Publisher's Synopsis
This study explores the questions of how and why the earliest verifiable images of the historical Buddha were created. In so doing, Robert DeCaroli steps away from old questions of where and when to present the history of Buddhism's relationship with figural art as an ongoing set of negotiations within the Buddhist community and in society at large. By comparing innovations in Brahmanical, Jain, and royal artistic practice, DeCaroli examines why no image of the Buddha was made until approximately five hundred years after his death and what changed in the centuries surrounding the start of the Common Era to suddenly make those images desirable and acceptable.
