception sees something with a curve, it has a natural tendency to reset to a straight line. An inner tension. In addition, the S-shaped curve exactly expresses the human beauty of the female torso. We Chinese mainly look at the face when looking at the beauty of women, while Indians and Westerners mainly look at the body, and the beauty of a female body is mainly reflected in the torso, so the S-shape highlights the female torso.
Tara Bodhisattva has no head, but it still looks very beautiful because the lines of the torso are very beautiful. There is also Sanchi’s Yakshasa, which perfectly expresses the vitality and fertility of women. Later, this style was used a lot, and many male Bodhisattvas often adopted the three-bend pose. Some of the Maitreya Bodhisattvas in the exhibition are also bent into an S shape.
The third type is the extreme bending posture. This is a posture that takes the triple bending posture to its extreme. The human body is highly distorted. It can be said that it completely violates the normal dynamic structure of the human body and can be extremely powerful. movement and vitality. The entire body of Feitian in the exhibition is twisted into an extreme bend, showing the vitality of the explosion of life.