Taking the Bodhisattva into Town: Festivals, Image Processions, and the Celebration of the Buddha’s Life Story

This paper discusses early images depicting Siddhartha as a young prince during his First Meditation, along with epigraphical records attesting to this image cult. Additionally, several passages from the Vinayas of the Sarvāstivādins and Mūlasarvāstivādins preserved in Classical Chinese also document the now largely forgotten image worship of the Bodhisattva Siddhartha and shed light on the cult and iconographic significance of the First Meditation image, helping explain its transregional popularity. These materials demonstrate that the “jambu tree shadow image” once stood at the center of an important monastic cult and formed part of festivals and image processions associated with the major Buddhist festival celebrating Śākyamuni’s Enlightenment, known as the “Great Festival.” The paper also considers the connection between this cult and the emergence of the “Pensive Crown Prince” (Ch. siwei taizi) image, likely originating in Northern India and Gandhāra and later popular across China and East Asia.