[Buddha-l] Origin of the Buddha Image

[jkirk]

> Hi there Rahula,
> 
> Here are a couple of links to the web,
> I hope you find them useful and you'll find links to other websites  
> there.
> 
> http://www.buddhamind.info/leftside/arty/bud-imag.htm
> .........If you'd like to see some of my own work
>  (some of it is Buddhist images interpreted by a Western artist,
> some of it is personal explorations)
> go to www.buddhist-pics.com
> 
> With metta
> Visuddhimati.
============
The text in the above website says:

His presence was originally indicated by footprints, by a standing woman (his mother) representing his birth, a tree the Enlightenment, a wheel the Doctrine and the First Sermon, and the stupa his death.

I am surprised that the Buddha was ever represented by a standing woman (his mother)...does anybody have any locational examples of this particular icon? 

The one's I've seen of his mother either show her being visited by the white elephant in a dream (while reclining, asleep), or show his mother giving birth while hanging on to a branch of a tree while standing next to her is a helper woman, plus the Buddha emerging from her right side--but this icon occurred very much later than the earliest period of artistic representation of the Buddhist dharma. 
So where does one find the lone standing woman icon?
Joanna

  


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