Strop, although Buddha could have been a prince, there is another theory. Buddha could have been a rich Brahmin (I have no idea how to spell that) boy who left his family to go study with the samana's (I think).
Yeah hojoko, I won't speculate on what he actually was- I believe certain details are more important (strictly personally speaking) to demonstrate his place in history.
To RsC, seeing as I've taken the Zen Buddhist perspective, the literal historical figure of Buddha is what I see- I don't have any idea what he looked like or anything but this doesn't matter.
Tell you what though, there are a lot of golden fat Buddha around. Perhaps they were modeled on portraits of Bodhidharma...but then again traditional depictions of him gave him a bushy beard and eyebrows too.
Speaking of which, does anybody actually know how the depiction really came about? I mean the big pot-belly and the massive ear lobes?
