Maitreya, the Buddha of the future, is represented in this graceful image. He has an ascetic’s piled hair with a miniature stupa (funerary monument) in his headdress that identifies him as Maitreya. He wears copious jewelry, including the Brahmanical sacred thread (yajnopavita) worn over his left shoulder. He is seated on a lotus base in the posture of royal ease (maharajalila asana). His right hand (now missing) was likely held in the gesture of discourse (vitarka mudra). His left hand holds a flowering stalk of the nagakeshara tree (Mesua ferrea) with a diminutive vessel containing the elixir of immortality in the flower head. His right foot rests on a projecting lotus pedestal. The sole of his left foot is graced with a sacred marking (lakshana). A companion image of Avalokiteshvara is now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (63.418). Together they would have originally flanked a larger Buddha image.

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