The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c11.s1.16

c11.s1.16

3. (L., 6). The following panel represents no less than three episodes. On the right the young *nâga*—recognizable, as on the sculptures of India, by his coiffure of serpents' heads—asks upon his knees, and obtains, the protection of the hunter Halaka. In the middle (cf. pl. XXXIV, 1) the same Janmacitraka, grieving and under compulsion, is driven from the midst of the waters and lotuses of his pond by the influence of incantations pronounced (at his right side) by a Brahmanic ascetic before a sacrificial altar; fortunately the hunter, standing (on the other side) with his weapons in his hands, is watching over him. According to the text, he is about to put the charmer to death, not without first having made him annul the effect of his charm. In the third group (on the left) we must therefore, it seems, recognize the same Brahman, not reporting to the king, whose agent he is, a mischance which he has not survived, but at the moment when he receives from this king his secret mission. It follows, therefore, that, by an exceptional, but not impossible, arrangement, the episode on the left, like that on the right, must have preceded in time the one which they both enclose.