The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c12.4

c12.4

This central figure is surrounded by eight little attendants, four on each side. These are so many vigorous and plump little boys. All wear on their shaven crowns tufts of hair : round their necks are necklaces ornamented with medallions, doubtless serving as amulet-bearers ; on their feet black shoes ; about their loins cotton drawers, forming in front a little pocket which is pierced with a small slit, but projecting in wide pleats behind. The penetrating eye of Dr. A. von Le Coq has already noticed that four of them are about to play a kind of hockey. The first, at the bottom to the left, is raising his two hands, of which the right brandishes a crooked stick, towards one of his companions, who is perched upon the stool, as if to incite him to throw the ball which he clasps tightly in his right hand. The latter also holds upright in his left hand a similar bat, and half turns towards the seated woman, as if she were watching their play, while feeding her latest-born. At the top, on the right, two other little boys are engaged in the same sport. The upper one, who is squatting, with his left hand throws the ball, which is indicated in red; the one standing below receives it with his bat; for, before the canvas was stretched and the drawing distorted, his left arm, which has now disappeared, was, doubtless, long enough to reach and manipulate the red, bent stick which is to be seen between the two partners. Below, a fifth child, seated on the ground, practises playing a sort of guitar with four strings. Still lower, a sixth is carrying as well as he can, in a basket too big for his arms, some melons, whole or in slices — those famous melons of Upper Asia, whose excellence all travellers unite in celebrating and of which the scent alone was sufficient to awaken in the heart of the Great Mogul Baber, even mid the enchantment of his Indian gardens, a homesickness for his native Ferghâna. To return to the left portion of the plate, above the two hockey-players we see another little boy, who seems to be amusing himself by trying to balance on his head a two-handled vase. As for the eighth little figure in the top corner, it is so much injured that we dare not venture any conjectures concerning its manner of amusement : the author of the tracing which accompanies and supplies what is missing in the plate, has completed the figure, with infinite probability, as a little genius perfectly analogous to the one in the symmetrically opposite corner.