The Five Buddhas of Meditation from Yungang
André BUENO
Original title: Os Cinco Budas da Meditação de Yungang
Published in
Keywords: Ancient China, Buddhism, Buddhist Iconography, Intercultural Dialogue, Theory of Five Buddha’s of Meditation.
In a previous article, we examined the relationship between the Buddha Akshobhya 阿閦如来 of cave 16 from the Yungang complex 雲崗石窟 in China, and the construction of a Buddhist iconography with Indo, Greek and Roman origin’s. Our proposal was that the Buddha of cave 16 is designed to spiritually receive the peoples from the Mediterranean. Now we want to analyze the elements by which we can say that the Buddha of cave 16 is Akshobhya, and as the original set of five caves of Yungang was organized according to the theory of “Five Buddhas of Meditation”.
Yungang: a Chinese Buddha to the Romans
André BUENO
Original title: Yungang: um Buda Chinês para os Romanos
Published in
Keywords: Ancient China, Buddhism, Buddhist Iconography, Intercultural Dialogue, Roman Empire.
The aim of this paper is to analyze the Akshobhya Buddha statue (in Chinese, Achurulai 阿閦如来), located in the cave 16 in Yungang Complex (Yungang Shiku 雲崗石窟), which is situated in northern China, and is built in 5th century CE. Our proposal is that this statue was sculpted to receive foreigners, especially the Romans, using an in Buddhist iconographic experience that incorporated elements Greco-Roman, Indian and Chinese.
