Healing Buddha
Standing Buddha image holding a myrobolan fruit and a begging bowl.
Gilded and lacquered wood with glass inlays.
Burma/Myanmar; 19th Century
BC 86.01.01.00; Northern Illinois University
Konrad and Sarah Bekker Collection
This is an unusual representation of the standing Buddha as a Healing Buddha. This form is iconographically identifiable through the Buddha figure holding an alms bowl in his left hand while clasping a medicinal myrobalan fruit between the thumb and fingers of his right hand. The Burmese adaptation of this image type allowed a remarkable innovation to occur: the Healing Buddha is always shown seated in Mahayana renditions, but here, in the Burmese depiction, he stands. This piece from the 19th century image is one of the rare, known images in Burma/ Myanmar to exhibit this new iconography. Within the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, depictions of the Healing Buddha are very common.
