Sculpture of the Week - Buddha Calling The Earth To Witness

17th Century Burmese, Buddha Maravijaya (Victory over Mara)

(Source)

This week's Piece of the Week was inspired by the PSOAS DVD night. Our theme was *kungfu!* and we watched a hilarious English dub of Jet Li's Shaolin Temple (seriously, get your hands on this cos it's hilarious in a Monkey way), and the Thai action thriller, Ong-Bak. There was lots of *Buddha will forgive me* action and I noticed that the sacred sculpture Tony Jaa was tracking down in Ong-Bak was of this type.

The story behind this sculpture is that Mara, the demon of desire and death, came along and tried to distract Buddha while he was mediatating on his way to enlightenment. Buddha was having none of that desire thingy and touched the ground and called up a goddess of the Earth who came up and got Mara to leave him alone! Such awesome power right there. Like the Shiva Nataraj, this is a commonly replicated image.

As befitting the story, Buddhas calling the Earth to Witness is generally regarded as an object of worship and meditation in temples or as figurines for the home. In fact my brother was given a teeny figurine of this as a present from someone who went to Thailand. He kept it on his study desk at home. Since he's now on his way to becoming a doctor, I guess it worked!