Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c7.284

c7.284

In the Bengal School, we find a class of image-basreliefs, representing the death of Buddha, which are very rare in Indian sculpture. In earlier periods, the best example of such images is perhaps the colossal image of the dying Buddha at Mattha Kuar near Kasia. In others we find Buddha lying on a couch beween two sāla trees. A chaitya rises between the trees in the background. In front Subhadra is seated in meditation in the centre, with his back turned towards the front and an aureate halo surrounding him. A mourning figure is seated on each side. We find four specimens of this event in the Indian Museum collection.⁷ In the stelæ of the Eastern Indian school we do not find the figure of Subhadra or the sāla trees. Ordinarily they show Buddha lying on a couch surrounded by four mourners, but both in the Sibbati stele and stele No. Br. 5 we also find a host of gods of the orthodox pantheon, on their respective *vāhanas*, proceeding towards the scene of the *Mahāparinirvāṇa*. Here also we find a *chaitya* rising up in the background. In stelæ, in which the eight principal incidents of Buddha's life are portrayed, we find Buddha lying on a couch, with one or two mourning attendants and a *chaitya* in the background. In all cases, however, this last incident of the Master's life is placed at the top of the back slab. In paintings, in ancient Bengali manuscripts we find the death scene occasionally, but in manuscript Add. No. 1643 of the Cambridge University's collection, the painting is in a very bad state of preservation and it is not possible to decide whether there was a *chaitya* in the background or Subhadra in the front or not.¹