Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c5.69

c5.69

The four compartments above this chamber contain:—(a) the illumination at Mahābodhi, (b) the first sermon at Benares, (c) the descent from the heaven of the thirty-three gods and (d) the miracle of Śrāvastī.⁸ No other stele discovered at Sarnath represents so many scenes of the life of the Master. S. 2⁹ represents, what M. Foucher calls the four principal incidents from the life of Buddha: (1) the birth, (2) the illumination, (3) the first sermon and (4) the death. S. 3 seems to have formed part of a long series of basreliefs perhaps doing duty as a door jamb or the side of a niche¹⁰ as we find in the Gāndhāra School.¹¹