Magical Maha Maya- Epic Dimensions in Buddhist Art

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About the Book Innovative Buddhist art and literature induct a new visual culture in South Asia. The performing arts' virtual realism is linked to the Jatakam rebirth stories. The anecdotal Jatakam recited in the "Hall of Truth" propels the Life Cycle of the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas. The newly invented "Lord's Descent" in Aramaic derived Prakrit Brahmi emblazoned on Bharhut's Maha Maya medallion enables magical rebirth. The sigils and logocentric images with scaffolding meaning are refined by hereditary skill. Throughout, Buddhist art intermingles with the enchanted materialism of the second century Tamil epic Manimekalai.

The interactive cultural production of the Greco-Kushan period intersects mythologies and ancient Mysteries of the Roman world. The interface provokes new transformative learning. The Apollo type of Buddha accompanied by Hercules in the Greek Hero Cult is related to Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean region. The divine-human transformation is helped by the newly fused Hellenistic goddesses. The iconic conceptual images, schematic narrative reliefs, and standardized reliquaries from the funerary monument's womb chamber demonstrate unified knowledge. The graphic Buddhist vocabulary adjusted to the existential world is a unique historical document of the first three centuries of the Common Era.

About the Author Arputheran Sengupta, born in 1947, m art historien, author, and award-winning artie She examines the semiotics of Buddhist visual art and linguistics as a programmed undertaking in the Greco Roman world. She discovers how the meaning of scientifically informed art and artifacts is subject to future alteration due to an individual's nation and notions. Much of her teaching experience for more than thirty-five years began at the Stella Maris College, the University of Madras, where she studied History of Fine Arts as an undergraduate. Her thesis on the religious views and cultural synthesis in the sculptural terracotta temples of Bishnupur in West Bengal earned her a Ph.D. from the Rabindra Bharati University at Calcutta.

As Professor in History of Art and Department Director at the National Museum Institute (1996-2010), a Deemed University in New Delhi, Arputharani Sengupta developed the postgraduate course syllabus and spearheaded investigative and interdisciplinary research on religious art. Her over a decade-long engagement with the National Museum of India, next door to India's Archaeological Survey in New Delhi, was a stimulating experience and a source of inspiration. The seven books with two double volumes and several supplementary publications by Arputharani Sengupta reflect her in-depth engagement with the individual elements of early Buddhist images and art objects to reclaim their original meaning subjected to change after two thousand years.

Preface As I write, I witness a unique moment in my passing way What remains is the idea behind the Dream of Mays It is a tale of impossible wonder, like science fiction- my quest is to leam the way stories are told and seek the story behind the story, but the cause for its creation is still out of sight. When the Buddhist cult entered the unchartered territory in South Asia, cultural jewels breaking barriers appear one after another. I question the burgeoning cultural flow. How did the Buddhist cult come to be dominated by Greco-Romans in the first place? So far, no one has cared for the motivation of the outsourced artist. Or his ancestry.

Death is frequent and erratic. A man usually grows old and dies bemoaned. But never to rot - his survival beyond the grave depends on the hothouse of magic. This glasshouse of creativity called Buddhist Art is unprecedented, futuristic, and optimistic. It is fantastic and luxurious in equal measure. The Buddhist world is about tall tales of distant places filled with unlikely creatures, of bowlegged dwarfs spewing plantlife, and riding an elephant with a fishtail, it is about legless Anguiped and serpent men like Gnostic Abraxas and winged men and women that is neither fish nor fowl but some sort of vegetal nature spirit. The jeweler-sculptors and ivory carvers filling in New Elysium simultaneously examine death and rebirth in several stupa sites. In unison, they expose the first eyewitness account of a unique moment in time- death and rebirth and resurrection of Buddha - countless times. But the most life-transforming colonial scoop revealed the forgotten necropolises as abandoned monasteries of the early Christian period.

Transmutation of the soul has several fictional traditions as we chase enigmatic "Dream of Maya"- it is part of an indefinable genre, with its roots in the voyagers' tales like Apuleius Metamorphosis and Shattan's Manimekalal, tall tales of distant places coming from Inspired Minds. Each sign and symbol exist, for it is religious fiction, even if the image at the heart of the story is the Moon and a white baby elephant caught and secured in its web as it descends like an arrow to enter the womb of Maha Maya slumbering in the manmade Chaitya cave mansion.

Buddhist art is about the Moon and Earth, Sun and the planets that sing; it is about the hush of their inaudible incantations. The spinning spidery fantasy transforms the lumbering black elephant into Mahakala, a homonym for Saturn, meaning black and time (Chronos).

Introduction The legendary life of Buddha in Mahayana known for multiple rebirths and mind-bending travel, which unfolds in the course multiple timelines and places. Even visual devoted the early Buddhist has pattern of ambiguity regarding the carly historic period. gap nearly two-thousand years, solving Buddha phenomenon at beginning archaeology mainly involved fitting the unfamiliar sculptured vignettes with newly Jatakam birth stories literature. contrast, Pali Sutta Pitaka a "Basket Discourse" constituting rival philosophies Theravada Way of Elders reveals much about religious practices spiritual everyday life. Buddhist revealed by Aramaic derived Brahmi Gandhari scripts wrapped the spirit conversion brought by New mystifying transformation incandescent Buddha into religious creed began colonial archacologists Indologists. In this setting, detecting deification Prince Kapilavastu the root the birth, growth, and of new monarchic state. The influence Scythian Kushan religious and Asia.

lengthening silence about the origin iconography, scriptn and the language inbuilt meaning Buddhist chronicle engulfed a disregard for context stage and its time. interdisciplinary expected rectify now outdated and inaccurate assumptions completely Greeks and their contribution emergent South Asia. Buddhist mortuary cult marked not only its but the innovative scripts and rebirth theme dictating collection Jatakam Sri Lankan Pali literature. The sandstone parclose Bharhut stupa branded Gandhari labels Jatakam vignettes in Prakrit Brahmi. This radical muscal practice was routine among the painters the ancient black and Greek pottery. So far defined only within the narrow limits obscure Sunga the novelty Bharhut sculpture is the same as that Sanchi, Mathura, Amaravati, and Gandhara schools, which are unified under authoritarian codex controlling symbolic architecture during the first two of Common Era.

Reconciling secular theme in sacred spaces another matter. On the Cusp of Language "Great Departure" of the Prince of Kapilavastu popular refrain.

**Contents and Sample Pages**