Rare document by the American poet, a founding member of the Beat Generation , depicting three one-headed fish, with the all-seeing eye in the center, considered by Ginsberg to be the imprint of Buddha.
3.500€
Allen Ginsberg (1926.1997)
Original signed drawing – Buddha's Footprint.
One page in-16° (9.50 x 10 cm, sight size) on thin bluish paper.
London. August 16, 1967.
Rare document by the American poet, a founding member of the Beat Generation , depicting three one-headed fish, with the all-seeing eye in the center, considered by Ginsberg to be the imprint of Buddha.
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In 1967, in the Catholic Worker , Ginsberg elaborated on his 1962 discovery in India: “I saw the three fish, a head, carved on the inner sole of the bare stone of the Buddha's footprint at Bodh Gaya, under the Bo tree. Stone feet or soles are a traditional form of votive marker. Mythologically, the 32 signs—like the stigmata—of the Buddha include chakras (symbolic magic wheels of energy) on the hands and feet. This is a kind of fish chakra. Thus, ancient artists carved large feet as symbols of the enlightened man—before the Greeks introduced the representation of the Buddha's human face. They had never had statues of him—umbrellas, Bo trees, or feet—before Alexander's arrival in India.”
In 1967, Ginsberg was in London and regularly hung out with Paul McCartney, discussing the counterculture and the decriminalization of drugs. Ginsberg participated in the Hyde Park hippie gathering on July 18th and gave numerous readings of his texts in the British capital.
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The Buddha's Footprint was reproduced, among other places, as the frontispiece of his Indian Journal and on the cover of his book Collected Poems.