Fasting Buddha

This emaciated figure of the Great Master is known as fasting Buddha. An identical fasting Buddha statue, perhaps its proto-model, of around the 3rd century A.D. is in the Lahore Museum, Lahore, Pakistan.

Before Buddha attained Enlightenment, he underwent a long fast rendering him very weak and thin. The fasting Buddha images represent the same state. He had broken his fast with pudding offered to him by a ‘shudra’ girl Sujata. Perhaps, in veneration to her all figures conceived as devotees on the pedestal are women. The ‘Pipal’ leaf motifs on pedestal’s upper edge symbolise the Bodhi tree he sat under meditating and fasting. The gesture of palms reveal determination and the lotus leaf like surging ‘antariya’, the unfolding of light within.