16 - The “likeness” of the image to the original Buddha: the case of the Siṅhala Buddha

Summary

The Buddha images, and other objects that imitate them, are created with power and energy because they have undergone a “life-giving process” that “animates” them. The “life-giving process” is the subject of this and the next chapter; it has two “circuits” linked up in the rites that sacralize the images and transfer potency to them. Griswold has succinctly stated the essence of the whole phenomenon of sacralization as practiced in Thailand:

Usually life and miraculous powers are transfused into new images from an older one – the chief cult image of a monastery which in turn has received them from a still older one, and so on back to one of the original likenesses. To transmit the succession to the images that are about to be cast, a long “sacred cord” is formed into a circuit: attached at its beginning to the cult image, it passes along a line of monks, each one holding it between his fingers; continuing its way, it encircles each of the moulds prepared for the new images; finally it returns to the cult image so as to complete the circuit. One or more of the monks go into meditative trance, producing an invisible charge in the circuit which transmits the life and supernatural qualities of the cult image to the new ones as the metal is poured.

The first circuit consists of joining a newly cast image to an existing sacralized, and probably historic and famous, image by a cord such that the latter's energies and virtues can be transmitted to the former.