The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c11.s1.45

c11.s1.45

All the versions agree in telling us that there came on the head of king Uposhadha an enormous tumour, very soft to touch and in nowise painful. When it had matured, there issued from it a fine boy, for the charge of whose nurture the 60,000 women of the royal harem disputed. To the wonderful circumstances of his birth he owes his double name of Mûrdhaja and Mândhâtar — or even, by confusion of these two, Mûrdhâtar. But what is of special importance to us is that the Kashmir poet furnishes us with the only link which was missing in the interpretation of the bas-reliefs (¹).