Seated Buddha

Buddhist Bronzes  from Indonesia

“Many kings in the islands of the Southern Ocean admire and believe Buddhism. In the city I visited, Buddhist priests number more than 1,000, whose minds are bent on learning and good practices.”*

So reported a Chinese Buddhist monk when he stopped at the Indonesian island of Sumatra in the 680s on his way home from visiting India’s holy sites.

For the next five hundred years Buddhism, in its Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions, flourished in parts of Indonesia, particularly the island of Java. In fact, Java produced, particularly in the 800s, some of the most complex, ambitious, and beautiful Buddhist monuments of all time. Despite the fact that the majority of the Indonesian population is Muslim today, Borobudur remains a popular tourist destination and a marker of cultural pride.

*Adapted from J. Takakusu’s 1896 translation of A Record of the Buddhist Religion as Practised in India and the Malay Archipelago by the monk Yijing.

Traveling monks carried ideas, as well as texts and probably small artworks, between India, Southeast Asia, and China. Certain symbols, motifs, and trends in artistic style show up all around the Buddhist world, having been transmitted by pious travelers. For instance, the Buddha is usually shown seated cross-legged. However, in the period from the 400s through the 800s, images like this one, showing him seated on a throne, with his legs downward, were produced from India to Japan and at many Buddhist sites in-between.

The exact identity of buddhas seated in this way is sometimes not clear. In East Asia they are often identified as the buddha of the future, Maitreya. In Indonesia, some evidence suggests that they often represent a supreme buddha like Vairochana.

This image resembles, in its posture and proportions, a famous, larger-than-life-sized statue in the ninth-century Javanese Buddhist temple of Chandi Mendut.