SMALL OLD BUDDHA STATUES.
For many hundreds of years small Buddha statues have been cast in bronze, lead and terra cotta. Many of these ancient small Buddha statues have been found in the Golden Triangle area where Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand meet. They have also been found in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. The oldest small Buddha statue was discovered in Suwannaphum, northeast Thailand, it dated back to the Pyu Burmese period (AD 200 - 900) and this small Buddha statue was crafted by the Pyu people who were the earliest known civilisation of Burma (Myanmar), they are now extinct.
The majority of these small Buddha statues were crafted from bronze and lead. The bronze was occasionally mixed with meteorite metal (Tibet with its high altitude, thin atmosphere and desolate landscape received an abundance of meteorite fragments). The lead Buddha statues were mixed with silver which is called ‘CHIN’ texture. The erosion (wearing down) of the face and top of many of these old Buddha statues is because in ancient times people would always carry their small Buddha statues with them while travelling and monks in Sri Lanka have recorded that people would perform an ‘eye opening ritual’ by anointing pure water to the eyes of the Buddha statue and rubbing the top of the statue after finishing their prayers. This is the reason that many of these old statues have eroded faces and the top of many are well worn down through many years of use. It is not known and there is no definite evidence indicating when amulet, talisman necklaces with the image of Buddha began to be worn as pendants but we do know that small Buddha statues would have always been carried by ancient people as talismans. In ancient times these small Buddha statues were always wrapped up in a piece of cloth and were sometimes tied around the head above the ears while people were at work or in battle, a king would fix small Buddha images around his hat.
Buddha Statue Amulets.
Small Buddha statue amulets were originally made to be buried beneath temples and many have been found inside much larger Buddha statues. The reason they were often placed inside other much larger Buddha statues is they were thought of as ‘Storage batteries of Buddhist energy’. A single small Buddha or a few small Buddha’s inside a large statue gave the statue more powerful energy. Small Buddha statue, amulets were also made for domestic worship in the home and were also carried for protection. Small Buddha statue, amulets were and still are left at temples as votive offerings. Most of these small sacred Buddha statues are made from solid bronze or lead. (It is known that old Tibetan and Nepalese ‘singing bowls’ were often melted down to make small Buddha statue amulets.) Bronze is not an easy metal to work with and the modelling of many of these small Buddha statues is often very eccentric, and it is not always easy to link the statue to any of the known major historical styles of Buddha images. The fact that so many of these Buddha statue amulets were made over the centuries is a tribute to the piety of the Buddhist artisans who made them.
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