Studies in Indian Art c12.s5.20

c12.s5.20

The belief in the Seven Buddhas seems to have been later on supplemented by a hierarchy of numerous Bodhisattvas. During the Kushāṇa period we find in Mathurā art, on the one hand friezes depicting the past, present and future Buddhas in one single sculpture, and on the other several Bodhisattvas treated independently. Of the former class frieze No. 1.7 in Vogel's *Catalogue* is a typical specimen. He says, 'The figure to the proper left wearing royal dress must be the future Buddha or Bodhisattva Maitreya. In his left hand we recognise the vessel, which is his emblem in the Graeco-Buddhist sculptures of Gandhāra. The other five figures wear monk's dress; that next to Maitreya seated in meditation must be Śākyamuni, the Buddha of the present age, and the other three his immediate predecessors, Krakuchchhanda, Kanakamuni and Kāśyapa. Probably three Buddha figures are lost to the proper right.' (Vogel, *Catalogue of the Mathura Museum*, p. 135; also 1.37, p. 139). The present image of Kāśyapa Buddha rightly belongs to the class of representations of the previous Buddhas in Kushāṇa art. We have already found from Mathurā the image of Dipaṅkara Buddha who was the first of the twenty-four Buddhas. This statue was dedicated by the Buddhist nun Dhavasrī in the Kushāṇa period, and is now deposited in the Lucknow Museum, B. 23.