The agony before enlightenment
The 'Fasting Buddha' is a Gandharan masterpiece, one of the most prominent statues in the world and a valued possession of the Lahore Museum since 1894. It stands only 33 inches tall and is crafted out of grey Gandharan Schist stone. But the statue is more than its physical form; it represents a story of millions of people's search for spiritual enlightenment — a fantastic mystical journey.
The statue of Fasting Buddha is one of the finest examples of Gandhara Art and one of the most sought-after artefacts in Buddhism. The statue was discovered in the nineteenth century in Sikri, Gandhara region, and most likely comes from the second century CE. The sculpture portrays the heroism of Buddha in his battle to find a way to end to human suffering.
According to Buddhist tradition, this Buddha's holy form as the 'Fasting Buddha' serves as a reminder and inspiration of Buddha's difficult journey to achieve enlightenment. The figure depicts the strength Buddha’s desire to assist others while subjecting his body to extreme conditions to achieve enlightenment. Although it is believed that the Buddha endured great agony because of prolonged fasting, he never gave up or used the challenges to justify abandoning his spiritual pursuit.
For the viewer, this significance of this message is immediately touching. “Its serenity is impeccable and the aura around it sucks you into its core meaning,” Feica, a renowned Pakistani visual artist, sculptor and cartoonist said. “The statue is a representation of the artist’s epic excellence.”
Although the statue is popularly known as Fasting Buddha, there is an ongoing debate about whether the statue should be called the "Fasting Bodhisattva" or "Fasting Siddhartha," since it depicts an incident before the Buddha's enlightenment. According to Buddhist tradition, Siddhartha Gautama experimented with numerous ascetic methods in his spiritual search. These methods including starving himself until he resembled a living skeleton.
In his spiritual search, Siddhartha realized that mental development and understanding, not physical hardships were the worthiest methods for achieving enlightenment. For millions of Buddhists, this sculpture embodies the significance and struggle of being on the spiritual path. People from around the world believe that possessing an image of the Fasting Buddha, making offerings, and praying to it will endow them the courage, diligence, and mental strength necessary to overcome obstacles.
A few devotional icons from the greater Gandhara region represent the Buddha as an emaciated renunciant of material possessions. However, only three such images have been discovered during excavations, implying that very few were created in Gandhara. These statuses show Buddha's bone structure, tendons, and veins -- all regarded as ugly and unsuitable for a picture of enlightened transcendence in the Buddhist world. These representations were long believed to represent the six years when Buddha practised rigorous austerity in search of enlightenment.
The Abhiniskramana Sutra describes how the Buddha collected himself for contemplation. His mouth was closed, his teeth were squeezed together, and his tongue was pressed upward against the palate. His skin wrinkled, physique shrunk, and his eyes became hollow as those of an older man. Those who saw him during this time were filled with an odd sense of awe and devotion at the sight of the penance he was experiencing. It has been proposed that these images are not symbolic depictions of the six-year fast -- which is widely thought to be a wrong path -- but a depiction of Buddha's genuine enlightenment.
According to the Buddhist text, the Buddha sat on cut grass beneath the Bodhi tree in Bodhgaya, India, where he attained enlightenment and then meditated and fasted for forty-nine days. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s sitting depiction of the hungry Buddha depicts the Buddha meditating on a grass bed -- iconography compatible with other known examples.
Although the Buddha realized his self-mortification was pointless, in doing it he acquired and thoroughly mastered a variety of non-Buddhist ascetic techniques. Given the Gandharan Buddhists' competition for disciples with various Brahmanical organisations, it is somewhat unsurprising that the Buddha was portrayed as the first among ascetics.
These images were almost certainly intended to appeal to a lay population that admired religious figures who exercised complete control over austere disciplines as part of an effort to convert these groups to Buddhism. Texts also refer to forest monks - Buddhist adherents who promoted a much more austere lifestyle than those who lived in monasteries adjacent to sacred locations – who may have shared this view of Buddha.
Excavations from other locations have uncovered depictions of the Fasting Buddha that bear resemblance to the Gadharan style, indicating that this image type was ideologically significant within the larger Buddhist world. Numerous instances of fifth-century AD paintings of famished Buddhas have been discovered at the Central Asian site of Kizil, and a few portable depictions have been discovered in Kashmir. This iconography was less popular in India, where only one Gandharan Schist relief was discovered in Mathura, and another referenced by the Chinese traveller Xuanzang in Bodhgaya.
Of the other depictions of emaciated Buddhas on display around the world, only the Lahore Museum houses a magnificent, complete figure with a lengthy beard -- evoking Buddha’s discipline. Another very bony specimen was discovered in 2010 during a Christie’s auction. Fragmented variants can be found in various institutional collections, from the Peshawar Museum to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These epic works are able to portray the Buddha’s devotion to his legendary mission because of their use of deeply incised lines — a feature of Gandharan art that developed from an East-West cultural exchange.
The fleeting appearance of emaciated Gandharan Buddhas throughout the Buddhist world can most likely be attributed to the movement of Gandharan monks in the fifth century AD. Although little is known about how devotional imagery was utilised and understood in Gandhara, scenes based on classic pictures shed light on the actions of lay and monastic communities. The reclining grey schist Buddha in the Lahore Museum depicts bones and veins so finely carved that they are practically indistinguishable from the folds of the figure’s long scarf. This is one of the most dramatic examples of this unique cultural fusion.
The statue of the Fasting Buddha supports the thesis that it originated in the ancient province of Gandhara, where the arts of the Indian subcontinent mingled with Hellenistic styles introduced to this region by Alexander the Great and his successors. There is a fascination with the human body in Hellenistic art, an Indian sculptural tradition, and a close naturalistic investigation of the human form. These traditions converged in Gandharan art to create a distinct, expressive style at the crossroads of East and West.
It is generally believed that the artists responsible for the Fasting Buddha figure were from Kushan Empire or earlier, which was strongly influenced by Hellenistic art. Greek descendants either settled in the Gandhara region or local artisans there took up Hellenistic styles.
In some cases, artists may have combined Hellenistic art with local Indian sculpture. Humera Alam, the former director of the Lahore Museum and an expert on Gandharan artefacts said the Fasting Buddha sculpture has a visible mix of these influences. “Anatomy is noticeably Hellenistic, and attire pattern completely represents the local style found in our times,” she said. “This marvellous sculpture cannot be studied out of context.”
After starving himself, the Buddha received an offering of rice milk by Sujata, after which he came to understand that certain realization could come from a simple shift of the mind, at the right time and in the right conditions. For adherents of Buddhism, this is a reminder that all beings who reached enlightenment need to go through such hardships. Difficulties push us to step out of our comfort zones to overcome ignorance and ego and realise the impermanence of things. Once we do this, we can let go and start again without self-made boundaries.
The Fasting Buddha did just that.
The writer is a Lahore based author, educator, brand strategist and journalist. He can be reached at: arshadawan@msn.com