Bhaishajyaguru or Medicinal Buddha

Rarely a theme of folk, the painting represents Buddha as Bhaishajyaguru – Master of medicine, or the medicine Buddha, the unfailing healer of the ills of ‘sansara’ – world, an aspect of classical iconography as it evolved in centuries’ long tradition of Buddhist art. Bhaishajyaguru is considered as a transform of Akshobhya – ‘steadfast’, the Buddha fixed within him, the form that common man identifies as Buddha in Bhumi-sparsha-mudra – his earth-touching posture, one of the basic forms with which the Buddha was initially conceived in the Buddhist iconographical tradition. Later, there evolved a number of forms of the Medicine Buddha himself. The Tibetan Buddhism discovered some seven forms of the Medicine Buddha, Bhaishajyaguru being the main among them. The Tibetan people greatly revered these seven forms and invoked each for redeeming from a specific illness.

Bhaishajyaguru is broadly the next stage of Akshobhya, as while Akshobhya is fixed within him defeating ills facing him, Bhaishajyaguru leads others defeat their ills that face them. Bhaishajyaguru, the physician of human passions, not the ills of body, does not show the path of defeating death, old age, or even sickness, but only the fear of them for their fear, not such ills, is their arch enemy. Hence, in iconographic tradition Bhaishajyaguru is represented firstly, in ‘dhyanasana’ that is, as fixed within him, wearing monastic garments and endowed with ‘urna’ – a small rounded protuberance in the centre of eye-brows, ‘usnisha’ – tuft of hair, and long-lobbed ears, and secondly, as holding his right hand in ‘abhaya’ imparting freedom from fear, sometimes carrying in it a fruit or a twig of myrobalan, and the left, placed on his lap with a pot held in it. Pot – ‘ghata’, is symbolic of both, one’s ‘withinness’ where he is required to fix himself, as also, contents that it contains, the nectar or medicine.

Thus, the painting representing Buddha as Bhaishajyaguru is not a mere blend of two domains, but it is rather a delightful transformation of classicism into the folk, refreshing, naïve and mesmeric. Most folk art forms inherited the tribal traditions of adorning their abodes, their mud-huts, with forms from around them, and in mediums – usually coloured clay soils or what nature afforded and lay around them. Hence, they usually have a limited range of colours. Slightly different from their idioms a Madhubani painting chooses, though not always, a wider range of colours as also the motifs and imagery from different worlds : human, animal and nature, but the ingenuity with which this canvas has chosen its palette : a galaxy of black, red, green, pink, brown, grey, and mixed tints of yellow and green, all in bright tones and bold patterns, is not always seen even in Madhubani tradition.

Of all kinds of portraits this painting’s option for this aspect of Buddha, which combined the world of nature with the man’s, was based, perhaps, on its ability to better attune to a folk tradition, Madhubani in particular, of which cosmic unity is the core. As its essence this form of Buddha has around his figure a number of creepers, though symbolic of medicinal plants, which indicates that the life mutually sustains and the worlds of man and nature are indivisible. For further widening this folk thesis of synthesizing the worlds of man and nature, the painting portrays the great Master as seated on a lotus rising from the ocean, or water – nature’s other domain, a more characteristic feature of Vaishnava iconography, Lakshmi’s in special.

Fractions of vines, painted around the great Master’s head, symbolic of his power to heal, are not without a few birds perching around his head; alike, the waters around the lotus, he is seated on, abounds in a number of sportive fish. The Madhubani artist perceives in this form of Buddha not merely the worlds of men, animals and nature merging but also barriers of other kinds, even the gender, transcending. Besides that installed on a lotus rising in the ocean the figure of the Buddha leads the mind to see its parallel in Lakshmi’s imagery, somewhat feminizing his appearance, even the proper iconographic features of his image have been conceived as overlapping male and female identities, perhaps believing that on his level of magnification he was as much a woman as a man, or his feminineness was seen as manifesting the tenderness of a compassionate mind as the Buddha was.

This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr. Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of literature and is the author of numerous books on Indian art and culture. Dr. Daljeet is the curator of the Miniature Painting Gallery, National Museum, New Delhi. They have both collaborated together on a number of books.

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