The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c11.s1.39

c11.s1.39

Thanks once again to the *Divyâvadâna* (¹), we shall there recognize with absolute certainty the biography of the famous king Mândhâtar, as familiar to the Brahmanic legend as to the Buddhist. But it is only from the eighth bas-relief, counting from the southern entrance (no. 76 of Leemans), that the text again comes into line with the monument, to march side by side with it thenceforward as far as the twentieth. What does this mean? Are we to suppose that the first seven pictures relate to another story? The analogy of the south-eastern corner seems to supply stronger reasons for supposing that the first twenty bas-reliefs of the south-western corner were likewise dedicated to a single legend, that is to the *Mândhâtravadâna*: only the sculptor must have commenced at a much earlier point than the compiler. The first goes back, it seems, as far as the incidents which preceded the birth of the hero, whilst the second, in an exordium obviously shortened and drawn up in telegraphic style, gives a rapid résumé of his first youth, and proceeds to expatiate at large on the exploits of his reign. Until we have fuller information, everything leads us to believe that the story of Mândhâtar commenced at the corner of the southern staircase and not right in the middle of one of the faces of this twenty-cornered gallery, and that it terminated, like that of Sudhana, at the fourth angle after the staircase.