Vanished Buddha Statue (Sri Maha Bodhi, Anuradhapura)

Vanished Buddha Statue (Sri Maha Bodhi, Anuradhapura)

S amadhi Buddha Statue of the Sri Maha Bodhi Shrine (Sinhala: ශ්‍රී මහා බෝධි පුදබිමේ සමාධි බුද්ධ ප්‍රතිමාව) is a vanished stone Buddha statue that was once placed at the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi Shrine in Maha Viharaya premises in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. The statue, apparently similar to the famous Samadhi Statue and Toluvila Statue , has been captured in a few photographs taken in the later 19th century and the early 20th century but, a single piece of evidence to prove its present existence has not been found yet. However, the popular tradition suggests that this statue has been embedded into the large Buddha statue placed in the main shrine of the Bodhi Tree that was reconstructed in the 1910s (Schroeder, 2022). Photo Evidence The first clear photograph of the statue was taken in 1895 by Captain J.R. Hogg (1870-1939) in which the statue is depicted half-buried in the ground (Schroeder, 2022). By examining this photograph, the scholar Ulrich von Schroeder assumed it is the only ancient Budd…