Vortrag von Prof. Dr. Gudrun Bühnemann

Crushed Underfoot: Patterns of Subjugation and Extreme Dependency in the Buddhist Iconography of Nepal.

Vortrag von Prof. Dr. Gudrun Bühnemann

Buddhist art from the Himalayan region has become widely known through display in museums and exhibitions. The art from Tibet and Nepal has attracted particular attention and has been idealized as “meditational” and “enlightenment art”. In this talk I will focus on representations of Buddhist Tantric deities that do not support this cliché. Instead, they illustrate the act of subjugation and state of extreme dependency due to sectarian animosity between two competing religious traditions, Hinduism and Buddhism. I will discuss major patterns of such representations in art all of which convey the message of the superiority of the Buddhist figures over Hindu or Śaiva divinities in specific ways.