Absence of the Buddha Image in Early Buddhist Art : Towards its Signifi - cance in Comparative

Journal of Buddhist Ethics 6 (1999): 219 In 1839, Robert Spence Hardy, Methodist missionary to what was then Ceylon, wrote The British Government and the Idolatry of Ceylon, a polemical pamphlet which accused the ruling British authorities of supporting a religion abhorrent to the mind of God because of its idolatry and Ògross superstitionsÓ (Hardy, 1839, p. 46). He was talking of Buddhism. That the image of the Buddha has been seen as an idol by the Abrahamic religions is one point of departure for Tanaka in her study of the absence of the Buddha image in the early years of Buddhism. It leads her to look at the significance of this for contemporary inter–faith relations. If the image of the Buddha could be shown to be peripheral to Buddhism, and if it could even be argued that there was greater creativity in early Buddhism because of its absence, would the door be opened, she asks, to greater understanding between the major world faiths, particularly between Buddhism and monotheism? With this in mind, she seeks to explore what devotion might have been like for Buddhists without the image. She condemns approaches which have projected immaturity or naiveté onto early Buddhist art and claims that an empathetic, imaginative leap into a Buddhism without any visual representation of the Buddha might enable an Òoriginal form of Buddhist faithÓ to emerge (p. 3), one with greater spiritual freedom for the devotee. Absence of the Buddha Image in Early Buddhist Art: Towards its Significance in Comparative Religion. By Kanoko Tanaka. New Delhi: D. K. Printworld (P) Ltd., 1998 [Emerging Perceptions in Buddhist Studies, No. 8], 148 pages plus illustrations, ISBN 8124600902, US $66.70.