Seated Buddha

0:00:06.5 Dr. Beth Harris: We’re standing in the storage room at the National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C. We’re looking at a bronze sculpture, this beautiful image of Buddha seated on a lotus throne surrounded by a kind of mandorla or halo of flames.

0:00:24.0 Dr. Emma Natalya Stein: And we have the 24 Buddhas of the past ringing the pedestal.

0:00:29.5 Dr. Beth Harris: The 24 Buddhas of the past remind us that Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha that we’re looking at, is only the most recent Buddha. It’s got this lovely green patina that tells us that this was at one point buried.

0:00:44.8 Dr. Emma Natalya Stein: The sculpture was found in southern Vietnam among a group of seven bronze sculptures. Some Hindu deities, a ritual bell, a yogini. They all share one thing in common. They were part of the Khmer Empire that had its heartland near Angkor Wat in northern Cambodia. The Khmer Empire reached its greatest extent under the ruler Jayavarman VII. When he expanded the empire, he built many temples, roads, and networks to connect the far reaches of the empire. And he was the first to instate Buddhism as the state religion.

0:01:25.2 Dr. Beth Harris: This was an area that had both Hindu and Buddhist practitioners.

0:01:30.0 Dr. Emma Natalya Stein: Although it was found in southern Vietnam, that doesn’t seem to have been the place of its fabrication. The flaming aureole has these finials that are nagas. Nagas are divine serpents who are protector deities. And the way in which they are depicted, with almost like a mane behind them, this is really typical of bronze sculptures from Khmer parts of northeastern Thailand. That, plus these Buddhas, plus the seated Buddha on a triple-petaled lotus platform, these are typical of Khmer culture within northeastern Thailand.

0:02:11.2 Dr. Beth Harris: So this is an object that traveled.

0:02:13.5 Dr. Emma Natalya Stein: It would have gone from its place of fabrication to southern Vietnam, possibly with a traveling monk, possibly as part of an expedition that expanded the empire. It’s likely that it traveled during Jayavarman VII’s time, when the territory of the Khmer Empire expanded to its greatest extent and southern Vietnam became, at least peripherally, under the control of the Khmer dynasty.

0:02:41.5 Dr. Beth Harris: So we’re seeing Buddha at a specific moment under the bodhi tree.

0:02:46.3 Dr. Emma Natalya Stein: This is a moment of his enlightenment or his extended meditation. He’s got both hands in his lap. His legs are crossed. He’s holding a lotus bud or a jewel in his hand. And at the moment of his enlightenment, he takes that right hand and points down and touches the Earth. And that would be the sign of him reaching enlightenment. He has a crown, he has lotus bud earrings. He’s wearing some jewelry. It would have been buried, likely at the time when Khmer power over that region started to become uncertain.

0:03:27.7 Dr. Beth Harris: So perhaps that motivates someone to bury these objects for safekeeping.

0:03:33.7 Dr. Emma Natalya Stein: Throughout South and Southeast Asia there has been a historical practice of burying valuables in times of uncertainty. In this context it is very likely that the bronzes from various temples in the area were collected and ritually buried in a semi-permanent encasement. Over time the memory dies with the people and many centuries later a farmer might be digging in their field and strike something hard and out comes a cache of bronzes.

0:04:04.6 Dr. Beth Harris: And in this case it was actually a French forest ranger who was digging in a mound and came across this particular group of objects.

0:04:13.7 Dr. Emma Natalya Stein: The reason there was a French forest ranger digging in a mound in southern Vietnam is that at the time Vietnam was under French control. In the 1940s when the French ceded that area to Japan, there was a big circulation of Khmer artworks and it’s during that period that the bronzes travel to the U.S.A. And one of them, this seated Buddha enters the collection of the Freer Gallery of Art.

This work at the National Museum of Asian Art

Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art

Emma C. Bunker and Douglas Latchford, Khmer Bronzes: New Interpretations of the Past (Chicago: Art Media Resources, 2011).

Emma Natalya Stein, “A Divine Assembly,” Global Lives of Objects: Celebrating 100 Years of the National Museum of Asian Art, edited by Massumeh Farhad and Sana Mirza (Lewes: D Giles Ltd, 2023), pp. 70–73.

Introduction to Buddhism

How to recognize the Buddha