Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c12.s4.46

c12.s4.46

Vāsavadattā-Udayana story. The clue to this identification is furnished by three terracotta plaques recently discovered from the ancient site of Kauśāmbī, once the capital of king Vatsarāja Udayana. They are now deposited in the Bharat Kala Bhavan, Banaras and all are obviously from the same original mould. They illustrate the tensest part of the Vāsavadattā-Udayana legend, the flight of the lovers from Ujjayinī on the back of a female elephant in the company of their court jester Vasantaka. The Kauśāmbī plaques have been published in detail in the Journal of the UP Historical Society.¹ In this new light the scene of the Gaṇeshgumphā cave becomes clear. Both in the stone relief and the terracotta plaques the pursuers at the back of the elephant are the soldiers of the king of Ujjayinī. They are divided from their main job by Vasantaka who from his seat on the back of the elephant is raining a shower of coins which the soldiers greedily begin to pick up. In the terracotta plaque Udayana is seated on the elephant and holds the lute Ghosha-vatī in his right hand. In the sculpture he is shown shooting at the soldiers. The pose of Vāsavadattā is identical in both the terracotta and the stone relief. She is driving her own elephant with a goad in her right hand. Whereas the terracotta plaque depicts only the flight scene, the stone relief supplements it by adding a couple of subsidiary related scenes enacted in Udayana's capital at Kauśāmbī. In the second part of the scene separated from the first by a tree which marks the end of the forest Udayana and Vāsavadattā are out of danger and seem to have reached their capital. They are alighting from their elephant who is kneeling on the ground.