(forms part of artistic research into skin and skin cover, notes prepared for the now abandoned PhD research)
Narendra Raghunath
The emergence of anthropomorphic(human-like) Buddhist imagery during the early centuries of the Common Era represents one of the most significant developments in the history of South Asian art, not because it marked the sudden invention of religious representation, but because it contributed to a fundamental transformation in the ways religious communities materialised, communicated and experienced sacred ideas. During the centuries around the beginning of the Common Era, Buddhist, Jain, Brahmanical, and other religious traditions increasingly participated in artistic environments in which sculpture, architecture, narrative representation, inscriptions, and ritual objects assumed important roles in the construction of religious experience. The appearance and subsequent development of anthropomorphic images of the Buddha and Bodhisattvas must therefore be understood within this broader history. It was a specifically Buddhist development, but one that took place within a much wider South Asian transformation in which religious ideas increasingly acquired durable visual and material forms.
The historical evidence does not support a simple narrative in which an originally "image-less" Hinduism encountered Buddhism and Buddhism introduced religious images that Hindu traditions subsequently adopted into their culture. Such a formulation imposes modern religious categories upon a period in which religious identities and institutions were considerably more fluid. Nor does the evidence permit us to say with confidence that Buddhists consciously introduced anthropomorphic images to compete with Brahmanical traditions. What can be demonstrated more securely is that, during the Kuṣāṇa and early Gupta periods, Buddhist and Brahmanical communities were developing increasingly sophisticated systems of anthropomorphic representation, while Jain traditions were also producing their own established forms of sacred imagery. The resulting artistic environment was one of interaction, differentiation and competition rather than simple one-way influence. Evidence from the Kuṣāṇa period is particularly important because it includes experimental Brahmanical iconographic forms alongside Buddhist and Jain sculpture.
The earlier history of Buddhist representation is nevertheless essential to understanding what changed. At monuments such as Bharhut and Sanchi, dating principally from the centuries before the emergence of the mature anthropomorphic Buddha image, the Buddha was frequently evoked through signs and symbols rather than represented directly as a human figure. The empty throne, the Bodhi tree, the Dharma wheel, the footprints, and other motifs, function within narrative and commemorative contexts as symbolic references to the Buddha in early Buddhist art. Scholarship often interpreted this phenomenon as evidence of Buddhist "aniconism," implying a deliberate reluctance or prohibition on representing the Buddha in human form. That interpretation has become increasingly problematic. The absence of an anthropomorphic Buddha in particular monuments or periods does not by itself establish the existence of a general theological prohibition. It is more historically responsible to describe the early Buddhist evidence in terms of symbolic modes of representing the Buddha, while recognising that the reasons for the choice of particular representational strategies remain debated.
This distinction matters because the emergence of the anthropomorphic Buddha should not be presented as the abandonment of a universally accepted rule. It is better understood as the gradual development of another mode of Buddhist representation that eventually became enormously important.
In those early centuries, when the images of the Buddha and Bodhisattvas were produced in substantial numbers, particularly in the regions associated with Mathura and Gandhāra, the chronology of the earliest examples remains contested; s the evidence does not permit a single universally accepted date for the "first Buddha image."
Nevertheless, the Kuṣāṇa period provides secure evidence for the establishment and development of anthropomorphic Buddhist sculpture. A dated Buddhist image associated with the third regnal year of Kaniṣka provides an important chronological anchor for the development of Buddhist icons at Mathura. At the same time, stylistic studies have argued for earlier examples.
Mathura is particularly important because it demonstrates that the development of the Buddha image cannot be explained simply through foreign artistic influence. Mathura already possessed a substantial sculptural culture before the mature anthropomorphic Buddha emerged. Its artists had extensive experience depicting powerful human and semi-divine beings, including yakṣas and related figures. Studies of Kuṣāṇa-period Mathura sculpture have therefore emphasised the importance of local artistic traditions in shaping the Buddha's visual identity. The Encyclopaedia Iranica, summarising this scholarship, notes the relevance of representations of yakṣas, nāgas, Jinas, Brahmins and ascetic teachers to the development of the Mathura Buddha type.
This evidence fundamentally changes the interpretation of the Buddha image. Rather than appearing in an artistic vacuum, the Buddha emerged within an already sophisticated culture of representing exceptional human and supernatural figures. The challenge confronting the sculptor was not simply how to make a human likeness of Siddhārtha Gautama, but how to create a body capable of communicating a distinctive religious status. The resulting image was therefore neither an ordinary portrait nor merely an illustration of a Buddhist narrative. It was an idealised sacred body whose posture, gesture, bodily marks, clothing and surrounding attributes could communicate aspects of Buddhist identity and doctrine.
Gandhāra presents a different but complementary development. The sculpture produced in the northwestern region employed visual conventions that reveal connections with Hellenistic, Roman and Iranian artistic traditions, particularly in the treatment of drapery, bodily modelling, hair and architectural ornament. Yet these forms were incorporated into Buddhist subjects and religious environments. The significance of Gandhāran art, therefore, lies not in the claim that Greek artists "invented" the Buddha, but in demonstrating how artistic languages could move across cultural boundaries and acquire new meanings. A visual form originating in one artistic environment could be adapted to represent a religious subject belonging to another.
This process should be understood as translation rather than simple transmission. The presence of classical artistic conventions in Gandhāra does not mean that Buddhist art became Greek. Nor does the presence of indigenous Indian conventions in Mathura imply that its sculpture developed in isolation from wider networks of exchange. Both regions were connected to larger political, commercial and cultural worlds. The Buddha image consequently emerged through multiple forms of interaction, and the contrast between Mathura and Gandhāra demonstrates precisely why no single-origin theory is adequate.
The artistic importance of the anthropomorphic image becomes clearer when it is placed within the institutional world of Buddhism. A Buddhist image was rarely an isolated object corresponding to the modern museum category of "sculpture." It belonged to an architectural and ritual environment that could include stupas, relics, monasteries, inscriptions, narrative reliefs and spaces for movement and devotion. The image, therefore, participated in the organisation of religious experience. It could provide a focus for visual attention, ritual action and devotional memory while remaining integrated with the larger architecture of the Buddhist sacred site.
This relationship between image and institution also connects Buddhist art to the history of patronage. The production of sculpture required material resources, skilled labour and institutional support. Inscriptions associated with religious donations provide evidence for the participation of individuals and groups in the construction and maintenance of religious establishments. Such evidence cautions against treating religious art as simply the expression of rulers or elite patrons. Buddhist monuments were supported by a broader economy of donations and institutional activity, in which various social groups could participate.
The image consequently had several functions at once. It could be a focus of religious devotion, a material expression of a donor's generosity, an element within a monastery or stupa complex, a vehicle for narrative communication and an artefact produced through specialised artistic labour. Its significance cannot therefore be reduced either to theology or to aesthetics. The history of Buddhist sculpture is simultaneously a history of religion, patronage, artistic production and social organisation.
The development of anthropomorphic Buddhist imagery also needs to be considered alongside the continuing importance of narrative representation. The Buddha image did not replace the narrative relief. Rather, anthropomorphic figures increasingly existed within larger visual programmes in which scenes from the Buddha's life, previous births and Buddhist sacred history could be represented. Sculpture thus became capable of combining two forms of religious communication: the presence of the sacred figure and the memory of sacred narrative. The viewer could encounter both the figure of the Buddha and the stories through which his religious significance was understood.
This combination contributed to the development of an unusually sophisticated visual language. Gesture, posture, clothing, bodily characteristics and attributes increasingly became meaningful elements of identification. The sacred figure did not need an inscription explaining who he was. His visual characteristics could provide information. In this sense, iconography gradually became a form of visual knowledge.
The development of this visual language was not confined to Buddhism; as the Jain communities also developed distinctive anthropomorphic representations of the Tīrthaṅkaras. At the same time, Brahmanical traditions produced increasingly complex representations of deities and divine manifestations. The Kuṣāṇa period is particularly important because it provides evidence for experimental Brahmanical iconographic compositions. The evidence is significant precisely because it undermines a simplistic chronology in which Buddhist anthropomorphic representation appears first and Brahmanical imagery follows only as a response. The development of Brahmanical iconography was already underway within the same broad historical environment.
The evidence from the early Gupta period reinforces this point that the Brahmanical sculpture developed increasingly sophisticated representations of deities such as Brahmā, Śiva-related forms, Viṣṇu and other figures. At the same time, Buddhist sculpture developed its own highly refined visual language. The Gupta period, therefore, should not be interpreted as the moment when Hinduism "caught up" with Buddhism. It was instead a period in which different religious traditions were developing distinctive systems of sacred representation within a shared artistic world.
The term "Hinduism" requires caution in this context, since in the early centuries it is more precise to speak of Brahmanical traditions, along with specific Vaiṣṇava, Śaiva, and other devotional formations than use of a generic term such as "Hinduism". evidence permits such identification. The latter category of Hinduism encompasses a vast range of traditions that developed over many centuries. Using the modern term without qualification risks making ancient religious communities appear more unified than they actually were.
This terminological caution also changes how the relationship between Buddhism and Brahmanical religion should be interpreted. There was undoubtedly interaction and, in particular, historical contexts, competition for patronage and institutional resources. Still, the evidence does not establish a general programme in which Buddhist communities deliberately created images to "counter Hinduism." Nor can the later development of Hindu iconography be attributed simply to Buddhist influence. The more defensible interpretation is that Buddhist, Jain and Brahmanical communities participated in a changing religious economy in which images became increasingly effective means of expressing sacred identity, institutional legitimacy and devotional practice.
The significance of Buddhism lies partly in the extraordinary success with which Buddhist communities developed and disseminated such visual forms. The Buddha image became sufficiently recognisable to travel across cultural boundaries while being repeatedly transformed by local artistic traditions. Buddhist visual culture subsequently developed in Central Asia, China, Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia and elsewhere, with each region producing distinctive representations of Buddhist subjects. The importance of the Indian developments, therefore, extends far beyond the subcontinent: they provided fundamental visual models that enabled Buddhism to become a global religious tradition.
Yet even here, caution is necessary. The expansion of Buddhism cannot be explained by art alone. Buddhist mobility depended on monks, merchants, political relationships, monasteries, pilgrimage, texts, networks of exchange, and images. Sculpture was one component of a much larger process. Its importance lies in the fact that it provided a particularly durable and adaptable medium through which religious identity could be materialised across cultural boundaries.
The emergence of anthropomorphic religious imagery also changed the possibilities of artistic production. Once religious identity became increasingly articulated through the body, artists had to develop increasingly sophisticated methods of representing gesture, posture, attributes, bodily proportion and spiritual states. The sacred image became a technical and intellectual problem. The sculptor was not merely making an attractive object but negotiating a set of theological and iconographic requirements.
This development is particularly visible in the mature religious art of the Gupta period. Buddhist sculpture increasingly emphasised a serene and idealised body, in which physical form was used to communicate spiritual transformation. Brahmanical sculpture developed its own increasingly elaborate systems of multiple arms, attributes, vehicles, gestures and divine manifestations. Jain images emphasised other qualities, particularly stillness and detachment. Different religious traditions, therefore, used the body to articulate different conceptions of the sacred.
The significance of this development lies in the fact that the human body became a medium of philosophical thought. The Buddha's body could communicate enlightenment and composure. The Tīrthaṅkara's body could communicate renunciation and spiritual detachment. The body of Viṣṇu could communicate sovereignty and cosmic order. Forms of Śiva could communicate asceticism, generative power or cosmic activity. The Goddess could embody protection, power or destructive energy. These meanings were not inherent in human anatomy; they were produced through culturally developed systems of iconography. This is one of the most important achievements of Indian religious art. The image became a medium through which abstract concepts could acquire visual form without necessarily being reduced to literal illustration.
The transformation, therefore, needs to be understood at several levels simultaneously- at the level of religion, it changed how sacred presence could be encountered. At the level of art, it stimulated new approaches to the representation of the body. At the institutional level, it strengthened the relationship among religious communities, monuments, and patronage. At the societal level, it provided durable forms through which donors and communities could express their religious affiliation. At the level of cultural exchange, it enabled religious images to move across regions while being repeatedly transformed.
The long-term consequence was the formation of a remarkably rich Indian culture of sacred representation. Buddhist, Jain and Brahmanical traditions did not merge into a single visual system; they developed distinct iconographies. Yet they increasingly shared an understanding that sculpture, architecture and visual narrative could perform intellectual and religious work. The image could therefore become a material theology.
This observation is particularly useful for understanding the subsequent history of Indian art. In later Hindu temple traditions, the deity's image would become central to ritual, pilgrimage and darśana, while temple architecture would provide a larger cosmological framework for the image. These later developments should not be projected backwards into the Kuṣāṇa period as though the mature Hindu temple system already existed in its later form. Nevertheless, the early centuries CE were part of the long historical process through which images became increasingly central to Indian religious practice.
As a consequence, the relationship between Buddhism and Brahmanical traditions should not be understood neither as a story of unilateral Buddhist influence nor as an isolated parallel development. The evidence points toward a more complex pattern of shared resources, regional variation, selective borrowing, competition, and differentiation, in which Artists worked within traditions and those traditions were not sealed compartments. Forms, techniques, and visual conventions could travel between communities and take on new meanings.
Gandhāra is perhaps an illustration of this principle, in which artists drew upon a visual vocabulary associated with the wider Hellenistic and Roman worlds while producing images for Buddhist contexts. Mathura demonstrates the complementary importance of indigenous South Asian traditions. The Kuṣāṇa and Gupta evidence from Brahmanical and Jain contexts shows that anthropomorphic sacred representation was not exclusive to Buddhism. Taken together, these bodies of evidence point toward a culturally interconnected artistic environment rather than a hierarchy of "foreign" and "indigenous" art.
This has important implications for how Indian art history should be written. The old opposition between indigenous Indian art and foreign influence is inadequate for explaining the evidence. Gandhāran art cannot be understood simply as Greek art transplanted into India, just as Mathura cannot be treated as an isolated, untouched indigenous tradition. Both were products of historical interaction.
The same principle applies to religious traditions. Buddhism was not simply an external force acting upon an otherwise unchanged Brahmanical India. Brahmanical traditions were themselves changing, while Buddhist, Jain and local traditions were developing through their own internal intellectual and institutional histories. The resulting artistic culture was produced through interaction among traditions rather than through the unilateral influence of one tradition upon another.
The implications extend into the modern Indian imagination, although this connection should be understood as a long-term historical interpretation rather than a direct causal claim. Contemporary India remains saturated with visual forms inherited from religious art: Buddha figures, representations of Śiva, Viṣṇu, Kṛṣṇa and Devī, Jain Tīrthaṅkaras and numerous regional sacred figures continue to circulate through temples, homes, popular prints, cinema, television, public sculpture, advertising and digital media. Their meanings have changed repeatedly, and contemporary artists and communities frequently reinterpret them for new social, political and aesthetic purposes.
What persists is not necessarily the original meaning of the ancient image but the cultural power of recognisable visual forms. A contemporary viewer can encounter a seated Buddha without knowing the technical history of Gandhāran or Mathuran sculpture and nevertheless recognise the figure as belonging to a particular religious and cultural world. The same is true of the visual conventions surrounding Śiva, Viṣṇu, Devī, Kṛṣṇa or the Jain Tīrthaṅkaras. Centuries of artistic repetition, transformation and cultural memory have made these figures part of a shared visual vocabulary.
The modern persistence of these images should not, however, be taken as evidence that contemporary meanings are identical to ancient ones. The Buddha of a modern wellness advertisement, a nineteenth-century colonial painting, a Gupta-period sculpture and a Gandhāran relief belong to different historical contexts. What connects them is the image's enduring capacity to carry cultural meanings over time while allowing those meanings to change. There for the significance of the early anthropomorphic Buddhist image does not allow us to claim that Buddhism "invented" religious imagery, or Hinduism subsequently copied it. The historical significance comes from its contribution to a broader transformation in which religious thought, artistic form, and material culture became increasingly interconnected.
While Buddhist communities developed powerful visual representations of the Buddha and Bodhisattvas in those early days of aesthetic evolution, the historical evidences prove that the Brahmanical and Jain communities also developed their own systems of sacred imagery. Artists of the period adapted existing forms to new theological requirements; patrons invested resources in religious monuments; and images became embedded in increasingly complex architectural and ritual environments.
The result was not a single Indian religious aesthetic but a highly differentiated visual civilisation, within which different traditions could recognise, contest, borrow and transform one another. The historical trajectory can therefore be understood more cautiously as a movement that emerged from an already diverse field of symbolic and sacred representation and built an increasingly sophisticated system of anthropomorphic religious imagery. Buddhism was one of the principal forces in this transformation, particularly during the Kuṣāṇa period, but it operated alongside Jain, Brahmanical and regional traditions rather than outside them. While Mathura and Gandhāra reveal different regional solutions, the Kuṣāṇa and Gupta Brahmanical sculpture demonstrate parallel iconographic development in the region. Subsequently, the history of South Asian art shows that sacred imagery became one of the principal means through which religious communities articulated identity, doctrine, mythology and devotion.
The lasting contribution of this transformation was therefore not simply the creation of particular images. It was the development of a cultural capacity to think through images. Religious ideas that might otherwise remain abstract could be given bodies, gestures, attributes, narratives and architectural contexts. Images could preserve memory, organise ritual, establish identity and create points of encounter between communities and their sacred traditions. Indian art consequently developed an unusually powerful relationship between representation and presence. The sacred could be represented without being exhausted by representation; the divine could acquire form without being confined to that form. This tension between the visible and the invisible, the body and transcendence, the image and presence became one of the enduring intellectual problems of South Asian art.
It is in this sense, rather than through a simplistic story of Buddhist influence upon Hinduism, that the emergence of anthropomorphic Buddhist imagery transformed the history of Indian visual culture. It helped establish a historical environment in which sculpture could become not merely an illustration of religious belief but one of the principal ways in which religious communities thought, remembered, worshipped and imagined the sacred.
Further reading :
Dehejia, Vidya. The Unseen Presence: The Buddha and Sanchi. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996.
Huntington, Susan L. “Early Buddhist Art and the Theory of Aniconism.” Art Journal
Brancaccio, Pia, and Kurt A. Behrendt, eds. Gandharan Buddhism: Archaeology, Art, and Texts. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006.
Rosenfield, John M. The Dynastic Arts of the Kushans. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.
Banerjea, Jitendra Nath. The Development of Hindu Iconography. 4th ed. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1985..
Shah, Umakant P. Jaina-Rūpa-Maṇḍana: Jaina Iconography. 2 vols. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1987.
