Life of the Buddha: The Emaciated Buddha


Fasting Siddhartha (Sakyamuni Buddha)
From Sikri, Pakistan
Kushana period
Schist. H: 84 cm
Lahore Museum, Lahore

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This is an image of Siddhartha Gautama during the period of his extreme asceticism and renunciation. After he had left his princely life behind, Siddhartha practiced extreme self-denial for a period of six years in his efforts to learn the truth about the human condition and a method of release from its endless round of suffering in samsara. Eventually, Siddhartha would realize that this path of fanatical asceticism was as unproductive in his search for the ultimate truth as his previous life of incessarnt luxury had been. He then gave up the ascetic life and embraced the Middle Way, between extreme luxury and extreme austerity.

The presence of a beard on the face of the Buddha-to-be is particularly unusual, and indicates his complete disregard of his own body during this period of his life. The extreme realism in the treatment of the Buddha's emaciated body is characteristic of Gandharan interests but not commonly employed in the rest of India, where there is a much stronger tenedency to idealize and generalize in the depiction of deified beings. The sinews and bones of the Buddha's body are revealed beneath the barest amount of flesh that still remains. The realism characteristic of this work, and in particular the familiarity with the details of human anatomy, is inherited from the Hellenic worlds in which there was a preoccupation with detailed depictions of physical reality.

Artists of Kashmir in the far north of India and Tibet would continued the tradition of depicting the emaciated Buddha, which was otherwise not represented in Indian art.