Sangama of Buddhism in the Asiatic Diaspora: Imagery of Monks -Bodhidharma and Aṟavaṇa-Aṭikaḷ in Visual Art

Buddhism is a creative religion in Asiatic civilization, creative in the sense the proliferation of a rich literature and visual art leading to Universal Harmony. The present article is an attempt to examine the imagery of Buddhist monks in visual arts with special reference to Bodhidharma/ Aṟavaṇa-aṭikaḷ, propagator of the Buddhist creed. Bodhidharma hailing from Kāñcīpuram lived in China to propagate the Buddhist dharma in the land of Confucianism and Taoism. The imagery of Bodhidharma is popular in Chinese and Japanese annals and visual art through the ages. Visual culture is an authoritative source to demonstrate how a personality was viewed some 1000 or 2000 years ago, e.g. the murals and fresco in the Ajaṇṭā caves that illustrate the Buddhist annals. The Buddha‟s nativity was Nepāḷa, which means his physiognomy should have been of the Mongoloid milieu. The article examines the facial anatomy of the Buddha with reference to monks that propagated Buddhism. Bodhidharma was of the Tamil stock, which means what anthropologists normally designate Drāviḍian. Āryan and Mongolian are of different genres and pigments, viz. Āryan-white, Mongolian-yellow (or golden) and Drāviḍian-black. By the way, the personality of the Mongol reflected in Vassili Yan‟s novelJenghiz Khan is corroborated while dealing with facial anatomy that is known as mukhalakṣaṇa in Indian iconographic jargon.

Keywords: Asiatic Diaspora; Bodhidharma/Aṟavaṇa-aṭikaḷ; imagery of monks; iconography; mukhalakṣaṇa