Provenance: Private English Collection, acquired in the UK in the 1970s.

Note: The figure contains metal sculptures as part of its consecration and is a rare example of an early sculpture with its consecration intact. The X-ray reveals the presence of at least two metal sculptures: a miniature Buddha and a Buddhist stupa. The Buddha is seated in padmasana on a lotus throne, his left hand help in dhyanamudra. The process of consecrating a Buddhist sculpture was an elaborate ritual executed in accordance with canonical texts describing the process in detail. The most important part of the ritual was filling the sculpture with relics, for the vast majority comprising paper scrolls with mantras. In special circumstances, the lama included metal sculptures of deities and ritual objects associated with a renowned Lama. For a discussion on the consecration of Buddhist sculptures, see the essay by G. Leonov in Wisdom and Compassion, The Sacred Art of Tibet, M Rhie and R. Thurman, New York, 1991, pp351-353.

(x-ray)

(x-ray detail of miniature Buddha and stupa)

An Early Ming Seated Gilt Bronze Sculpture of the Buddha Shakyamuni
Robert D. Mowry, Senior Consultant, Christie’s
Alan J. Dworsky Curator of Chinese Art Emeritus, Harvard Art Museums

This unusual gilt bronze sculpture represents a Buddha seated on a double-lotus pedestal. Presented in the guise of a monk, the robes, urna, ushnisha, benevolent countenance, distended earlobes, small snail-shell curls of hair, and webbed fingers identify the figure as a Buddha. Typically represented by a painted disk or an inset cabochon jewel—and often incorrectly termed a “third eye” or even a “caste mark”—the urna appears here as an integrally cast, raised dot in the “V” where the eyebrows meet on the forehead above the nose; according to the canonical texts, the urna is the curl of white hair between the Buddha’s eyebrows from which issues a ray of light illuminating all worlds. The ushnisha, or cranial protuberance atop the head, symbolizes the expanded wisdom that the Buddha gained at his enlightenment; it serves as the Buddha’s diagnostic iconographic feature, as only Buddhas possess an ushnisha. Open at the center, a halo in the form of a slender ring of lotus buds on a vine scroll encircles the Buddha’s head, emblemizing his divine status. (Symbolizing divinity, a halo is a circle, or disc, of light that appears behind the head of a deity; a mandorla is a full-body halo.) The gilded surfaces not only make the sculpture appropriate for representing a deity but symbolize the light that, according to the sutras, or sacred texts, radiates from his body.

The Buddha sits in vajrasana, a cross-legged, yogic position, or asana, in which the feet are placed on the opposing thighs, soles up, the heels as close to the abdomen as possible, and the knees and legs arranged as symmetrically as possible; placed atop the left thigh, the right foot and leg thus conceal from view the left shin, ankle, and foot. (Also termed padmasana, or lotus position, this position is known as vajrasana in Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism.) The Buddha lowers his right hand in the bhumisparsha-mudra, or earth-touching gesture, in which he extends his right hand, palm outward, over his right knee to touch the earth in order to call it to witness his enlightenment. (A ritual hand gesture, a mudra symbolizes a particular action, power, or attitude of a deity.) As the Buddha had been meditating immediately before attaining enlightenment, his left hand remains in his lap, palm upward, in the dhyana-mudra, or meditation gesture.

“Buddha” means “the Enlightened One”. A Buddha is an individual who has attained enlightenment and has entered into nirvana. Typically presented in the trappings of a monk, the Buddha generally is depicted with a single head, two arms, and two legs; he may be shown standing or seated and always displays a benevolent countenance. He wears a monk’s robes and may be shown either barefoot or with sandals (usually of plaited straw, if represented); like monks, he usually is portrayed without jewelry. The distended earlobes—which resulted from the heavy earrings that he wore in his youth as the crown prince of a small kingdom in the foothills of the Himalayas, in present-day Nepal—symbolize his rejection of worldly life and his embrace of the religious life. He may be represented with a shaven pate or with short hair arranged either in wavy locks or in small, snail-shell curls, as in the case of the present sculpture. The sutras state that Buddhas bear the “Thirty-two Marks of a Great Man”; the most typically portrayed of those marks are the urna, or circular mark at the center of the forehead, the webbed fingers and toes, the ushnisha, or cranial protuberance atop his head, and the suggestion of light emanating from the body (through gilding and through the presence of a halo, mandorla, or both).

Mahayana Buddhism, the predominant form followed in traditional China, holds that there are an infinite number of Buddhas, all of whom are deities. The Buddhas most widely worshipped in China, and thus those most frequently portrayed in sculpture and painting, are Shakyamuni (the Historical Buddha), Amitabha (the Buddha of Infinite Light ), and Bhaisajyaguru (the Medicine Buddha). 

The particular Buddha represented by this sculpture most likely represents Shakyamuni, the Historical Buddha. In fact, any Buddha may be shown seated and with the hands arranged in the bhumisparsha-mudra, due to the gesture’s association with enlightenment; even so, according to traditional Buddhist iconographic conventions, usually only the Buddha Shakyamuni is shown with the right hand held in the earth-touching gesture. 

Revered by virtually all sects of Buddhism, Shakyamuni, whose name means the “Sage of the Shakya Clan”, is the most recent Buddha to have lived in this world, so he is often called the Historical Buddha. He taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and severe asceticism and self-mortification. His teachings are transmitted in many sutras but principally in the Lotus Sutra, known in Sanskrit as Saddharma Pundarika Sutra and in Chinese as Miaofa Lianhua Jing. He is best remembered for his Four Noble Truths, the essence not only of his teachings but of Buddhism itself: 

All life is suffering.
Suffering is caused by desire, or attachment.
To eliminate suffering, one must eliminate desire.
To eliminate desire, one must follow the Eight-Fold Path.

Since Tang times (618–907), the Buddha Shakyamuni typically has been shown together in a triad with Bodhisattvas Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Transcendental Wisdom, and Samantabhadra—Wenshu and Puxian in Chinese—standing on either side of him. (A bodhisattva is a benevolent being who has attained enlightenment but who has selflessly postponed entry into nirvana in order to assist other sentient beings in gaining enlightenment and thereby release from the samsara cycle of birth and rebirth.) In earlier times —and occasionally in later times, as well—Shakyamuni is sometimes shown in the company of Maitreya who, as the Buddha of the Future, eventually will succeed Shakyamuni.

The style of this sculpture incorporates Chinese, Tibetan, and Nepalese elements, but the sculpture’s precise date and place of creation have yet to be determined with precision. Even so, it is likely that it was produced in the fifteenth century in an area removed from Beijing, perhaps in the far northwest of China. From the Chinese tradition, this sculpture drew the figure’s stocky proportions, the relatively plain drapery enlivened with a meticulously wrought hem sporting a floral arabesque, and the arrangement of the robes that fall over the upper left arm in an elegant pattern of folds and that cover the right shoulder, even as they leave the upper portion of the chest bare. From the Tibetan style, the sculpture drew the compressed double-lotus base and the figure’s relatively square face with fleshy cheeks, small features pulled toward the center, dimples on either side of the mouth, the slight S-curve to the upper eyelids, and the subtle ridges that define the eyebrows. And from the Nepalese style, it drew the narrow, circular halo open at its center, and likely also the somewhat rectangular openings in the elongated earlobes. 

The halo and the base arguably are the sculpture’s most unusual features; virtually unique, their styles are difficult to place in terms of date and location of creation. Differing from the typical Tibetan, or Tibeto-Chinese, double-lotus base — which includes two tiers of lotus petals, one upward facing and one downward facing, as if reflected in the waters of a lotus pond — the two tiers of this base feature upward facing lotus petals in the top register and a floral arabesque with a vine scroll encircling alternating lotus blossoms and lotus seedpods in the bottom register. In established fashion, a row of beading, worked after casting, borders the top and bottom of the base; an additional row encircles the base’s subtly constricted waist, separating one register from the other. Introduced to China from Nepal and Tibet during the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), the double-lotus base gained popularity in the early fifteenth century, in the early Ming period, and would be used from that time on for sculptures in Tibetan-influenced styles.

The base of the present sculpture finds parallels in that of a gilt bronze sculpture of Tathagata Amoghasiddhi from fourteenth-century Tibet and now in the Berti Aschmann Foundation of Tibetan Art at the Museum Rietberg, Zurich, Switzerland, which has a double lotus in its narrow upper tier and a floral arabesque with a vine scroll encircling lotus blossoms in its comparatively tall lower tier. The vine scroll in the base of the present sculpture also is akin to those in the fifteenth-century, Chinese or Tibetan, embroidered silk panels incorporated into the mountings of some fifteenth-century Tibetan paintings.

The present sculpture’s slender, ring-like halo recalls those of early Nepalese bronze sculptures, such as the eighth-century Tara in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (IS.9-1989), the tenth-century Avalokiteshvara in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1982.220.14), and the tenth-century Vak (an Emanation of the Buddha Amitabha) in the Cleveland Museum of Art (1971.170). Despite superficial similarities, however, the halo of the present sculpture differs markedly from those of early Nepalese sculptures, as it comprises a ring of lotus buds incorporated into a vine scroll—echoing the lotus scroll encircling the base—whereas the Nepalese haloes feature tongues of flame. 

Though distant from China, Nepal and its sophisticated sculptural styles came to play an important role in China during the Yuan dynasty due to the influence of Anige (1245–1306), a young Nepali artist who was brought to Beijing in 1262 by Drogön Chögyal Phags’pa (1235–1280), an influential Tibetan monk of the Sakya sect and state preceptor for Kublai Khan (1215–1294), the founder of the Yuan dynasty. Anige played an important role at the Mongol court, serving as the director of all artisan classes and the controller of the Imperial Manufactories Commission. 

In this context, it is very possible that the sculpture dates to the fifteenth century and was made in the northwest of China, in the area that, during Song times (960–1279), comprised the independent kingdom of Xixia, or Western Xia—also known as the Tangut Empire—which existed from 1038 until 1227, when it was conquered by the Mongols. Encompassing the present-day provinces of Gansu, Ningxia, eastern Qinghai, and portions of yet others, Xixia occupied a large territory of northwestern China, including the Hexi Corridor, also termed the Gansu Corridor, which claimed that stretch of the Northern Silk Route that served as the most important trade route between North China and Central Asia for both traders and the military. As such, people, objects, and influences from many lands and cultures passed through and intermixed to advantage in Xixia; indeed, it is said that the people of the kingdom made significant achievements in literature, art, music, and architecture, their culture characterized as “shining and sparkling.” Trade continued to pass through that area, as did people, art, and influences, from Song times through the Yuan dynasty and into the Ming (1368–1644). None of those circumstances proves that this sculpture was produced in that area; even so, those circumstances could well account for sculpture’s unusual features and their distinctive blend. The traces of red lacquer on the sculpture’s surfaces further argue for a Chinese origin, though they do not prove such, as they are not integral to the sculpture’s manufacture.

A metal plate covers the open base of this hollow-cast sculpture. The base plate, sometimes termed a consecratory plate, conceals the sculpture’s interior from view and secures in place the dedicatory objects deposited within at the time of consecration in order to enliven the image and grant it efficacy. Engraved at the center of the base plate, a double-vajra symbolically shields and protects the sculpture and its contents. The consecratory objects typically include small paper sutras and prayer scrolls, beads, textile fragments, small bronze seals, small sculptures, and assorted other consecratory items. Religious in nature, such dedicatory items seldom are dated and rarely include any information that would convey insight into a sculpture’s date, place, or other circumstances of manufacture.

Lacking exact counterparts and incorporating a varied mixture of styles and influences, this fascinating sculpture represents the Buddha Shakyamuni at the moment of his enlightenment, and it likely was produced in northwest China in the fifteenth century, absorbing, assimilating, and amalgamating elements from the Chinese, Nepalese, and Tibetan sculptural traditions. 

The urna is variously termed 光毫, 玉豪, 白毫, and 素豪 in Chinese; the ray of light issuing from the urna is generally termed 眉間白毫相. In fact, many Hindu deities indeed have a third eye at the center of the forehead, but Buddhist deities, and particularly the Buddhas, have a magical curl of hair between the eyebrows. The urna is one of the thirty-two special physical characteristics of the Buddha, known as the Thirty-Two Signs of a Great Man. This refers to the laksana-vyanjana, known in Chinese as the xianghao ??, with xiang referring to the thirty-two major marks, and hao ? to the eighty secondary signs on the physical body of Buddha. 

In Sanskrit, a halo behind the head is termed prabhamandala or siras-cakra, while the mandorla, or full-body halo, is called a prabhavali. 

For books on Buddhist art relevant to this sculpture, see: Pratapaditya Pal et al., Light of Asia: Buddha Sakyamuni in Asian Art (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art), 1984; Denise Patry Leidy, The Art of Buddhism: An Introduction to Its History and Meaning (Boston: Shambhala; distributed in the United States by Random House), 1st ed., 2008; Denise Patry Leidy, Donna Strahan, et al., Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and New Haven: Yale University Press), 2010; Pratapaditya Pal, The Arts of Nepal (Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill), 1974; Pratapaditya Pal, ed., On the Path to Void: Buddhist Art of the Tibetan Realm (Mumbai, India: Marg Publications), 1996. 

Note that 菩薩 is a contraction of 菩提薩埵,, which is a Chinese transliteration of the Sanskrit term “bodhisattva”. 

For information on bodhisattvas, see: Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and Donald S. Lopez, Jr., The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 2013; Damien Brown, A Dictionary of Buddhism (Oxford, England, and New York: Oxford University Press), 2003; Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations, 2nd ed., in the Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices series (New York: Routledge), 2009. 

Compare the fourteenth-century gilt bronze Buddha Shakyamuni in Nepalo-Chinese style illustrated in: Robert R. Bigler, Before Yongle: Chinese and Tibeto-Chinese Buddhist Sculpture of the 13th and 14th Centuries (Zurich, Switzerland: Robert R. Bigler Asian and Egyptian Art), 2015, pp. 92-93, no. 21. 

See: Helmut Uhlig, On the Path to Enlightenment: The Berti Aschmann Foundation of Tibetan Art at the Museum Rietberg Zurich (Zurich, Switzerland: Museum Rietberg), 2011, pp. 73-74, no. 31. 

See: Karl Debreczeny, ed., Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism (New York: Rubin Museum of Art; distributed by Seattle: University of Washington Press), 2019, p. 54-55, figs. 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3. 

See: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O25029/the-buddhist-goddess-tara-sculpture/ 

See: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/39351?&searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&ft=1982.220.14&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=1 

See: http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1971.170 

Denise Patry Leidy, Donna Strahan et al., Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; and New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press), 2010, pp. 148-151, no. 37.

On this topic, see: Xie Jisheng 謝繼勝,, “Acala/Trailokyavijaya in Silk: A Tangut Synthesis of Tang Esoteric and Tibetan Tantric Traditions” in Debreczeny, ed., Faith and Empire, 2019, translated by Zhu Renxiao. Also see, by the same author: Xie Jisheng, Xixia Zang chuan huihua: Heishuicheng chutu Xixia tangka yanjiu [Tibetan-Style Painting in Xixia: Research on Xixia Thangkas Excavated at Heishuicheng] (Shijiazhuang: Hebei Jiaoyu Chubanshe), 2002, in the series Xizang yishu yanjiu xilie [Research on Tibetan Art], 2 volumes / 謝繼勝著, 《西夏藏傳繪畫: 黑水城出土西夏唐卡硏 究》 (石家莊市: 河北敎育出版社), 2002年， 《西藏艺术硏究系列》, 2卷.

Zhao Yanlong, “Qiantan XiXia gongwen wenfeng yu gongwen zaiti” [A Brief Discussion on the Writing Style in Xi Xia Official documents and on Documental Carriers], Xibei Minzu Yanjiu [Research on Northwest Nationalities], vol. 45, no. 2 (2005), pp. 78-84 / 趙彥龍, “淺談西夏公文文風與公文載體”, 《西北民族研究》, 45, no. 2 (2005年), 78-84頁. 

For the classic English-language study on the inclusion of dedicatory objects within the cavities of hollow religious sculptures, see: John M. Rosenfield, “The Sedgwick Statue of the Infant Shotoku Taishi,” Archives of Asian Art, vol. 22 (1968-69), pp. 56-79; also see: Chandra L. Reedy, “The Opening of Consecrated Tibetan Bronzes with Interior Contents: Scholarly, Conservation, and Ethical Considerations”, Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, vol. 30, no. 1 (1991), pp. 13-34. 

For an image of the interior of a Yongle period 永樂年 (1403–1424) gilt bronze sculpture with dedicatory objects packed inside, see: Denise Patry Leidy, Donna Strahan, et al., Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010, p. 151, fig. 110; for an image of one of the miniature scrolls removed from that sculpture and unfurled, see: Leidy and Strahan, Wisdom Embodied, pp. 150-151, fig. 109.