Jain Journal 1979 10

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 24

OCTOBER, 1979
In the Subha-sutta (99) of the Majjhima Nikaya a Brahman Sangarava calls Gautama Buddha a mundaka samana, "shaven-headed monk." So by the time when the sculptors of Mathura began to carve images of Gautama Buddha there were two rival traditions relating to hair on the Buddha's head: an older one now preserved in the Pali Nikayas represented Gautama as muṇḍaka or shaven-headed monk; and another tradition preserved in the Mahāvastu, the Lalitavistara and the Nidānakathā represented him as having cut his hair with his sword leaving part of it intact on the head. The shaven-headed images of the Buddha found at Mathura, Mankuar and Sarnath represent the older tradition, and the images of the Buddha with hair on the head arranged in ringlets represent the other and more popular tradition, because it is found both in Sanskrit and Pali texts.
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Gautama Buddha was not an ordinary monk. He was born with the thirty-two marks of a Mahāpuruşa (superman). These marks distinguished the Bodhisattva Gautama from the ordinary Arhats. These marks are fully described in two of the Suttas of the Digha Nikaya (Mahāpadānasuttanta and Lakkhaṇa-suttanta) and the Lalitavistara. Two of these marks that relate to the head are uşnişaśīṛşa, "having a head like a royal turban," and pradakṣinavarta-kesah, "having hair (arranged) in ringlets turning to the right." The commentator Buddhaghosa in his Sumangala-vilāsini (Mahāpadāna-sutta-vaṇṇanā) says that the term uṇhisasīsa (uṣṇīṣaŝirṣa) may be explained in two different ways either denoting the fullness of the forehead or the fullness of the head. The fullness of the forehead may be caused by a strip of muscle (maṁsapaṭala) rising from the root of the right ear, covering the entire forehead, and terminating in the root of the left ear. As a head with such a strip of muscle on the forehead looks like a head wearing a turban, it is therefore called a turban-like head or turban-head. The other explanation defines the turban-head as a fully round head symmetrical in shape like a water bubble."
The smooth head without any mark of hair like the head of the wellknown colossal Bodhisattva dedicated by the Friar Bala in the third year of Kaniska at Sarnath, the head of the Bodhisattva image from Katra in the Mathura Museum, the head on the fragment of the BuddhaBodhisattva image from Mathura in the Museum of Ethnology at Munich, and of other images of the same type, shows slight elevation
• Majjhima Nikaya, Vol. II, p.210.
"Indian Historical Quarterly, Vol. V, no.4, Supplement, p.77.
8 Vogel, Catalogue, Plate VII; Coomarswamy, History of Indian and Indonesian Art, Fig. 84; Bachhofer, Early Indian Sculpture, Plate 81. Bachhofer, Early Indian Sculpture, plate 82.