Pleasure and Fear: On the Uneasy Relation between Indic Buddhist Monasticism and Art

When monastics of the Indic North and Northwest around turn Common Era made decision to introduce art into monasteries, current cultural assumptions regarding aesthetic experience such objects, which were axiomatically negated by Buddhist ideology, led certain confrontations in law praxis an attempt resolve these within monastic legal codes (vinaya) redacted during this period. Tracing historical relation between monasticism context, paper focuses on two uneasy relations. The first deals with opposition worldly aesthetics pleasure associated fashion asceticism as a representation monasticism’s renunciate ideal. second considers fear images deities, rejection objects mere signs, resulting acts theft iconoclasm enacted upon them. It will show that resolution both was sought particular semiotic rendered them signs significance accorded ideology. Yet solution remained incomplete, issues arising when same ideology applied own stūpas Buddha-images.