Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c7.50

c7.50

We read in the lives of the great Master that immediately after his birth a sage named Kāla-Devala or Asita-Devala came to visit Śuddhodana and cast the horoscope of the new-born child. In the Gāndhāra School, basreliefs representing this incident of the Master's life are common. The basreliefs on the stūpa from Loriyan Tangai now in the Indian Museum collection represent this scene.⁴ There is a larger basrelief in the collection of the Lahore Museum,⁵ Representations of this incident have not been found in basreliefs of the Mathurā and Benares Schools discovered up to date. In the eastern school this incident is represented on the larger stelæ of the first class. In the stelæ from Bihār and Sibbati there is a small miniature temple, under the miniature temple containing the representation of the birth scene, which contains the figure of a Bodhisattva and no doubt represents one of the corner domes of the great temple at Bodh Gaya. Below this temple there is a basrelief within a still smaller shrine on the extreme right. To the left of this shrine, two bearded figures are seated side by side one of whom holds up the child Bodhisattva in his arms. This scene is indistinct in the Shibbati stelæ, but it is quite distinct in No. Br. 5. The sage Asita-Devala and others, whose names are to be found in Kshemendra's Buddha-Janma, predicted that the child would become a chakravartin or universal monarch or a Buddha.⁶