Buda històric Sakyamuni en dejuni

This image, typical of the art of Gandhara, represents the historical Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, also known as ¿¿kyamuni, who lived between the 6th and 5th centuries before Christ. ¿¿kyamuni is shown here affected by the consequences of the six years in which he subjected himself to extreme asceticism, in other words, the repression of pleasures, vices and material needs and the voluntary imposition of diverse practices such as meditation and corporal mortification, with the aim of finding a path to achieving enlightenment and thus being able to release himself from the continuous cycle of reincarnations. This long and severe asceticism did not lead him directly to the desired goal, but enabled him to reach the conclusion that the extreme paths were not the appropriate ones. He ended up finding the way towards this desired enlightenment practicing what is known as halfway Buddhism: the path of moderation that rejects devoting oneself to extremes. Unlike the majority of representations of ¿¿kyamuni in which the aim is to capture and idealise the moment of his enlightenment and physical beauty, the iconography of this work is exceptional for the fact that it represents the physical deterioration during his period of asceticism and privation of material goods. The few examples that are known of this type of representation are sculptures with realist intentions that show the skeletal figure of Gautama, as well as tendons, veins and other details of the human body that in the Buddhist world are usually thought to be improper of the transcendental image of Buddha. Once having achieved enlightenment and discovered how to put an end to the cycle of existences, ¿¿kyamuni embarked on a series of journeys around northern India to spread his doctrine. After his death, aged 80, the relics of ¿¿kyamuni became the object of worship of his followers, but it was not until the beginning of our times that the artists from the ancient region of Gandhara began representing him with a human form.