Head of the Buddha
Can I see it?
Not on view at present
Where is “Head of the Buddha” now? Collection: Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Not on view at present. Checked September 25, 2026.
London, United Kingdom
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the sculpture
When the V&A acquired this sculpture there was a small paper label stuck on the back of the head. It bore the following history in faded ink: ‘Found embedded in red clay and dug out during excavations for Sultangange Railway, Bengal, 1862’.
This head of the Buddha displays a number of conventional auspicious marks (‘laksanas’). These include the close-curled hair represented in spirals (‘snail-shell’ type), a prominent skull protruberance (‘ushnisha’), a forehead mark (‘urna’) indicated as a curl of hair, and distended ear lobes. An examination of the back reveals that the head once had a nimbus (‘prabha’) and most probably formed part of standing Buddha figure.
Read on
Experts are now confident that the sculpture came from Sultanganj, once the site of a major Buddhist monastery and stupa in the early Pala period (about 760-1142 AD). The style of this sculpture belongs to a Sarnath school of the post-Gupta period (320-about 540 AD). However, it already exhibits the highly accomplished skills of the Bihari sculptors who worked the fine-grained shale stone characteristic of sites south of the Ganges. It may be dated to the early Pala period.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Details
- Accession number
- IS.171-1949
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Victoria and Albert Museum
- Image: Victoria and Albert Museum — © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
