This elegant head of Buddha Shakyamuni epitomizes the restrained stylistic ideal of Buddha images created during the mid-5th century in the artistic and religious center of Sarnath, Uttar Pradesh, where the Buddha preached his First Sermon. It would have originally surmounted a Buddha torso with a robe fashioned in the unpleated ‘wet look’ drapery style (see 69.3 and M.79.83). This Buddha head displays several of the standard iconographic features. It has snail-curl hair, the cranial protuberance (ushnisha) emblematic of his omniscience, elongated earlobes symbolizing his renunciation of the material world, and heavily-lidded pensive eyes conveying his compassion for all sentient beings. There is no sacred forehead marking (urna).

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