Religion

Running head : Art Architecture in the Hindu-Buddhist Tradition

Multi-Faceted Art Architecture

in the

Hindu-Buddhist Tradition

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Art Architecture in the Hindu-Buddhist Tradition

Have you ever seen a man with eight arms and five heads , with three faces on each head ? No , I am not talking about Siamese or conjoined twins . I am referring to South and East Asian deities who are revered in the Hindu-Buddhist tradition . How could such strange beings be so respected , especially in India , you might ask . We are living in

a modern age and the Western mind would definitely think it foolish to even entertain such thoughts . In the beginning , I thought the same way but after studying and analyzing this phenomenon , I gradually and eventually realized that many modern scientific findings are based on ancient Asian thought depicting these strange beings . Indeed Hindu-Buddhist art and architecture portray abstract concepts of the mind and the nature of the universe to facilitate the understanding of important physical and spiritual facts that can help humankind in the challenges of life

Buddhist images found in East Asia originated from South Asia . Buddhism is one of the main religions of Japan , China , Korea and South East Asia but this religion evolved from Hinduism in India . While Buddhism is more abstract and reason-oriented , Hinduism tends to be more concrete yet intuitive . Thus many of the images used in Buddhism are abstract derivatives of Hindu images

Intuitively , during ancient times , Indians felt three forces in all of nature that...