Nagarjuna, Nagaraja Buddha & Shakyamuni Buddha Similarities
The two iconographic figures of Acharya Nagarjuna and Nagaraja Buddha both have a hood of seven snakes. Nagarjuna is also one of only three human figures to have an ushnisha, a buddha crown protuberance, on the top of the head. This makes it very difficult to differentiated between Nagarjuna and Nagaraja. In painted compositions Nagaraja typically has a white face and a blue body. Nagaraja can also perform either the teaching gesture with the two hands or his own unique gesture with the two index fingers held together at the heart and pointing upwards. Shakyamuni Buddha in a life-story episode is also protected from the weather by a snake (naga) with either a single or multiple heads. Those depictions of Shakyamuni are found in the sets of life-story paintings.