The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

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196. Buddha from Bengal.
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts
A typical example is the seated Buddha in the
collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
[196]. The Buddha is represented in the yoga
pose and earth-touching gesture of the Enlightenment.
A feature that might at first strike
the observer as a rather strange anachronism is
that the Buddha wears the crown and jewels of a
royal personage, the very worldly attributes discarded
at the time of the renunciation. This can
best be explained as part of the process of the
Buddha's deification in Mahayana Buddhism
the crown and jewels not only proclaim his
power as Cakravartin or universal sovereign,
but are intended to suggest that state of radiant
splendour or transfiguration attained at the
supreme moment of Enlightenment. The iconography
is the same as in the Buddha from
Fondukistan discussed in an earlier chapter. 4
The actual style of the carving is a kind of
desiccated perpetuation of the Gupta school of