One of the most well-known images of the Buddha shows him touching the earth at the time of his enlightenment. Yet no mention is made of such a gesture in the early texts. Where, when, and why did it arise?

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✅ Sutta mentioned:
https://suttacentral.net/mn62/en/sujato

✅ My paper:
“The Shape of Victory: the Earth-Touching Gesture in Context.” In The Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies 22 (2023). https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/i...

✅ Other resource:
Maria Spagnoli, "Searching for the origin of the bhūmisparśa-mudrā," East and West, Vol. 55, No. 1/4. https://www.academia.edu/40925233/Ser...

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00:00 Intro and my paper
01:51 Literary evidence
03:37 Why did the gesture arise?
04:14 Didactic role
04:48 Role of the Earth
06:08 Literary role the gesture plays
07:35 Maria Spagnoli’s hypothesis
10:55 Why the gesture arose

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