Buddha Statues and Figurines: The Buddha Garden

Welcome to TheBuddhaGarden.Com website and thank you for viewing our large collection of Buddha Statues and Buddhist artwork, including our Stone Garden Buddhas, along with metal statues from India, Nepal and Thailand. If you are looking for smaller figurines, as well as Kuan Yin artwork, you will find it all here. Many visitors buy our assorted Ganesh Statues and Hindu Sculptures. Be sure to check out the collection of Jewelry as well, which features Buddha Pendants and Hindu Talisman. The Buddha Garden is actually the new, spirituality-oriented website of Siamese-Dream.Com, where we have been selling online since 1997, making us one of the oldest companies selling Buddhist and Hindu art online. So it's a new name (and web site) for a company that has been around for over 12 years.

A Brief Introduction to Buddha Statues and Sculptures

For several hundred years after the Buddha entered Nirvana in 486 BCE, there were few, if any, Buddha statues or sculptures. In fact, images of the Buddha were quite uncommon, with artists preferring to depict Buddhist symbols instead. In temple carvings and artwork, the Buddha was "represented" by the depiction of spiritual objects, such as a lotus blossom.

It wasn't until the Maurya Dynasty, especially under the Buddhist King Ashoka (about 273 to 227 BCE) had united most of the Indian subcontinent, did Buddhist art have an official patron. Prior to that, there were precious few statues or sculptures of any kind, as the Aryan people and their Vedic religion produced great written and oral works, but almost no sculptured pieces. Even then, Buddhist statues from this period tended to be pillars or other non depictional pieces.

Gandhara Period Statues

By the third century of the common era, the Gandhara style had developed, and artists were producing Greco-Buddhist sculptures. These statues had been directly influenced by Hellenistic arts, so it appears that statue making had been so minimal in the hundreds of years preceding this period that they had to "import" ideas from Greece (where Buddhism had spread) of how a Buddha statue should look. As Gandhara is centered in the Northwest of India, and was a place were many invading armies had passed, it probably should not be too much of a surprise that early statues and art was heavily influenced by Persian and Greek forms. Contemporary of the Gandhara period were the Mathura and Amaravati styles, which also produced large amounts of Buddhist artwork. The Mathura style was also heavily influenced by foreign influence, while Amaravati sculptures were less so.

The Classic Indian Buddhist Sculpture

Indian art historians look to the Gupta period, which spanned from approximately 320 to 550 CE, as the classic period of statue making. Buddhist art started to shed its Greek influence, and the Buddha was depicted looking more Indian like. At the same time, images of the Buddha became more stylized - less emphasis was put on making a realistic portrait, and instead the focus was on producing a carving that looked like the subject was lost in a spiritual quest. Where Hellenistic are had been lifelike, the new Buddha's face had symmetric features, a calm expression, and details that were considered "nonessential" were left out. The favorite materials used in sculpture making from the Gupta period were sandstone, limestone and schist.

Statue Styles from Asia

As the Gupta period came to an end, Buddhism also was declining in India as well. It had to contend with a resurgence in Hinduism, as well as persecution from invading Muslim groups that eventually ruled almost all of present-day India. But as Buddhism declined in the land of its birthplace, it was on the ascension throughout much of East and Southeast Asia, and the Buddhist art produced in those countries could arguably rival any of that produced in the preceding years in India. The Sukhothai style of Buddhist art from Thailand, for example, is considered by many people to be the ultimate expression of the Buddha sculptures and statues. Others will argue that Khmer (Cambodian), Japanese, Chinese, etc., styles are the ultimate artistic expression.

But what almost everyone can agree on is that Buddhist statues from each region has distinct characteristics. To the trained eye, it is easy to tell a Chinese statue from a Thai work, or a Korean sculpture from an Indian one.