In Chinese, Japanese, and Southeast Asian art and sculpture, why is Siddharta Gautama always portrayed with hair that clings close to his scalp in little ringlets, or knots, or knobs? The people who made those statues and paintings mostly had straight hair, didn’t they? And they otherwise portrayed Gautama as East Asian, not Indian.
According to the legends I’ve read, the Buddha was originally supposed to have had long hair (a symbol of the upper class – I suppose they had the wherewithal to wash it). After he renounced the World, he cut it short, and it was supposed then to have curled over.
I don’t know if it’s true – I doubt it. But the artistic convention of tight little circles to represent close-cropped hair seems sort of obvious, and I suspect the legend grew up around that. Buddhism originated in India, where the people are not all straight-haired. It reached the straight-haired lands of China and Japan much later.
So did most of the Buddhists in North India too. This article notes that the earliest Buddha images seem to indicate smooth straight hair gathered into a topknot. It’s been argued that the stylized short curls were derived from Indo-Greek influences on sculptural styles in northwest India (“Gandhara style”) in the early centuries of the Common Era. I.e., because wavy or “hyacinth-locks” hair was a convention of Greek sculptors, it was adopted in Gandharan Buddha images as well. Later artists further stylized this convention into small uniform bumps or spirals covering the head.
Wavy or curly hair has been a standard iconographic feature of Buddha images ever since. Why should East or Southeast Asian sculptors change that? It’s not as though they needed to rely on local models to guide them in representing a conventional hairstyle, the way they might have done to depict facial features, or that local worshippers would identify with coiffures as much as they would with facial features.
For a similar example, think of modern Western Jesus iconography. Even in images showing Jesus with white skin and blue eyes, the artist retains the conventional long hair and beard (not to mention archaic-looking robes), even for display in cultural settings where most men are short-haired and clean-shaven.
I feel obligated to chime in. My answer: Dunno. Asked my Thai wife, who is Buddhist. She doesn’t know either. But it’s true he would have cut off his long hair upon becoming a monk. As for getting a perm at the local salon, dunno.
I’ve read that it may be to represent snails that crawled onto his shaved scalp to keep him cool in the sun.
[QUOTE=Shoshana]
I’ve read that it may be to represent snails that crawled onto his shaved scalp to keep him cool in the sun.
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I can’t refute that, but I’ve never heard it before. Neither has the wife.
I think this is probably a made-up backstory inspired by the common description of the hairstyle as “snail-shell curls”. The only traditional legend I’ve ever seen concerning the curls is that when the Buddha cut his hair as part of renouncing the world and becoming a monk, the stubble spontaneously curled into perfect spirals and he never had to cut his hair again. That legend is probably originally a made-up backstory too, albeit a much older one.
[QUOTE=Shoshana]
I’ve read that it may be to represent snails that crawled onto his shaved scalp to keep him cool in the sun.
[/QUOTE]
. . . OK, that’s gross . . . touching, but gross . . .
I like the giant cobra-as-umbrella story a lot better. It was shown in the film Little Buddha. 
[QUOTE=Johanna]
I like the giant cobra-as-umbrella story a lot better. It was shown in the film Little Buddha. 
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Now, that one really IS part of the story.
I read about this particular Indian and South East Asian stylization of Buddha’s hair in the book The Tao of Symbols by James N. Powell. It’s been a long time and I don’t remember a lot of details, but IIRC, Buddhas hair in swirls and topknot as represented in this type of sculpture is actually symbolic of a certain holy or cosmological form, or Yantra and is synonomous with the architectural form of Buddhist Stupas. The hair when viewed from above is a representation of a mandala.
I’m sorry I can’t find any direct links or cites to information about this, but this is the basic gist of Buddha’s hair to the best of my knowledge.
Here’s some more information from The Stupa - Yoga’s Sacred Architecture by Nitin Kumar
[QUOTE=Nitin Kumar]
Finally crowning the apex of the stupa is a jewel like shape. This surmounts all the five elements and hence expresses a higher state of reality than that characterized by these elements.
This protruding jewel is found not only on top of stupas but also crowns the heads of Buddha-images of all countries and all periods. This is the ushnisha which sometimes looks like a flame springing from Buddha’s head, and sometimes like a lotus bud growing there.
This protuberance signifies the Highest Reality, namely the Enlightenment of the Great Buddha himself. Hence in a sense, the journey to the stupa’s top is a process of spiritual ascension, where the jewel lying at the end of the quest is Nirvana itself.
The identification of the highest point in the stupa with the highest point in Buddha’s image leads us to ponder as to whether a more deeper correspondence can be established between the stupa and Buddha’s physical body. According to Yogic thought, the five elements are correlated with the five psychic centers within the human body. This correlation is as follows:
1). The earth (prithvi) is the lowest psychic center. This is located between the feet and the knees.
2). Water (apas) lies between the knees and the anus.
3). Fire (agni) lies between the anus and the heart.
4). Air (vayu) lies between the heart and the middle of the eyebrows.
5). Space (akasha) lies between the middle of the eyebrows to the top of the head.
Finally above the head is the final seat of enlightenment. This is identified with the Sahasrara chakra, which is said to be the seat of pure consciousness or ultimate bliss. This is the Buddha’ s ushnisha.
According to the principles of yoga, our composite selves are made of two superimposing constituents. These are the physical self, known as the gross body, and the other is the higher self, which is the microcosm of the universe, known as the subtle body. The subtle and the gross bodies are both analogues of each other. We have seen above how the subtle body is presented in the stupa.
The Buddha’s physical form too finds an echo in the stupa. In such a visualization, the base is Buddha’s legs, the dome is his torso, and to represent the head a second cubical structure is added between the dome and the spire. This cube known as the harmika is exactly at the place where Buddha’s eyes should be. This can be seen in the typical stupas of Nepal where, on each side of the harmika, a pair of eyes is painted.
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Buddha’s topknot is called The Ushnisha.
[QUOTE=Siam Sam]
But it’s true he would have cut off his long hair upon becoming a monk.
[/QUOTE]
Says who?
[QUOTE=BrightNShiny]
Says who?
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It’s just . . . it’s just something that monks do. Buddhist monks have always shaved their heads, and the Hindu orders that Buddhism grew out of did likewise.
I’m surprised in all this time that no one has really addressed the main point, and followed up what I posted. On recollection, I heard that legend many times because it’s on the audio edition of Joseph Campbell’s the Hero with a Thousand Faces (which isn’t a reading of his book, since they intersprese the reading with clips of Campbell lecturing).
A quick search online using “Buddha hir curled sword” reveals the following:
From this site: The hair and the Usnisa on the head of the Buddha and the jinars
The footnote is from: 1 Buddhist Birth Srories translated by T. W. Rhys
Davids,. London, 1880, p 86.
It is interesting that he uses “sword” in this translation. Is it more likely that the Buddha Gautama had a knife… or?
What kind of edged “sword” or “knife” would the average ascetic from Nepal have in 600 B.C.? Did the Buddha have a Kukri, perhaps?
Well, remember that Prince Gautama originally came from a Kshatriya or royal warrior family. So if he cut off his hair before he left home to become a monk, he certainly would have had a sword available to do it with.
Note, however, that the Nidanakatha is probably at least several centuries later than the Buddha’s own date; in fact, it probably post-dates the development of the Gandharan-influenced “snail-shell curls” style in Buddhist iconography. So it’s probably not worth while examining it for historical realism about what the Buddha actually did.
[QUOTE=BrightNShiny]
Says who?
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Says my Thai wife who is alifelong Buddhist. Says just about every Buddhist you’ll meet over here.
[QUOTE=Kimstu]
Well, remember that Prince Gautama originally came from a Kshatriya or royal warrior family. So if he cut off his hair before he left home to become a monk, he certainly would have had a sword available to do it with.
Note, however, that the Nidanakatha is probably at least several centuries later than the Buddha’s own date; in fact, it probably post-dates the development of the Gandharan-influenced “snail-shell curls” style in Buddhist iconography. So it’s probably not worth while examining it for historical realism about what the Buddha actually did.
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Yes, but royalty didn’t automatically infer a sword as regalia, the sword as a long straight blade is traditional of European morphology. Swords are very poorly defined, historically and linguistically. Does a Kukri qualify as a sword?