Old Hand Carved Shakyamuni Buddha Head. Statue. China.
Shakyamuni aka Gautama Buddha was the founder of Buddhism. Shakya was the tribe/clan to which his family belonged. . He was the son of Shuddhodana, the king of the Shākyas, a small tribe whose kingdom was located in the foothills of the Himalayas, south of what is now central Nepal.
As a young man, he married and had a son. But he longed to be in the secular world and go out in search of a solution to the inherent sufferings of life. Buddhist scriptures describe four encounters, which served to awaken in him an awareness of these four sufferings common to all people—birth, aging, sickness, and death—and a desire to seek their solution. Eventually he renounced his princely status and embarked on the life of a religious pursuit.
This carving is from a remote but well known artisan enclave south of Guilin city center (Guangxi Zhuang Region, southern China). It was carved in the early 1900s and acquired 40+ years ago by a collector in Miami Beach Florida.