Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c7.158.1

c7.158.1

When Buddha was seated on the bank of a tank at Vaiśālī, which, later on, became celebrated among the Buddhists as the monkey tank (Markaṭa-hrada), a monkey offered some honey to him, then committed suicide by drowning himself in a well and was reborn as a god. This tank has been identified at Basarh in the Muzaffarpur district by the late Dr. Th. Bloch who excavated the ruins at this place for the first time in 1903-04.² The representation of this incident does not seem to have been very popular with the artists of the Gāndhāra school. There is not a single specimen of the representation of this scene in the splendid collection of Gāndhāra basreliefs in the Indian Museum at Calcutta, and there appears to be only one specimen in the Lahore collection. In this specimen the incident is divided into three parts:—(1) the monkey bringing the bowl of honey, (2) Buddha holding it with one hand and imparting protection with the other and (3) the monkey walking out of the scene.³ The representation of this scene has not been discovered among the specimens of the Mathurā school of sculpture. Among specimens of the Benares school, it is to be found very rarely.