Thinking Bodhisattva

This sculpture is an example of the rich cultural interplay and hybrid art styles of the Gandharan empire in the first centuries C.E. It represents the bodhisattva who will be born as the historic founder of Buddhism, Prince Siddhartha, sitting in a celestial abode called the Tushita heaven, where he teaches the gods and meditates on his future birth. Like other Gandharan bodhisattvas, he looks like an earthly prince, richly dressed and bejeweled, and impressively enthroned. The headdress and the figure's heavily moustached face belong to the Indian world, while the Buddha's body, with its naturalistic treatment of flesh and muscle, and contrapposto pose suggest Roman sculpture.

The lion throne has Persian antecedents as an image of regal power. The lion supports on his throne recall the Buddhist epithet _Shakyasimha_, "lion of the Shakya clan;" and the pillars erected during the first Indian empire, the Mauryan Dynasty (322-185 B.C.E.) by the Buddhist emperor Ashoka (r. 279-232 B.C.E.), many of which feature a lion on the capital of the column. The Buddha was born into the _Shakya_, or lion, clan. In Buddhist iconography, lions are also protectors of _dharma_, the teachings of the Buddha.

The use of hard-fired ceramic instead of stone reflects the later Gandharan period from the 4th to the 6th centuries C.E. The medium of fired clay was expensive in the area around Hadda, from which the sculpture comes, as wood was scarce. Such an expensive sculpture would have been a very meritorious Buddhist offering.

**Adapted from**

Anne Bromberg, "Thinking Bodhisattva," in _The Arts of India, South East Asia, and the Himalayas_ (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art; New Have: Yale University Press, 2013), 49.