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In Asian art a lotus throne is a stylized lotus flower used as the seat or base for a figure. It is the normal pedestal for divine figures in Buddhist art and Hindu art, and often seen in Jain art. Originating in Indian art, it followed Indian religions to East Asia in particular.

The precise form varies, but is intended to represent the opening flower of Nelumbo nucifera, the Indian lotus; in some Buddhist legends the baby Buddha emerged from a lotus flower. The Indian lotus is an aquatic plant similar to a water lily, though not actually any close relation. Among other unusual characteristics, nelumbo nucifera has particular properties of repelling water, known as the lotus effect or ultrahydrophobicity. Among other symbolic meanings, it rises above the water environment it lives in, and is not contaminated by it, so providing a model for Buddhists. According to the Pali Canon, the Buddha himself began this often-repeated metaphor, in the Aṅguttara Nikāya, saying that the lotus flower raises from the muddy water unstained, as he raises from this world, free from the defilements taught in the sutra.

In Sanscrit the throne is called either a padmasana (asana is the name for a seated position), which is also the name for the Lotus position in meditation and yoga, or padmapitha, padma meaning lotus and pitha a base or plinth.

History

The form is first seen as a base for rare early images of Laxmi from the 2nd century BCE; many or most of these may have a Buddhist context. However it first becomes common with seated Buddha figures in the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara around the late 2nd or the 3rd century CE. It may have reached Deccan as early as the end of the 2nd century. At some point before his death in about 250 the Buddhist thinker Nagarjuna exhorted an unknown Buddhist monarch, very probably in the Deccan, to:

... Please construct from all precious substances

Images of Buddha with fine proportions

Well designed and sitting on lotuses ...

- suggesting this iconography was current by then. It is not clear from the language whether sculptures or paintings, or both, were meant.

In early Buddhist art it may be intended to specifically depict the second of the Twin Miracles in the legend of the Buddha's life. In some accounts of this, when engaged in a contest with sorcerers, the Buddha multiplied himself into other bodies, which sat or stood on lotus flowers. It became used for other Buddhist figures, and adopted for other Hindu deities than Laxmi.

Form

The throne in art evolved to be rather distant from the actual plant. In historic sculpture there is very often a clear dividing line about halfway up; most often petal shapes both rise and fall from this, but sometimes the upper part of the throne attempts to represent the prominent flat-topped seed head as a base for the figure. In East Asian paintings, and also modern Hindu paintings, the lotus throne is often depicted more realistically in terms of its shape (though obviously not its size).

• Flower of nelumbo nucifera the Indian lotus; its colour range is from white to red
• Gaja-Laxmi, 1st century BCE, terracotta, 14.61 cm tall
• Restrained lotus throne typical of Chola bronzes, when they have them at all. Shiva Nataraja, 10th century.
• Thrones under Parvati, 11th century
• Guanyin, 12th-century Japan
• Apart from the three figures, the pendent foot of this 12th-century Tibetan Mahakala has its own throne
• Krishna, the butter thief, ivory, 16th-century India
• Fancy coloured Buddhist throne under Mahakala, Ladakh
• Gaja-Laxmi, Odisha, 18th century
• Raja Ravi Varma, Goddess Lakshmi, 1896

Representing the whole plant

The vast majority of lotus thrones just depict an isolated flower, or a group of flowers unders different figures. But some images depict more of the plant. A famous relief of Gaja-Laxmi in Cave 16 at Ellora shows a pond of lotus leaves and budding flowers as a vertical panel below the throne. Other compositions show stalks, buds and flowers reaching up beside a main figure. These may terminate in a flower held by the main figure, especially if it is Avalokitesvara, or in another lotus throne behind the hand, if it is outstretched in a mudra. Alternatively, stalks may climb up to support lotus thrones underneath minor, smaller, figures, as in the early terracotta plaque illustrated above.

Notes

1. Coomaraswamy, 21; Krishan & Tadikonda, 65; Rodrigues
2. AN 10.81, '"Bāhuna suttaṃ".
3. AN 4.36, "Doṇa suttaṃ".
4. Jansen, 18
5. Coomaraswamy, 22; Krishan & Tadikonda, 78, note 89
6. Moore & Klein, 149; Krishan & Tadikonda, 65
7. Walser, 80-87
8. Walser, 80
9. Walser, 81-83
10. Krishan & Tadikonda, 67
11. Hāṇḍā, Omacanda, Gaddi Land in Chamba: Its History, Art & Culture : New Light on the Early Wooden Temples, 78-79, 2005, Indus Publishing, ISBN 8173871744, 9788173871740, google books
12. Michell, 362

References

• Coomaraswamy, Ananda, Elements of Buddhist Iconography, Harvard University Press, 1935, online text
• Jansen, Eva Rudy, The Book of Hindu Imagery: The Gods and their Symbols, 1993, Binkey Kok Publications, ISBN 9074597076, 9789074597074, google books
• Krishan, Yuvrajmm, Tadikonda, Kalpana K., The Buddha Image: Its Origin and Development, 1996, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, ISBN 8121505658, 9788121505659, google books
• Michell, George (1990), The Penguin Guide to the Monuments of India, Volume 1: Buddhist, Jain, Hindu, 1990, Penguin Books, ISBN 0140081445
• Moore, Albert C., Klein, Charlotte, Iconography of Religions: An Introduction, 1977, Chris Robertson, ISBN 0800604881, 9780800604882, google books
• Rodrigues, H, "The Sacred Lotus Symbol", Mahavidya, 2016
• Walser, Joseph, Nagarjuna in Context: Mahayana Buddhism and Early Indian Culture, 2005, Columbia University Press, ISBN 0231506236, 9780231506236, google books

• Buddhist iconography
• Hindu iconography
• Indian art