Buddha heads in stone and beyond: Material adaptations and visual declarations of Odisha's Buddhist heritage today

Since its discovery during the excavations at Ratnagiri (a Buddhist site in Odisha, India) between 1958-61, one particular monolithic, colossal stone head of the Buddha, dating to the ca. ninth century has been replicated across media. While the original purpose of this Buddha head remains unclear, through its various “copies,” in various media, it now stands in (with other chosen few objects) for the Buddhist heritage of Odisha. Though Buddhism had a robust inning in Odisha until the twelfth-thirteenth centuries, there are few practitioners of this religion in the region or in India today. Iterations of the well-known artifacts of Odisha’s hoary Buddhist past, however, are now placed in government-sponsored public spaces, including the art museum and domestic airport in the state's capital city Bhubaneshwar. Though these objects are decontextualized fragments, they make cultural and political assertions about Odisha’s history. Some of these creations are in stone, which was historically the main medium for sculpture since ca. seventh century and remains so at the flourishing contemporary stone-working guilds. Other recent works mimic stone's materiality in man-made materials. Still others, situated in community spaces such as the pristine Puri beach, fashioned as ephemera in sand, cleverly combine the historical and environmental heritage of Odisha. This paper explores how these newly minted material translations function as visual reminders of the exceptional sculpting tradition of premodern Buddhists who devised potent ways of articulation through scale. Despite their material translation, these Buddha heads showcase and contribute to the memory of Buddhism in Odisha today.