The Buddhist Art of Ancient Arakan ( XIV )

By U SAN THA AUNG

The Head, The Hair And The Usnisa

Buddha Images

The biography of Buddha relates that Prince Siddharttha, son of Suddhodana, king of the Sakyas, made the great renunciation at the age of 29. One night he rode off from the palace and when far from the city he stripped off his ornaments and royal robes. He cut off his long hair with his sword. He received a monastic robe from Brahma Ghatikara. From that moment till his death he wore nothing but the monastic robe.

A student of Buddhism, who is accustomed to think of the Buddha only as a human being, would naturally expect to find the Master represented in art, like any other Buddhist monk, with a shaven head.

As a matter of fact, Buddha is always represented as a deity, with a nimbus, certain physical peculiarities and all the characteristic marks proper to the conception of a Chakravartin or king of the world. Texts implying the deification of the Buddha and possessing all the characteristic marks of a Chakravartin are older than the oldest images of Buddha. We can thus suppose that the images of Buddha are intended to be visual realization of literary descriptions. The styles of art and fashion in iconography are characteristic of period and place.

Representations of the head

The heads of Buddha images may be classified as follows:

The head smooth, with a spirally twisted projection on the crown. ( See Picture. Go ) Early Kusana type.

The head with long flowing locks gathered together on top of the head to form a topknot. ( See Picture. Go ) Early Gandhara type.

The head with a cranial protuberance (Usnisa). The whole head together with the protuberance being covered by small curls. See Picture. Go The Usnisa appeared about the middle of the 2nd century AD. Both Gandhara and Mathura used this type. This type spread from both areas to the Far East and Southeast Asia. The vast majority of the Buddha images belong to this type. In a comparatively late form, the usnisa is surmounted by a flame tip, a flame niche or a lotus bud. In some of the Buddha images of Arakan, the usnisa itself is represented as a flame. See Picture. Go

4. The head with a crown: this type of Buddha is usually called crowned Buddha. Such images are common in the Eastern School of Bengal and Bihar and in Arakan School of art. See Picture. Go

The Hair

In the reliefs and sculptures showing the act of Bodhisattva cutting his hair, he is represented as grasping the whole of the hair in a single tress in the left hand, and cutting it with the sword in the other. The turban has already been removed. If this is the case the most natural way to represent the remaining hair will be to reduce the single thick tress to a single short curl. The See Picture. Go , which was an early kusana Buddha, represented the hair in this form. The smooth head seen in the picture meant simply that all the long hair was drawn up close and tight over the scalp into the single tress and not that it was shaved.

The Nidanakatha tells us that “the hair was reduced to two inches in length and curling from the right, lay close to the head, remaining of that length as long as he lived”.

A new type in which the whole head was covered with many small curls appeared about the middle of the second century, becoming almost universal, in Gandhara, in Mathura and in later art throughout the East and South-east Asia. The length and curling of the hair could still be accounted for from the literary tradition as mentioned in Nidanakatha. But to have curls with equal length all over the head, the original hair instead of being cut off at a single stroke, should had been done by a succession of strokes.

Anyway, we can note that the Buddha’s hair may be represented either in one curl or in many curls.

The cranial protuberance (Usnisa)

The Mahapadana-Sutta mentioned a list of the thirty two lakkhanas (superior marks) proper to a person, who is destined to become a Cakravartin or a Buddha. The last one being unhiso-siso. Similarly, the Mahavastu and Latita-Vistara mentioned unsiso-siso. The interpretation of this phrase is very important. Etymologically, it meant a sunshade or a turban (often a royal headdress) or a royal umbrella. The lakkhanas were recognized in infancy. They must be present on the body, since then, as a physical appearance. This results in a new interpretation of the phrase unhisa or usnisa as a cranial protuberance. That is, a bony protuberace on the top of the skull.

When the tonsure was reinterpreted as resulting in crop of short curls instead of a single coil, the cranial bump became con spiciously evident.