Shopping for Buddhas by Jeff Greenwald

Author:Jeff Greenwald [Greenwald, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: TRV003010 Travel / Asia / Central
ISBN: 9781609520953
Publisher: Travelers' Tales
Published: 2014-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

There were a couple of collectors at the Depot when we arrived. Nancy looked around in a panic and heaved an audible sigh of relief when she spied the little Buddha still meditating contentedly on its shelf. The moment the other customers—our sworn rivals—left, she glanced at Aryal. He nodded, removed the statue from its place, and brought it over to show us.

It was tiny, but absolutely exquisite, with a little ruby set into its urna. And the piece, Aryal assured us with a twinkle in his eye, was by the hand of Sidhi Raj himself. It had to be, he explained, because this was not a cast piece at all. It had been executed in repoussé: a technique that involves painstakingly hammering a sheet of copper into a finely sculpted mold. Considered the hallmark of an expert metal smith, repoussé, is a one-person job; no twelve-year-olds need apply. And, of course, this astral level of expertise was reflected by the statue’s truly lavish price tag.

The first time Nancy had seen this piece, she had scrutinized it for nearly an hour, making every attempt to weigh its attributes against its flaws. Most of the “flaws,” I soon discovered, were unavoidable; they were a function of the process of repoussé, itself. On closer inspection, though, they did seem a bit iffy; the hand had a rather paddle-like look, for sure, and there was a clumsy, scar-like seam showing down the back. There was also, needless to say, the size factor. If the statue had been any smaller, you could have worn it around your neck.

And so I found myself, once again, undertaking a process at which I was quickly becoming an expert: searching for points of irritation in an image of the Buddha.

Nancy and I argued the issue back and forth, rocking from one position to the other like elephants caught in a mire. Finally we reached a total impasse. The statue was great, it had its problems, the detail was fabulous, the seam was showing, the expression was celestial, the price was astronomical, and hey! How did we even know that it was by Sidhi Raj?

Aryal must have been anticipating this very thought. He picked up the statue, turned it upside down, and squinted at the bottom as if noticing it for the first time. Then he beckoned us forward.

“Look.”

He pointed toward the edge of the oval of copper that sealed the statue’s base. Were my eyes deceiving me? No; there it was, eminently readable and rendered in the unmistakable flowing script of the Nepali language. One word, etched awkwardly into the metal:

“Sidhi”

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