Introduction

Buddhism and its art have existed for more than 2500 years, weaving their way with monks and pilgrims through broad areas of the Asian continent and across seas, mingling with the art and styles of indigenous cultures.

Buddhism arose in a corner of India. Later it was propagated whole country of India, and it surpassed the frontiers into all Asia, in that South East Asia had have been strong impaction either Buddhist teaching and art.

Buddhist art serves to remind, to support and to reinforce the eternal truths of the religion and its development and style remain integral to the history of the religion, the two not being easily separated. Since the ultimate goal of Buddhism is the transcendence of this delusory world for nirvana, it required an art of highly idealized images, infinitely finer than those apparent in one’s mundane existence. Because donations to temples were one of the primary means available to lay followers of gaining merit, (punya) enormous numbers of books, images, buildings and ritual implements were created, often in mass produced to meet the demands of worshippers.

Buddhist art remained centre around the human dimension, featuring images of individual human endeavour and episodes of heroic, moral struggle, all designed to blend a sublime message with a mortal world.

History of Buddhist art have been origin from India commenced with evolution of monasteries in Buddhism and the monuments of king Ashoka. He ruled over a vast domain about the middle of the third century B.C. and promulgated rock edicts and established stone pillars in many places. These pillars were beautifully carved with details that are rich in Buddhist symbolism. At the top of the columns are three lions, regal beasts which are believed to roar out the Buddha’s teachings throughout the world. They are seated on lotuses, which symbolize purity, and they originally supported a great wheel, which symbolizes the wheel of the Buddhist law that was set into motion at the Buddha’s first sermon at Sarnath.

Ashoka also erected 84,000 stupas, burial mounds that contained relics of the Buddha. Stupas were some of the most important symbols of the Buddhist faith, representing at once the Buddha’s teachings and his final enlightenment. Surrounding many large stupas, including the famous examples at Sanchi, India, were stone gates carved with scenes from the life of the Buddha, as well as an-iconic motifs such as sacred trees, small images of stupas, and giant wheels seated on thrones, representing the teachings of the Buddha.

Indian Buddhist art is believed by many schools and to have reached its golden age such as: in Gandhara, north-west India, since the Maury period. Many tribes entered India since the second century B.C. and were rapidly indianized. Kaniska, the founder of the second dynasty of Kushan contributed to Buddhist culture. The culture of Romanized western Asia entered the territory of Kushan, and roman style entered Buddhist art. This is the so-called Gandhara art. The Buddha image was represented by this school for the first time. The best period of the Gandhara School was the second century and the first half of the third century. There are many Buddhist remains in Gandhara as well as in swat to the north of Gandhara. Images of the Buddha and the bodhisattva in stucco were produced on a large scale in the 4^th and the 5^th centuries. There are many remains of the later Gandhara School at Taxila on the left bank of the Indus where J. Marshall excavated and in the plains of Jalalabad in Afghanistan where the French archaeologists have excavated.

In Mathura, middle India. In the Kushan period and its relationship to Gandhara has been detailed It was appear around the first century A.D. in response to the growth of devotionalism in India’s religious traditions, and more specifically in response to the emergence of Mahayana Buddhism, in which the bodhisattvas saviour figure plays a major role. Mathura also was a great centre of art and culture during this period. Mathura has produced Buddha images of various dimensions. The workshop of Mathura export several Buddhist images to various other places, such as Sarnath, and even as far as Rajgir in Bihar. It is well known that Friar-Bala an inhabitant of Mathura had Bodhisattva images set up at different places.

The Kushana Buddha or Bodhisattva images of Mathura served as the prototypes of the more beautiful specimens of the Gupta period.

The Gupta period (4^th-6^th century A.D) marks bright period of art in India. Gupta art is marked by restraint combined with a high aesthetic sense and discipline. Beside the Buddhist images of Buddha and Bodhisattva with the delicate modeling of forms with meditative repose has rendered most attractive, this period is also known for excavations of several rock-cut Viharas and temples at Ajata and Ellora in Maharashtra under the patronage of the Vakataka king.

The Gupta art tradition was followed it later period also. The art of Nalanda, Kurkiha, Sarnath, Orissa and other places during the mediaeval period is based upon the Gupta art idiom. The north Indian Buddhism of the mediaeval period (8^th-11^th century A.D) is a peculiar synthesis of the Mahayana ideals and Tantric elements. The concepts of the Adi-buddha, the Dhyani-buddha, the divine Bodhisattvas as well as the concepts of Shakti of the female energy figures most prominently in the Buddhist art of those periods.

The Pala dynasty arose in the last period of Buddhism in the region of Bihar where Buddhism came into existence for the first time in India. The king of the dynasty patronized Buddhism, the Buddhist art of the Pala period is found in the Bihar region with its center at Nalanda. It accepted the Gupta style and also had original features. The sculptures of this school can be seen not only at Buddhagaya but also in the museums of Patna, Nalanda, Lucknow, Calcutta, Rajshahi and Dhacca in the lower Ganga valley.

Indian Buddhist art is believed by many to have reached its golden age during the Gupta period, when graceful stone figures of the Buddha and Bodhisattvas were carved in a truly Indian style. This style eventually traveled beyond India’s borders and influenced the Buddhist art of other regions. The murals painted in the caves of Ajanta, created in the fifth and sixth centuries, are some of the earliest and finest examples of a tradition of Buddhist cave paintings that spread throughout Asia. Throughout along time history Buddhism had almost monopolized Indian art. But since the late Gupta period Hinduism was prevalent side by side with that of Buddhism. After the Gupta period, Buddhism began a slow, steady decline in India, although it was gaining momentum in many other regions. The Pala kingdom, in particular, in what is now Bengal and Bihar in northeastern India continued the Buddhist artistic tradition for a few more centuries, creating many fine works in a more elaborate style that was transmitted to areas of south-east Asia. By the end of the twelfth century, Buddhism had almost disappeared in the India subcontinent, although many masterpieces of art have remained from the earlier periods.

Buddhism declined in India. The southern areas of Asia retained the older traditions, while the northern regions, beginning along the Himalayan belt that formed India’s natural northern frontier, followed the later devotional and esoteric schools. This division is clearly evident in the art of the two areas. In the north, much of the imagery depicted the polarity between heavenly rewards and personal damnations, while Southeast Asian art emphasized the older traditional subjects, especially those involving the historical Buddha and his teachings.

In the early spread of Buddhism to Southeast Asia and China, the evidence for Buddhism comes from three sources: Chinese histories, local inscriptions, and art. The Chinese histories that mention early Southeast Asian politics have been very thoroughly explored by scholars. The Chinese sources present the Indian impact starting in the first century B.C., and at times references to Buddhism can be discerned from this early period. By around the fifth century, there are reports from Chinese monks who traveled by ship to and from India, and who thus passed through Southeast Asia. One monk, Yijing (635-713 A.D.), stopped in the capital of Srivijaya Nagar in 671 A.D, on his way to India in order to study Sanskrit. Yijing returned to Palembang after ten years in India to live again in Srivijaya Nagar from 685 to 695 and it is there that he translated Indian texts into Chinese and wrote his memoirs.

Srivijaya remained a centre for Buddhist studies for hundreds of years. The famous Indian monk Atisha (982-1054) went to Sumatra to study with the Buddhist teacher Dharmakirti. Atisha later traveled to Tibet in 1042 and founded the Kadam lineage, which later on became its basis the Dge lugs (Geluk) school of Tibetan Buddhism.

The second category of evidence for Buddhism in Southeast Asia and Indonesia are inscriptions. The earliest inscriptions, mostly written on stone, date from around the fifth to the eighth centuries B.C. they are written in Indian-related scripts in Sanskrit, or similar in Buddhist texts. The dating of these inscriptions, scattered at various sites, is generally based on paleography, which gives rise to varying opinions by scholars. Most of these inscriptions hold little historical information, but they tell us that Buddhism was practiced by some of the population and sometimes the school of Buddhism can be broadly identified. When the early Buddhist inscriptions are compared to those of similar date that relate to Hinduism, it appears that Hinduism was associated with those in power, the local chiefs or kings. Hinduism in Southeast Asia served the role of building royal power more frequently than did Buddhism during this early period.

The third category of evidence for Buddhism on Southeast Asia is the art tradition. The cultural history of Southeast Asia was influence by Indian ideas. The development of Buddhist art in Southeast Asia is quite unique, Buddhist art was imported from India by Buddhist laymen traders and Buddhist monks but later it was copied, and developed into a fully indigenous tradition. Thus the seed of inspiration and art was Indian but the growth was Southeast Asian. The early expansion of Buddhist Theravada, but later from the beginning of the 7^th century Mahayana was introduced. Vajrayana even found a niche for itself. Indian influence continued with links with the Andhra, Gupta and Pala empires.

Almost people believed that Vietnamese cultural history was influence from Chinese ideas that mean even the Buddhist art. But the really, Vietnam today including Champa and Funan so we have to examine the mixture cultural of this area to more understand about Vietnamese Buddhist art today. With along time history Vietnam country had through passing with historical ups and downs, it’s culture and especial Buddhist art not only is an influence from Chinese ideas but those was complex with a web of influence woven by both Chinese and Indian ideas. Influence from India come from Southeast Asia. Also the same Southeast Asia countries; Vietnamese Buddhist art was imported from India but later it was developed into a fully indigenous tradition. That means the seed of inspiration and art was Indian, but the growth was Vietnamese.

There are many sources indicating the trade-routes to Southeast Asia from India. The Buddhist texts, Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa, give us some information about the earliest glimpse of sea-journey undertaken from India, also we can found in various Jataka stories told about the sea journey from Ganga to Southeast Asia or in the Mahajanaka-Jataka talk about a prince who set out with other traders with commodities for export to Suvarnabhumi. Beside that there are also some information from Chinese source or from Milindapanha text have been evidenced this problem.

We can see Indian ideas in Southeast Asian Buddhist works such as Borobudur stupa in Java, Buddha statue in the Sarnath style was the prototype of the Buddha in Dvaravati in Thailand or the Gupta style was represents in Burmese Buddhist stupas and temples at Tagaon, Prome and Thaton. In Cambodia both Buddhism and Hinduism were prevalent. Buddha statues in the Gupta style, especial of Sarnath have been found in many places. In Vietnam Buddhist art represent in Cham stupas or Funan Buddha and bodhisattvas statues.

There are so many scholars research about Buddhist art in Vietnam and Southeast Asia and so many Buddhist works on art are published such as: “the art of Southeast Asia: temples and sculpture” of Frederic, l., “the art of Indian Asian” of Heinrich Zimmer. “introduction to Buddhist art” of Chikyo Yamamoto, “Buddhist art in India, Ceylon and Java” J. Ph. Vogel, “Sacred Biography in the Buddhist traditions of south and Southeast Asia” of Juliane Schober, “History of Indian and Indonesian art” of Coomaraswamy, “Hindu-Buddhist architecture in south east Asia” of E. J. Brill, “the art of Srivijaya” of Diskul, M. C. Subhedradis. And so on…although so many works mention about Buddhist art in South East Asia but these only emphasis on Indian element and the separately represents of subjects.