Sacred Texts and Iconographies relating the Life of the Buddha

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together textual experts and art historians around the same table and discuss which texts have inspired the artists and their mentors when depicting the events related to the life of the Buddha. The important events in the life of Gautama Buddha are not consistently depicted in the ancient and contemporary art schools of Asia, and it is quite possible that these differences are due to confusion and irregularity in the way events are narrated in the sacred texts. It is important to examine how the Lalitavistara, the Mahāvastu and the Bud- dhacarita, as well as the Chinese and Tibetan translations of the original Sanskrit texts of the Abhiniṣkramaṇa sūtra and the Mūlasarvāstivāda vinaya, have inspired the South Asian artists and their mentors. In addition to the well-known Sanskrit texts, many other insights into the history of Buddhism have gradually emerged from the efforts of several scholarly projects based on Gāndhārī Buddhist literature. In contrast, the Nidānakathā, the Jinacaritaṁ, the Dhammapadāṭṭhakathā, the Mahāparinibbāṇa Sutta in the Dīgha Nikayā, among many Pāli sources composed in Sri Lanka, inspired Sri Lankan and to a certain extent Southeast Asian iconographies.
In this exercise, we also hope to discuss the Vedic inspirations of Buddhist literature and art. It will be important to highlight the sensitive links between text and image in both lineages, in order to better understand what is represented and why.