Bodhisattva with One Leg Pendent 菩薩半跏像ぼさつはんかぞう

Description

This Buddhist figure sits with one leg crossed, resting his right elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. His slightly rounded back, tilted head, and the way the fingers of his right hand just barely touch his cheek lend the statue an air of naturalness.

His armlets and the way his hair is gathered into a bun on top of his head tell us that he is a bodhisattva. In Japan, statues posed contemplatively with one leg crossed and one leg pendant, like this one, often depict the bodhisattva Miroku, who was worshipped in Japan as a bodhisattva who would save humanity.

This gilded bronze statue was excavated from a sutra mound at Mt. Nachi, a famous sacred mountain in Wakayama Prefecture. A sutra mound is a place where cylinders containing sutras, mirrors, Buddhist statues, or other similar artifacts are buried in the earth. In the late Heian period (794–1192), it was widely believed that Buddhist teachings would decline 2,000 years after the death of the buddha Shaka. Many people of the time believed that the bodhisattva Miroku would appear in 5,670,000,000 years to save humanity. People made sutra mounds to preserve Buddhist teachings until that time. You could say that this statue was put in a time capsule meant for people 5,670,000,000 years in the future.

This Buddhist deity sits in contemplation with one leg resting on his knee. In Japan, images with this posture were often worshipped as the bodhisattva Miroku. People thought he would return to this world to save all living beings 5,670,000,000 years after the death of Buddha Śākyamuni.