The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c5.s4.8

c5.s4.8

understand why — the artists came into collision with the impassable barrier of ancient usages, when they had to represent the form of the Predestined One in the course of the first twenty-nine years of his life, at the time when his princely surroundings still hid under a mundane cloak the Buddha about to appear. In truth, we were not able as yet (p. 13) to determine exactly, by the aid of the texts, which episode of his youth the faithful had chosen as the principal object of commemoration, nor in what manner the old image-makers must have set to work to commemorate it. It is curious to note that the sculptors of the second century shared our perplexities in this regard. Those of Barhut adopted the precise moment when the Bodhisattva descended into the bosom of his mother, when, at the latter dreamed that he descended there in the form of a little elephant (¹). Those of Sânchî do not represent the Conception, save incidentally; on the other hand, they complacently detail all the circumstances of the prince's entry into religion, that is, of his flight on horseback from his native town : they portray the gate of the town and several times the horse, the groom and the Gods : they leave to be understood only the hero of this Hegira (²). As to those of Amarâvatî, on the stelæ where they have set one above another the four grand miracles, they employ indifferently, in order to fill the panel reserved for Kapilavastu, — side by side with the tree of Bodh-Gayâ, the wheel of Benares and the stûpa of Kuçinagara (see pl. II, 2) — now the same « great abandonment of home », where we see nothing but the horse passing under the gateway, now a « nati-