Crowned and bejeweled serpent-enthroned Buddha

The meanings of this sort of Buddha image are not easy to ascertain. At one level, there is a reference to a moment in the life of the Buddha. In the sixth week after the Enlightenment, as the Buddha sat meditating, a storm broke out and a mighty serpent spread its hoods over the Buddha to shelter him.

This is probably not how this image should be understood, though. The Buddha is here shown crowned and bejeweled, as he would not have been in the weeks after the Enlightenment, so something more was meant than a reference to an episode of his life. Scholars now think that images of a crowned, serpent-enthroned Buddha represent a supreme cosmic Buddha rather than the Buddha who lived and taught on Earth.