The Vallipuram Buddha Image "Rediscovered"

Authors

• Peter Schalk University of Lund

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67235

Keywords:

Buddhism, Art, Idols and images, Sculpture, Buddhist, Statues, Thailand, Buddhist schools

Abstract

When, at the end of the 19th century, the Visnu kovil in Vallipuram, in Vatamaracci, in northern Ilam (Lanka) was (re)built, a Buddha statue was unearthed close to this temple, 50 yardsnortheast of it. It remained in the lumber room of this temple until 1902, when it was set up in Old Park at Yalppanam under a bo-tree. In 1906, the Vallipuram Buddha image was presented by Governor Sir Henry Blake to the King of Siam, who was particularly anxious to have it, as it was supposed to be of an archaic type. This event together with the statue, was forgotten for almost 90 years. All Tamilar and Sinhalese born after 1906 have never seen the Vallipuram Buddha image, provided they have not gone to and found it in Thailand. The study of the religious significance per se, in its historical setting, of the statue is important. The Vallipuram Buddha image is a typical creation of Amaravati art, the spread of which documents the spread of Buddhism to Ilam, where it exercised a decisive influence on the first period of the development of Buddhist art in the Anuratapuram school. We get then a geographical triangle of a cultural encounter between Amaravati, Anuratapuram in its first phase, and Vallipuram. This happened at a time when Buddhism was still not identified as Sinhala Buddhism, but just as Buddhism. The study of the Vallipuram statue is thus a way of transcending or at least suspending for some time polarising ethnic identities, not ethnic identities as such.