Standing Bodhisattva with Human-Figure Necklace

This sculpture of a bodhisattva—probably the future Buddha Maitreya—typifies the Gandharan style, which adopted a Hellenistic idiom apparent in such features as the chiseled musculature of the abdomen and the plush folds of the fabrics draped around the body. He sports an elegant chignon, heavy jewelry, a floral headband, a mustache, and an urna—a whorl of hair between the eyebrows that is one of the special lakshanas (marks) of a Buddha. Bodhisattvas, who entered the pantheon of Mahayana Buddhism around the turn of the first millennium, embarked on the path to enlightenment for the benefit of all humanity.