Images Forbidden

In 1990 Susan Huntington argued that early Buddhist reliefs long read as aniconic show worship at sacred sites; Vidya Dehejia (1991) called the emblems multivalent.

Susan Huntington, 'Early Buddhist Art and the Theory of Aniconism', Art Journal 49:4 (1990); Vidya Dehejia, 'Aniconism and the Multivalence of Emblems', Ars Orientalis 21 (1991)

Sacred images refused by Byzantine iconoclasts, Islam and, it was long said, early Buddhism.

Sources5 sources

Primary source

Qur'an 59:24 (Saheeh International translation), 59:24God as al-Muṣawwir, the Fashioner, the ground of the Islamic refusal of image-making.
He is Allah, the Creator, the Inventor, the Fashioner
al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, Book of Dress, trans. M. Muhsin Khan, vol. 7, book 72, nos. 835-836The hadith that image-makers will be punished and told to give life to what they made.
Make alive what you have created.
Council of Hieria, Definition of the Iconoclastic Council of 754, Fordham Internet Medieval Sourcebook, 754, DefinitionThe iconoclast teaching that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are Christ's only admissible image.
The only admissible figure of the humanity of Christ

Scholarship

Susan L. Huntington, "Early Buddhist Art and the Theory of Aniconism", Art Journal 49:4, 1990, 401-408Huntington's argument that reliefs read as aniconic life scenes show worship at sacred sites.
worship and adoration at sacred Buddhist sites
Vidya Dehejia, "Aniconism and the Multivalence of Emblems", Ars Orientalis 21, 1991, 45-66Dehejia's reply that early Buddhist emblems carry several meanings at once.