Born in India during the 6th century BCE, Buddhism is a reform of the Hinduism which spread even during the very lifetime of the Buddha, in India, then in all Asia.
Prince Gautama, also known as Siddhartha, is said to have left his princely life in a small kingdom of Northern India, when he discovered that suffering and death were the destiny of all human beings. He became an ascetic, traveled and studied with Hindu saddhus during about twenty years, and ultimately got the Enlightenment when meditating under the Pipal Tree.
His theories were clear, simple and free from the heavy ritualism of Hinduism. Soon, the Sangha, a large community of monks and lay people bloomed around him and diffused and propagated his teaching first in India, where it became state-religion for a while, and then in all Asia.
Buddhism arrived in South East Asia and Thailand around the 5th/6th century CE, overlapped the Hindu substrate of the different kingdoms of Champa in Viet-Nam, Funan, then Khmer in Cambodia and Dvaravati in actual Thailand. The early sculptures of the Buddha remained very similar to Gupta and post-Gupta style of they Indian patterns. Nevertheless, soon appeared local styles, integrating the Indian Heritage and creating unseen and refreshed shapes for the images of the Enlightened.
This seated Buddha is coming from U-thong in Central Thailand and is depicted in Vajrasana, (his legs are crossed in a yogi’s position) and doing the Maravijaya mudra (touching the earth when refusing the world of illusion). The firm design on his body and his square face with straight eyebrows show the strong influence of the Khmer style of nearly Cambodia. The band at the beginning of the curly hair and the square-ended pleat of his attire are characteristic of the 15th century’s style called Ayutthaya U-Thong B.
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