The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c5.s2.11

c5.s2.11

In fact, this point once gained, all the rest follows. Nothing is more easy than to guess what must have been the souvenirs brought back by the pilgrims from the four great holy places. To take the modern example most familiar to the French reader, what is represented by the images or medals offered for sale and bought at Lourdes? First and foremost, the miraculous grotto. What must have been represented on stuffs, on clay, wood, ivory, or metal by the first objects of piety manufactured at Kapilavastu, at Bodh-Gayâ, at Benares, or at Kuçinagara? Evidently the characteristic point towards which, at the approach of each of these four towns, popular devotion was directed. Now we know these points already from the picturesque expressions of the texts. What was first visited at Kuçinagara was the site, very soon and quite appropriately marked by a *stûpa* (¹), of the last death of the Master. In the same way, the essential miracle of Benares having taken place at the « Mṛiga-dâva », the Gazelle-park, it was inevitable that its consecrated description as « putting the wheel of the law in motion » should be translated in concrete terms by a wheel, usually accompanied by two gazelles. What was contemplated at Bodh-Gayâ, on the other hand, was the evergreen fig-tree, at the foot of which the Blessed One had sat to attain omniscience. Finally, what would be worshipped at Kapilavastu? Here the answer is less certain : undoubtedly the great local attraction consisted in the recollection of the nativity of Buddha; but, without mentioning his paternal home, the most ardent zeal might hesitate between the place of his material birth and that of his spiritual renaissance, between the park of Lumbinî, where he issued from the right side of his mother, and the no less famous gate, through which he escaped from the miserable pleasures of the world. Whatever might in this case be the difficulty of choice, with regard to the three other sites at least no hesitation was possible. A tree, a wheel, a *stûpa*, these suffice to recall to our memory the spectacle of those holy places, or even, by a constant association of ideas and images, to evoke the miracles of which they had been the theatre. Again, these things could be indicated as summarily as one could wish : if human weakness cannot dispense with the material sign, imagination makes up for the poverty of artistic means.