Elements of Buddhist Iconography c7.7

c7.7

pp. 22–23, with notes 41–48 In a monograph *On the Iconography of the Buddha’s Nativity*, Mem. Arch. Surv. India, No. 46, received as the present volume goes to press, M. Foucher reasserts the view that the *Śrī-Lakṣmī* representations at Bharhut and Sāñcī are Buddha nativities, and expresses the hope that I may agree with him. He will find that I do so to the extent that I admit the fact and propriety of a Buddhist application in this sense. At the same time I am very far from agreeing that Buddhism originated the formula; in my view there is nothing specifically or originally Buddhist in early Buddhist imagery, whether visual or verbal. The present case is very much to the point; for to postulate a Buddhist invention or development of the lotus-seated Mother *Śrī* type would be possible only by assigning a considerably post-Buddhist date to the *Śrīsūkta*, in which the lotus-seated (*padme-sthitām . . . śriyam . . . puṣkariṇīm . . . lakṣmīm*) *Śrī-Lakṣmī* is invoked as the mother of Agni-Jātavedas and darling of Viṣṇu (cf. Aditi as the “lady of Viṣṇu” in *Taittirīya Saṃhitā*, IV, 4, 12 and VII, 5, 14, and *Vājasaneyī Saṃhitā*, XXIX, 60) and described as “bathed by royal elephants with golden jars” (*gajendrair . . . snāpitā hema-kumbhair*). But “the *khila* texts . . . are by no means a