A Gilt Copper Alloy Figure Depicting Udayana Buddha

Acquired in Europe in the 1990s

The specific iconographic formula of abhaya and varadamudra and stylized robe with concentric raised folds has been known in China from at least the early 5th century when Chinese sculptural style was influenced by the Buddhist art of India and Central Asian cultures. The style of the gilt bronze has become known in China as Udayana after legends surrounding an historical Indian ruler and a sandalwood statue brought to China in antiquity. Numerous and competing myths surround the now-lost sandalwood image. Records survive however of Chinese expeditions to India where Buddhism was dominant in the Kushan empire from the 1st century CE, and it is likely that Indian Buddhist sculptural traditions thus found their way to China.

Testimony to this migration of style is seen in two Northern Wei bronze Buddhas, one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among the largest and most important early gilt bronze Buddhist images from China and dated by inscription to the equivalent of 486 CE, and another in a private collection from 443 CE, see D. Leidy, Notes on a Buddha Maitreya sculpture dated 486 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Oriental Art 55, no. 3 (2005-6), p. 22, fig. 1 and p. 28, fig. 12. Both statues show the Buddha standing straight with hands in abhaya and varadamudra, robe falling in stylised concentric folds and wavy hair with whorls at the front.

The origin of the bronzes’ style can be traced to early Gandharan sculpture where Classical Greco-Roman conventions influenced the Buddhist art of the region, with later stylisation of the robe in 3rd and 4th century Mathura sculpture that almost perfectly reflects the concentric folds of the Wei Buddhas’ robes and sinuate fall of cloth from the arms, see S. Czuma, Kushan Sculpture: Images from Early India, Cleveland, 1985, p. 72, cat. no. 16. The upright stance of the Northern Wei Buddhas, the hand gestures of abhaya and varadamudra, the folds of the robe and the wavy hair with whorls at the front are the stylistic source of a myriad Ming and Qing dynasty versions such as the present example, where the whorls of hair of the original are interpreted as discs. The later renditions in the Udayana style pay homage to the origins of Chinese Buddhism in the recreation of the Indo-Chinese styles with which early Chinese Buddhist sculpture is associated. The Udayana mythology did not prevail in Tibet and the genre is exclusive to Chinese Buddhist sculpture.