The colossal Buddhas are scarcely found in India proper, but in Central Asia and China. The images of colossal Buddhas are mostly Maitreya, although those of Sakyamuni and Vairocana also exist. Why were many colossal statues made as Maitreya? The Buddhist narrative texts about Maitreya describe that the Earthly Paradise would be realized when Maitreya will descend on the Earth, and on that ocasion the span of human life will be eighty thousand or eighty-four thousand years. According to the Buddhist texts of the Seven Buddhas of the Past, on the other hand, the human span had been eighty thousand years under the first Buddha of the Past, and became shorter and shorter, and has been reduced to one hundred years under Sakyamuni Buddha. So the appearence of Maitreya suggests a rebirth of the Paradise of the Past.
It is Buddhabhadra who transformed the descriptions of the span of human life into those of the visual height of the Buddhas. He studied the Buddhist meditations in Gandhara. The “Sutra on the Sea of Mystic Ecstasy Attained by Visualizing the Buddha” (T. vol. 15, p. 693) translated by him (A. D. 412-429) illustrates that the height of Kasyapa Buddha of the Past is 160 feet, that of Sakyamuni is 16 feet, and the future Buddha Maitreya is 160 feet tall again. This author considers that this idea was the first conception of colossal Maitreya. The “Grand Sutra on Maitreya's Becoming Buddha” (T. vol. 14, p. 429-430) translated by Kumarajiva, whom Buddhabhadra met in Ch'ang-an early in the fifth century, describes that the human being in the Maitreya's age is 160 feet in height and Maitreya himself is twice as tall as he, namely 320 feet. The “Sutra on Maitreya's Rebirth Here Below and Becoming Buddha” (T. vol. 14, p. 423-424) translated also by Kumarajiva exaggerates the height of Maitreya; one thousand feet. The colossal images of Maitreya have been considered as a symbol of this future Buddha's Golden Age.
