Fasting Buddha

Blog post and photography by Peter Hemenway

The “Fasting Buddha” is a masterpiece from ancient Gandhara that was excavated in Sikri, Pakistan, in the 19th century (the village where the statue was discovered, Sikri is not far from Peshawar). It probably dates to the 2nd century CE. The sculpture was donated to the Lahore Museum of Pakistan in 1894, where it is still displayed.

The story goes that Siddharta was close to death from fasting for 49 days when Sujata, who was a local Brahmin’s daughter (Brahmins area the highest class in Hinduism) offered him rice which saved him. He then preaching a “middle way”, a path of moderation away from the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification, the central tenet of Buddhist practice.