Korea Journal of Buddhist Studies 불교학연구 ISSN:1598-0642(Print)

One of the most tantalizing mysteries in the early phase of Buddhist art is why the Buddha’s head is not shaved in the earliest images of the Buddha. The so-called Buddha images of the earliest phase from Gandhāra and Mathurā invariably bear large topknots on their heads. The reason for this anomaly is that they were initially created as representations of Śākyamuni as a bodhisattva—that is, as a practitioner in the pre-enlightenment stage. Prince Siddhārtha is said to have taken off his turban and other hair adornments when he renounced the secular life. The visualization of Śākyamuni in this form apparently inspired the creation of the iconographic types of the bodhisattva in Swat (Gandhāra) and Mathurā, which show large topknots on the heads. When Buddha images in the proper sense were first created in Gandhāra, the large topknot was kept to ensure iconographic continuity from the earlier bodhisattva images. Considerations regarding the aesthetic and symbolic advantages of keeping long hair must also have played a role. Buddhists in Gandhāra were conscious of the problem of the topknot remaining on the Buddha’s head. Thus, they tried to cut the hair on the upper part of the head and render it as snail-shell curls in some Buddha images made during the second century. However, in the majority of Buddha images created in Gandhāra, the long hair and the large topknot continued to be favored. In contrast, Buddhists in India proper, especially in Mathurā and Amarāvatī, adopted snail-shell curls covering the entire head beginning in the third century, and this became a standard throughout virtually the entire Buddhist world.