Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c7.86

Language: English

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The representations of the illumination and the incidents connected with it form the favourite themes with the Buddhist artists of all schools. According to the well known story of the Master's life, the touching of the earth by him, and his call, thereby, on the earth-goddess to come and be the witness of his perfect knowledge, indicate the moment when he ceased to be a Bodhisattva and became "the perfect-one" or Buddha. Māra, the Buddhist Satan, having informed the Bodhisattva that there was nobody near at hand to witness his perfection or attainment of perfect knowledge, the latter summoned the Earth-goddess by touching her to be the witness of his enlightenment. In Buddhist iconography this peculiar posture of touching the earth has become one of the *mudrās* or special attitudes. It is called the attitude of touching the earth (*bhūmisparśa-mudrā* or *bhūsparśa-mudrā*) as well as the attitude of witnessing (*sākshi-mudrā*). This incident is regarded by Buddhists all over the world as the most important of the four principal incidents of the Master's life.

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In the oldest schools of Indian sculpture, before the adoption of Greek methods, the illumination of the Buddha was represented by an empty stone seat (*vajrāsana*) under a tree (*bodhi-druma*), over which was an umbrella indicating the presence of the Master, as we find in the case of the medallion on the railing at Bodh Gaya.¹ In the Indo-Greek school of Gāndhāra, specimens of the representation of this incident are profuse and the details much varied. Almost all incidents of the Master's life, both before and after the illumination, have been utilised by the artists of this school in their decorative schemes of Buddhist shrines. So we see the homage of the Nāga Kāliya,² the meeting with the grass dealer,³ the preparations for the illumination⁴ and finally the illumination itself. The last named incident is divided into two or three parts:—(1) The temptation of the Bodhisattva by Māra's daughters, (2) the attack on the Bodhisattva by the followers of Māra and (3) the call on the Earth-goddess to stand witness.

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In some cases, in the Gāndhāra school, the last part is supplanted by that of the presentation of four almsbowls by the guardian deities of the four quarters, as on the drum of the Sikri *stūpa*.⁵ No complete representation of the temptation of the Bodhisattva by the daughters of Māra has been discovered as yet among the specimens of the Gāndhāra school though the attack of Māra's army has been represented on numerous specimens.⁶ The defeat of Māra and the call on the Earth-goddess to bear witness to the illumination, are rather rare. The particular posture of touching the earth (*bhūmisparśa-mudrā*), which in later schools of Indian sculpture represents the particular moment when the Master attained perfection, is to be found very rarely among known specimens of the Gāndhāra school. There is only one mutilated image in the Indian Museum, Calcutta, in which two of Māra's partisans are lying prostrate on the ground in front of the adamantine throne, on which the Master is seated in the attitude of touching the earth.⁷ In the Mathurā school we find the temptation of the Bodhisattva by Māra's daughters, the attack on the Bodhisattva by Māra's army and the call on the Earth-goddess to bear witness to the illumination, all combined into one basrelief. In this specimen, Buddha is seated in meditation, with his right hand touching the earth, under the Bodhi tree. The daughters of Māra stand on his sides and their numbers vary according to the space available.

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Thus in one specimen there is only one figure.¹ On another specimen there are two,² while the full number, three, is to be found in two cases only.³ Besides these, we find Māra himself, in the act of shooting arrows towards the Bodhisattva, with one follower, represented as a demon. The attitude of touching the earth is almost universally common in the representations of this incident in the Mathurā school of sculpture, with the exception of one specimen (H. 6 of the Mathurā Museum) where Buddha has raised his hand in the attitude of protection (abhaya-mudrā), thus showing that the daughters of Māra were already vanquished and Buddha had extended his protection to them. The same arrangement is also to be found in an unpublished basrelief in the Lucknow Museum which appears to have been brought from Mathurā by Dr. Führer. It has not been noticed before and was found by me in the Lucknow Museum in 1908.