Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c7.25

c7.25

With the exception of one or two images discovered at Sarnath we do not know of any other specimens in India except those produced by the artists of the eastern school of mediæval sculpture, which look like independent images but are really, in modified forms, basreliefs, representing particular incidents of Buddha's life. These image-basreliefs are totally unlike images of Buddha with which we are familiar in the older schools of Gandhāra, Mathurā, Amarāvatī or Benares. The artists of the eastern school enlarged the main figure in the basrelief; so much so, that it really looks like an image; at the same time they shortened the attendant figures and lessened their number, so that they look more or less like decorative figures on the backslab. Specimens discovered up to date of this peculiar class of image basreliefs contain the representations of the following incidents :—(1) the birth, (2) the illumination or *sambodhi*, (3) the first sermon at Benares, (4) the taming of the mad elephant Nālāgiri or Ratnapāla, (5) the descent of Buddha from the heaven of the thirty-three gods, (6) the presentation of honey to Buddha by the monkey at Vaiśālī, (7) the miracle of Śrāvastī, (8) the attempt of Devadatta to kill Buddha by means of assassins, and (9) the death or *mahāparinirvāṇa*.