Have we misunderstood the Buddha's earth-touching gesture? I'll look at how the narratives surrounding the image hold a different way to see it, and how it all fits into the early, contested history of Buddhist iconography.

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✅ Videos recommended:
Origins of the Buddhist Earth Touching Gesture --    • Origins of the Buddhist Earth Touchin...  
The Five Hindrances to Meditation: "Armies of Māra" --    • The Five Hindrances to Meditation: "A...  

✅ Sutta mentioned:
https://suttacentral.net/mn149/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:
Cristin McKnight Sethi at the online Khan Academy https://www.khanacademy.org/humanitie...

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00:00 Intro: how we see the image today
02:01 Arose at the end of aniconism
02:53 Bodhisattva and Buddha: contested iconism
04:45 What the narratives say
08:07 The dual role of the image
08:58 Xuanzang’s description in the 7th c. CE

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