Standing Buddha

The Buddha stands on a circular lotus pedestal with his right hand in abhaya mudraand the left hand invarada mudra. He wears anantariyaover which the sanghati is diagonally drawn from the chest to the ankles going over the left shoulder and with its end drawn forward, a feature common to the images from this site. The squarish face, the features, the snail-shell curls of hair and the flaming ushnisha reveal the dominant south-east Asian influence. The palms are marked with a square with achakra(wheel) within, a feature common to all images from Nagapattinam. Nagapattinam, a major Buddhist establishment on the southern coast of India, has yielded over 300 Buddhist metal images datable to about 10th-11th century C.E. During the reign of Pallava Narasimhavarman (690-720 C.E.), a Chinese king is said to have built here a Pagoda popularly known as the China Pagoda. Sometime around A.D. 2005, the Sailendra king of Katah and Sri Vijaya, Sri Mara Vijayattungavarman, erected the Chudamanivihara and endowed it with the grant of a village. This Chinese association is referred to even by Marco Polo in 1292 A.D. This explains the influence of South-East Asian mannerisms on the Buddhist images from Nagapattinam. Incidentally, Nagapattinam and Kurkihar in Bihar are the only two areas in India, where we come across a flaming ushnisha. We commonly encounter this feature in the Malaya peninsula.

Front view