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The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c6: The Representations of "Jâtakas" on the Bas-reliefs of Barhut

The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c6

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The Representations of "Jâtakas" on the Bas-reliefs of Barhut

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¹ Lecture at the Musée Guimet, in *Bibliothèque de vulgarisation du Musée Guimet*, vol. XXX, 1908.

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Ancient India has bequeathed to us a considerable mass of texts and a very restricted number of sculptures : this means that for our instruction concerning its civilization we possess many more written documents than carved monuments. The latter deserve all the more to attract our attention. Their most ancient remains may, in fact, furnish us, as regards the external appearance and the material side of Indian life in the second century before our era, with a number of concrete and precise details which we should never have been able to expect from the most extensive or the most profound study of the literature. I hasten to add that I do not conceive the identification of these works of art as possible without their confrontation with the texts. These latter alone can help us to understand the mute language of the stones and, even in the absence of any explanatory inscription, to assign names to the characters, speech to the gestures, in one word titles to the subjects. In practice it is precisely thus that matters fall out. We find ourselves possessing in the holy scriptures of Buddhism a ready made commentary for the greater part of the surviving ancient bas-reliefs ; and these pieces of sculpture, rare or scattered though they be, are, for their part, a mine of illustrations quite appropriate to as many episodes of the Buddhist legend. You divine without difficulty the interest of this intimate accord between the written and the figured versions of the same stories and the advantage still to be obtained from it for the comprehension of both. This is what I should like to verify experimentally by studying, in accordance with the texts and the monuments, the traditions relating to some of the previous existences of the Buddha Çâkya-Muni. For this purpose we will make use, on the one hand, of the Pâli collection of the Jâtakas (¹) and, on the other, of the bas-reliefs of the stûpa of Barhut (²). From their rapprochement will quite naturally emerge for our convenience a small illustrated collection of some twenty-five Indian tales; and you shall judge if I exaggerate their charm.

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¹ Jâtaka, éd. Fausbøll, 6 voll. in-8º and one volume of index, London, 1877-1897; translated into English under the direction of Professor E. B. COWELL, 6 voll. in-8º, Cambridge, 1895-1907.

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² CUNNINGHAM, The Stûpa of Barhut, London, 1879 (published by order of the Secretary of State for India, who has kindly authorised the reproductions given in this book). — Cf. S. D'OLDENBURG, Notes on Buddhist Art, St. Petersburg 1895 (in Russian; translated into English in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, XVIII, I, Jan. 1897, pp. 183-201).

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The Jâtakas. — I owe however (by way of preface) some explanations which may allow you better to understand the meaning and more to enjoy the flavour of these tales and images, as amusing as naïve. But these necessary explanations may be extremely brief, and it will suffice if I rapidly recall to your mind three essential notions.

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The first is that, according to Indian ideas, every living being, whoever he may be, is not only sure of dying : it is no less certain that he must be born again in one of the five conditions of lost soul, ghost, animal, man or god; after which he will have to die again, in order to be born once more, and so on for ever, unless he attains salvation, which is nothing else than the final escape from this frightful circle of transmigration.

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The second point is that not only the attainment of this deliverance, but the conditions even of each of the ephemeral existences are regulated automatically by a moral law as general and as unavoidable as the physical law of gravity, the law of « works », or (to employ a Sanskrit word, the use of which has been popularized by the theosophists) of Karma. At the death of each being there is drawn up a kind of debit and credit account, with assets and liabilities, between the sums of the merits and demerits accumulated by him in the course of his anterior existences : and an immediate sanction, resulting mechanically from this simple mathematical operation, fatally decides his future destiny.

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In the third place, it is a belief no less generally admitted in India that whoever has attained to sanctity possesses, among other supernatural faculties, the privilege of remembering his past existences and even those of others. This gift of extra-lucid intuition, or, as it was called, of « divine sight », no one, of course, was considered to possess in a more eminent degree than Buddha. Now it was, we are told, his habit, with regard to incidents arising in the bosom of his community, to point or justify his prohibitions or his precepts by the opportune reminiscence of some analogous occasion which had already confronted him in the course of his previous lives.

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These three points agreed, all becomes perfectly clear. We admit fully henceforth that Çâkya-Muni, like all others, must have traversed a long series of successive rebirths. We understand, also, why he accomplished on the way so many good actions, displayed so many virtues, realized so many superhuman perfections : nothing less was required to enable him to acquire merits capable of conveying him to the supreme dignity of Buddha. Nor could we get our information concerning his past lives from a better source, since — if we believe the tradition — it is from the mouth of the Master himself that the story had been gathered before being consigned in writing to the works which have come down to us and which it would be useless to-day to enumerate and criticize. If we proceed to make use of the Pâli collection, it is not that I am under any illusion as to the antiquity of the prose commentary on the versified, the only canonical, part (¹) : the reason for this choice is simply that, as containing nearly five hundred and fifty narratives, that collection is by far the most considerable of all.

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The Bas-reliefs of Barhut. — Thus familiarized afresh with the jâtakas, you will not be surprised to note that the sculptors charged with the decoration of the ancient Buddhist edifices of central India have drawn copious inspirations therefrom. Not only did they, as we believe we have demonstrated above (²), feel themselves under less restraint in the treatment of subjects of this kind, but moreover no subject could answer better to the needs and the aim of the artist. Seeing that it was a question of religious foundations, that aim was quite naturally the edification of the faithful, both sedentary and pilgrim : and what could

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(¹) On this subject see below, essay VII on the Ṣaddanta jâtaka (²) See, p. 23.

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be more edifying, in default of scenes derived from the last life of the Master, than narratives of which he himself had previously been the hero before becoming the narrator? On the other hand, their familiar and picturesque character fitted in marvellously — certainly much better than moral considerations or metaphysical speculations — with the exigences of an art so concrete as sculpture and necessitating so much precision in material detail. Thus the good stone-cutters of Barhut and Sânchî have had recourse, like the sculptors of our cathedrals, to the treasure of their « Golden Legend », and have created, by the very force of things, a plastic art at once narrative and religious, which recalls in many ways the formulas of our artists of the Middle Ages. Thus it is, for example, that they did not, any more than these latter, prohibit the juxtaposition of episodes and repetitions of persons in the framework of one and the same panel. We shall have many opportunities of remarking this naive proceeding.

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But it is well to form beforehand some idea of the monuments which these bas-reliefs adorned. The Buddhist sanctuary was preëminently the *stûpa*, that is the « tumulus », and its principal role was to cover up a deposit of relics. As we see it in India from the third century before our era, it was already a stereotyped edifice of brick or stone, which presupposed the art of the architect and utilized that of the sculptor. Its chief feature was a full hemispherical dome, usually raised on a terrace. This dome, which was called the egg (*aṇḍa*), supported a sort of kiosk (*harmika*), itself surmounted by one or several parasols, an emblem of which you know the honorific signification in the East. The whole was surrounded, like all sacred places in India, by a high barrier, at first of wood, then directly imitated in stone from its wooden prototype. This enclosure was flanked at the four cardinal points by monumental gates (*toraṇa*), with triple curved lintels of which we have fine examples at Sânchî (¹). On the most ancient specimens from the basin of the Ganges the decoration was strictly limited to the doorways and railing. At Barhut medallions were strewn over the upright pillars and crossbars of the latter, whilst all along the inner face of the coping further motifs were ensconced in the intervals of the undulations of a serpentine garland. You will recognize one or other alternative of this double provenance in all the reproductions which are about to defile before your eyes (Pl. V-VI).

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One last question : Why have we chosen by preference the bas-reliefs of Barhut? The answer is easy : because most of them are accompanied by an inscription written in the oldest alphabet of central India, the one which towards the middle of the third century before our era was used by the famous king Açoka for his pious edicts. On one of the jambs of the eastern gate, found *in situ*, we read, in a somewhat later script, a mention of the ephemeral suzerain dynasty of the Çungas, which succeeded the Mauryas towards the year 180 B. C.; it relates to the erection of the gate, or, to be more exact, the replacement an old wooden model by a « stone work »; and thus we feel certain that towards the end of the second century the final touch must have been given to the decoration of the *stûpa*, commenced, no doubt, during the third. This is not all. Among the hundred and sixty *graffiti*, more or less, observed on the recovered debris of the balustrade more than half are restricted to giving merely the name of the donor, male or female, of such and such a pillar or

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(¹) See below, pp. 65-66, and cf. pl. VII and VIII, 1.

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such and such a transverse bar; but the rest give us explicit information concerning the subjects which the sculptures claimed to represent. Thus we have to deal with bas-reliefs sufficiently dated and identified beforehand by their authors for the benefit of their contemporaries and of the most distant posterity. In the moving sands of Indian antiquity we can find no better data, nor firmer ground on which to work.

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*The animals.* — After this indispensable preparation we may with full knowledge broach the examination of the twenty-five *jātakas*, of which, possessing the text, we recognize also the representation. A perfectly natural plan will be imposed upon us : it will be, if we may so express it, the biographical sequence of these successive lives, as well as the hierarchical order of the conditions into which the future Buddha had successively to be born. We shall see him mount one by one the rungs of the ladder of beings, first animal, then woman, and finally man. And indeed, putting aside all one’s complacency as Indianist, I do not think that the imagination of any race has ever created a finer or vaster subject for a poem than this destiny of a single being in whom are shown all aspects of life, in whom is concentrated all the experience of past ages, in one word, in whom the evolution of the entire human race is reflected. Unfortunately, as usually happens in India, the execution comes infinitely short of the conception. To sum up in one work, spacious and substantial, in view of the immense and varied career of the Predestined One, the original Indian system of the universe, would have required the powerful constructive genius of a Dante : Buddhism had not that good fortune.

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And this is why we do in Indian literature not meet with more than scattered fragments of the epic of the Bodhisattva, or future Buddha.

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To-day we are concerned only with the period of his previous lives, beginning with the most humble of them : but even within these limits we cannot help but regret the manner in which the monks, more solicitous for edification than for poetry, have bungled the subject. In the same way as, according to the naturalists, the embryo of mammalia reproduces in the course of its development the divers characteristics of the inferior species, so we should like to follow through the course of the animal forms which he remembered having assumed one after the other — fish, reptile, bird, quadruped, quadruman — the whole embryology of a Bodhisattva. But for that we should have to give ourselves up, in the midst of the disorder — or of the still more outlandish order(¹) — of the texts, to a veritable task of patchwork, joining together here and there the scattered portions of a poem which was never written. Evidently the idea of following out any series and gradation whatever did not occur to the minds of the compilers of these stories. We must say in excuse for them that the theory of evolution troubled them, for reasons easy to guess, much less than it does us. Furthermore, if they are incapable of composing a harmonious whole, they make up for it in detail by the naive savour and, at times, humourous attractiveness of their style : it is impossible to deny them a veritable talent as narrators. Once we have renounced for them higher ambitions, the compensation will appear to us very appreciable. Their stories of ani-

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(¹) We know that in the Pâli collection of Jâtakas, for example, these are classed solely according to the increasing number of verses which they contain, without regard to subject.

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mals form in fact a veritable « Jungle Book » long before that which did so much for the reputation of Rudyard Kipling : moreover, the latter was, in his, directly inspired by popular Indian tradition.

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Let us examine first the stories which present animals only, and which, consequently, are pure « fables ». There were related in India two thousand years and more ago tales with which we are still to-day familiar from infancy. I will cite, for example, that of « the Tortoise and the two Ducks », which is depicted already on the ancient balustrade of Bodh-Gayâ. Among the fragments of Barhut which have survived until our time we do not find any equally celebrated. On the other hand, when we see the Bodhisattva appear there, he has already arrived at the state, or if you prefer, at the genus of bird.

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I. Here (CUNNINGHAM, XXVII, 11) in his character of royal swan he refuses, if we may so express it, the « hand » of his daughter to the peacock, in spite of his magnificent plumage and because of his indecent dance (*Jât.* 32).

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II. There (CUNNINGHAM, XLV, 7) under the form of a pigeon, he reprimands the lazy and gluttonous crow, whom the cook punishes so cruelly for an attempted raid upon his pots (*Jât.* 42; cf. 274 and 375).

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III. Elsewhere (CUNNINGHAM, XLVII, 5) he is the cock perched on a tree, who wisely resists the treacherous seductions of a she-cat (*Jât.* 383). — La Fontaine (*Fables*, II, 5) says : of a fox.

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IV. Still further on (CUNNINGHAM, XXV, 2), born an elephant, he exterminates, with the help of his faithful wife, a terrible enemy of his race, an enormous crab, « as broad as a threshing-floor », which, in order to devour them, had hidden itself at the bottom of the lake in which the pachyderms were accustomed to bathe (*Jât.* 267).

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V. As we cannot see all in detail, I will detain you only a moment with the fifth *jâtaka*, spoken (and even written) of as « of the Quail ». As usual, the text (*Jât.* 357) indicates first of all on what occasion the fable was related. It was not the first time that Dêvadatta, the traitor cousin of Buddha and the Judas Iscariot of his legend, proved the hardness of his heart. At that time the Bodhisattva was born in the form of an elephant, chief of a troop of 80,000 others — India is very fond indeed of this round number. A quail, which had made her nest within their pasture ground and whose young, scarcely hatched, were still incapable of moving, begs him to spare her offspring. He willingly consents to this, and by his orders his 80,000 subjects respect the young birds as they file past : doubtless, this is what they are in the act of doing on the right lower part of the medallion (pl. V, 1). But he warns the quail that a fierce solitary is following him. The latter, deaf to all prayers, crushes the nest : you perceive one of the young ones under his right hind foot, exactly on the edge of the break in the stone, whilst the weeping mother is perched on a tree in front of him. But vengeance is not long delayed : for already on the bulging forehead of the cruel elephant a crow is busy, pecking out his eyes with its beak, whilst a big « blue fly » deposits its eggs in the sockets. A third ally of the quail, its gossip the frog, is seated at the top of the medallion in a conventional rocky landscape. Its role, in the story as on the bas-relief, is by its croaking to attract the enormous animal, which is blind and burning with fever, by making it believe in the proximity of water. Thus it leads him right to the edge of a sharp precipice, where he falls headlong : only his hind part has not yet quite disappeared into the abyss. Application : the Bodhisattva was the leader of the troop of elephants, Dêvadatta was the solitary. — « Well, what about the quail », you will ask. — You desire to know too much.

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The Bodhisattva under an animal form and mankind. — In these five fables man does not intervene. Here are five others in which he is seen and, at first, hardly to his credit.

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VI. In order to follow up the two preceding births, let us take a new one in the form of an elephant and even of an elephant « with six tusks » (*Jât.* 514). The wonderful animal is standing in the foreground, leaning against the banyan tree (pl. XXIX, 1) which the oldest tradition assigns to him for a shelter. Behind him, likewise in profile, is his first wife, her left temple adorned with a lotus, whilst, seen full face in the background, his second wife, furious at not having herself received any such flowery ornament, is showing unmistakable signs of jealous anger. She goes so far as to suffer herself to die of hunger, while forming the aspiration of being born again as a woman and becoming queen of Benares. Scarcely has her double wish been fulfilled than she charges the cleverest hunter in the country to carry out her vengeance. Hidden at the bottom of a pit, the latter discharges a poisoned arrow into the bowels of the elephant, as is written and is elsewhere found figured, on the sculptures of Amarâvatî and of Gandhâra. But at Barhut, when we again (on the left of the medallion) see the hero of the story, it is already the moment when, wounded to death and practising the virtue, which was Buddhist before becoming Christian, of pardoning all offences, he docilely stoops down, in order to allow his enemy to cut off his triple tusks with the help of an enormous saw. We must turn to the Pâli collection or to the paintings of the Ajaṇṭâ Caves to learn that the wicked queen, at the sight of the tusks of her former husband, which her emissary brought back to her, felt nevertheless a revulsion of conscience, of which she died heart-broken (¹).

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¹ We shall have an opportunity later (Essay VII) of recurring more in detail to the *Saddanta-jâtaka* (cf. pl. XXIX and XXX).

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VII. No less naively illustrated is the ne-birth as an antelope, *kuruṅga*. On pl. V, 2 we read as plainly as in the text (*Jât.* 206) that there were once an antelope, a tortoise and a wood-pecker, which, united by friendship, lived together on the shores of a lake in the depths of the woods. The antelope has just been caught in a trap : and, whilst the tortoise exerts itself to gnaw through the fetters, the wood-pecker, represented a second time on the right, does all that it can, in its character of bird of ill-omen, to delay the coming of the hunter. Soon — but no room could be found in the picture for this second adventure — the antelope will in its turn deliver the tortoise :

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Ainsi chacun en son endroit
S'entremet, agit et travaille,

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as we are told by La Fontaine, who to our trio of friends has added also a rat (*Fables*, XII, 15).

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VIII. Another medallion (pl. V, 3) contains no less than three episodes. At the bottom the tender-hearted stag, *ruru*, saves the son of the merchant, who was going to drown himself in the Ganges, and brings him on his back to the bank, where one of his roes is stooping to drink at the river. At the top, on the right, the king of Benares, guided by the young merchant, who is evidently acting as his informant, is preparing with bent bow to kill the great rare stag, the object of his desires as a hunter. But the words addressed to him by the latter quickly cause the weapons to fall from his hands, and we find him again in the centre in edifying conversation with the wonderful animal, whilst the treacherous informer seems to be hiding behind the royal person. We know from another source that the Bodhisattva, always charitable, intercedes with the king in favour of his perfidious debtor (*Jât.* 482 ; not to be confused with 12).

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IX. Of the two births as ape, which we meet next, the one (*Jât.* 516) contains a story with a quite analogous moral, but the bas-relief is very much damaged (CUNNINGHAM, XXXIII, 5). A Brahman, saved by the Bodhisattva, who rescues him from the bottom of a precipice, repays him with the blackest ingratitude, attempting to assassinate his benefactor during his sleep. On this occasion also the magnanimous animal forgives.

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X. More original and much better preserved is the other *jâtaka* of Mahâkapi (*Jât.* 407; pl. V, 4). At that time the Bodhisattva was in the Himâlayas, king of 80.000 monkeys, and he took them to feed upon a gigantic mango-tree — others say a fig-tree, and the bas-relief agrees with this — whose fruits were delicious, but the branches of which unfortunately spread over the Ganges. In spite of the precautions prescribed by the foreseeing wisdom of the « great monkey», a fruit, hidden by a nest of ants, escapes the investigations of his people, ripens, falls into the stream of water, and is caught in the nets which surround the bathing-place of the king of Benares. The latter finds it so much to his taste that, in order to procure others like it, he does not hesitate, when he has obtained information from the « wood-rangers », to follow the river to its source, until he arrives at the wonderful tree. At night the monkeys gather together as usual : but the king of Benares has the tree surrounded by his archers, with fixed arrows and only awaiting the day to begin the slaughter. There is alarm in the camp of the Bandar-log, as Kipling expresses it. Their leader reassures them and promises to save their lives. With a gigantic spring, of which he alone is capable, he clears a hundred bow lengths as far as the opposite bank of the river, there cuts a long rattan, the one end of which he fixes to a tree on this bank, whilst he attaches the other to his foot, and with another spring returns to his own people. But the vine which he has cut is a little too short, and it is only by stretching out his hands that he can reach the branches of the fig-tree. Nevertheless, the 80,000 monkeys pass over this improvised bridge and descend in safety on the other side of the river. This latter is, as usual, indicated by sinuous lines, in which a tortoise and some fish are swimming. But already two men of the court of the king of Benares are holding by the four corners a striped coverlet, into which the Bodhisattva, exhausted with fatigue, has only to let himself fall when the last of his subjects has been saved. At the bottom (and this is the second picture within the frame) we find him sitting in conversation with his human colleague, who is amazed at his vigour, his ingenuity, and his devotion to his people. Between them a person, of whom we see only the bust and the hands respectfully joined together, is, if we may judge from the absence of the turban, a man of low caste, apparently that one of the « wood-rangers » who guided the royal caravan towards the Himâlaya.

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The Bodhisattva in human form and animals. — In this last narrative the king of Benares gives a proof of good feeling : therefore he is presented to us as an ancient incarnation of Ānanda, the well-beloved disciple. In the four preceding fables man appears to us in the odious form of a hunter, except when he reveals himself as a monster of ingratitude, whilst the brute continues to show an example of the most difficult virtues. However, we must not be in too great a hurry to conclude that, in the Jātakas, the better part always belongs to the animals : in fact, it only falls to them when they incarnate the Bodhisattva. In other words, in the Buddhist adaptation to which these tales have been subjected the Bodhisattva has been incarnated in animal form only in those cases where it was decidedly more flattering to be beast than to be man. Here are four other examples which will abundantly prove to us that ingratitude, foolishness, the aggressive instinct, and dishonesty are not, in the minds of our authors, the privilege of humanity alone, as you might have been led to believe. The stories ought indeed to come a little later in the plan which we have adopted, since the Bodhisattva is there already clothed in the human form par excellence, I mean that of a man : but for the advantage of warning ourselves against a wrong idea it is worth while slightly to disarrange the hierarchical order of the sexes.

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XI. Do you desire further simian stories? Look on the left of pl. VI, 1 at this young novice, or Brahmanic student, who is giving a thirsty monkey something to drink. Now he goes away towards the right, having loaded on his shoulders, at the two ends of a stick placed like a balancing beam, his two round pitchers, suspended in nets of cord after the manner of the time and of the present day; meanwhile the animal, who has mounted into the tree again, makes grimaces at him as a reward for his charity : « Oblige a villain, and he will spit in your face », says our proverb.

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If we are to believe the text, the monkey did worse still on the head of the Bodhisattva, a thing which is quite among the habits of these horrid beasts. It is needless to repeat to you that he was none other than Dêvadatta (*Jât.* 174).

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XII. Another time (*Jât.* 46 and 268), a gardener, wishing to take his holiday, has charged the monkeys which haunt his garden to water it in his stead. And in fact they set about it with pitchers (pl. VI, 2); but on a suggestion of their king, who by nature prefers to do things methodically and does not intend his water to be wasted, they begin by pulling up every shrub in the nursery, so as to measure by the length of its roots the exact quantity of water which it will require. The Bodhisattva is the « wise man », who enters by the left and surprizes them while thus occupied. He does not restrict himself to stating that hell is paved with good intentions : there is no lack of moralizing, also, about the stupidity of the king of the monkeys : if he is the most intelligent, what must be thought of the rest of the troop?

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XIII. On another fragment of the coping (CUNNINGHAM, XLI, 1-3) is figured in two successive scenes the story of a stupid fighting ram, who is inspired by his warlike instincts to charge a Brahmanic ascetic : we must say in his excuse that the latter was wearing a garment of skin (*Jât.* 324). The whole humour of the affair is that the monk imagines, at the moment when the ram stoops, ready to rush upon him, that even the beasts bow before his worth. It is in vain that a young merchant, no other than the Bodhisattva, warns him of his imprudent mistake : there he is soon on his back, upset along with the double burden which he was balancing on his shoulder.

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XIV. Again in another place it is the turn of the Bodhisattva to carry the water-vessel and wear the big chignon and the summary costume of an ascetic (pl. VI, 3); and it is in this guise (and not that of a tree-god, as the commentary gives it, *Jât.* 400) that he is present as a simple spectator at a very amusing scene. Two otters, by uniting their efforts, have dragged a big fish to the dry ground on the bank of a river, the one holding it by the head, the other by the tail; but, their united exploit accomplished, they quarrel about the sharing of the booty and take a passing jackal as arbiter. The latter is represented twice, first seated between the litigants, then walking proudly away to the right : he is carrying the best piece in his mouth and leaving to the two deceived otters only the head and tail of their prey. The moral is easily guessed. The text states very explicitly that the best law-suits in the world only serve to enrich the coffers of the king; and you, for your part, have in the « Jackal and the two Otters » already recognised an Indian variant of the « Oyster and the Litigants » of La Fontaine.

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XV. For the rest we must not in the presence of the extreme variety of these tales claim to set up too general rules. A little further on (pl. VI, 4) animals reappear side by side with another identical incarnation of the Bodhisattva, and this time they play a most honourable part. The bas-relief is here much simplified in comparison with the version of the *Jâtaka* (488), which gives to the hero a sister, six brothers and two servants. At Barhut we see at his side only a woman — likewise clothed in the ascetic costume — who may very well in the intention of the sculptor be the wife of his lay years, and of whom the Pâli prose, with its accustomed and perhaps excessive modesty, will have made his sister : has it not been bold enough (*Jât.* 461) to give us Râma as the brother, and not the husband, of Sîtâ? On the other hand, a monkey and an elephant likewise take part in this scene, unless the latter is merely the mount of Çakra : for the « Indra of the Gods » looks upon it as a duty to bring back the bundle of lotus stalks (rather similar to our bundles of asparagus and just like those which I have seen sold, nowadays, in Kashmir, in the market of Srinagar), which gave its name to the story. That is all the food of the ascetic, and on three days in succession Çakra, in order to prove him, has stolen it, but without succeeding in moving him. At the moment when he repents, each one of the characters, both human and animal, was about to exonerate himself from this theft by a veracious oath, even the monkey declaring himself incapable of it; for, it is said somewhere, « in the company of saints everyone becomes a saint ».

VI

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The Bodhisattva and women. — With these reservations, these two series of examples, preserved by chance, suffice to prove what I was just now saying concerning the double attitude of the Jâtakas with regard to animals. If from the beasts we now pass — without any idea of comparison, be it said — to the women, we observe that at the very first the same distinction seems necessary. Either we are in the presence of one of those beautiful types of faithful wife which are an honour to Indian literature, and then we may safely wager that the Bodhisattva is this time incarnated in the feminine form; or else it is a masculine role which is assigned to him, and in this case the texts, giving free scope to an instinct for satire worthy of our Gaul of the Middle Ages, becomes inexhaustible on the subject of the malice and perversity of the fair sex. The stories which they tell of it (we shall, of course, adduce only those which are figured, more or less, at Barhut) lack neither raciness nor verve. In fact, whilst the stories which have come before us up till now were properly fables, we have now to do with the kind of jolly tales which in the Romance languages of mediæval Europe were called « fabliaux » or « fableaux ».

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XVI. On a medallion which can hardly with propriety be reproduced (CUNNINGHAM, XXVI, 7), we witness the conception and birth of the *rishi* Ṛiśyaśṛinga (Antelope-horn) or Ekaśṛinga (Unicorn), as celebrated in the Brahmanic epic as in the Buddhist legend. Son of an anchorite and a roe, he knows nothing of a sex to which he is not even indebted for his mother, and consequently he will be an easy prey to the first women he meets. On this common trunk are grafted two groups of stories. In the first, the young hermit is scarcely adolescent and lives with his father. A neighbouring king, in order to put an end to a famine, or simply because he has no son, forms the design of taking him for his son-in-law : and his own daughter, or, in the less ancient versions, some courtesans charge themselves with the task of leading him astray and bringing him back to the court (*Jāt.* 526; *Mahāvastu*, III, 143; *Mahābhārata*, III, 110-113 etc), Without great difficulty they succeed, as soon as the father has turned his back, being helped as much as they could desire by the naive candour of the young man, who as yet has seen nothing of the world, for whom a rebounding ball seems a marvel, who takes cakes for delicious fruits without pips, and who calls carriages « moving huts ». He apprehends still other causes of amazement, not less ingenious, but already less innocent, at the aspect, so new to him, of his feminine visitors: and you can easily conceive that this theme of the spontaneous awakening of the sexual instinct in the most ignorant of young men should have served as an example to Boccacio and for a story to La Fontaine (*Contes*, III, 1, « The Geese of Brother Philip », taken from the preamble to the fourth day of the *Decameron*).

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Of the second form of the legend the clearest summary that we at present possess has been preserved to us by the Chinese pilgrim Hiuan-tsang with reference to a ruined convent of Gandhâra, in the extreme north-west of India. « It was in this place, he tells us, that formerly there lived the *rishi* Unicorn; this *rishi*, having allowed himself to be led astray by a courtesan, lost his supernatural powers; the courtesan mounted on his shoulders and thus returned to the town » (cf. *Jât.* 523 ; *Daçakumâracarita*, II, 2 etc.). Here there is no longer any question of the father of the hermit, and the age of the latter is left undetermined. On the other hand, what we are told of him reminds us of the fables detailed in our relations of animal stories, the so-called « Bestiaria » of the Middle Ages, concerning the Unicorn which only a young girl is able to capture : « And she (says their source, the Physiologus) commands the animal and it obeys her; and she leads it away to the king's palace ». Why there rather than elsewhere? This unexpected trait forms, on the contrary, an integral part of the adventure of the shy anchorite Unicorn, whom the king's daughter very naturally leads to her father, or whom the courtesan has wagered that she will bring back to the court. And, again, the piquant detail that this latter mounts astride on the shoulders of the wise *rishi* awakens invincibly the memory of the celebrated « Lay of Aristotle ».

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XVII. A fragment of another medallion, found only by the greatest chance, bears as title the three first words of the one stanza which constitutes the ancient nucleus of *Jâtaka* 62 : « The music that the Brahman... » : and, in fact, it shows us a caste man seated, with his eyes bandaged and playing the harp, whilst a couple dance before him (CUNNINGHAM, XXVI, 8). He is the chaplain of the king of Benares, and had, we are told, a habit of gaming with his master. But the king, each time he threw the dice, used, in order to bring himself good luck, to hum four verses, taken from some popular song, which were not very respectful to the virtue of women, and by force of this truth he won every time. The Brahman, in a fair way to being ruined, gives up playing and decides to rear a new-born girl-child without her ever seeing any other man than himself. She has scarcely reached marriagable age when he, in his turn, challenges the king, whose word, having become false, is no longer efficacious, so that he loses game after game. Thwarted, and guessing what is the snake under the rock, he charges one of his agents to seduce the only real virtue in his kingdom. This plan does readily succeed; and it must be believed that intelligence comes to a girl still more quickly than to a boy. The young novice's mind is so readily and so effectually enlightened, that she consents to organize the little scene of comedy represented by the bas-relief, and it is with her lover that she is dancing to the sound of the harp played by the blinded Brahman. I lay no stress upon the rest of the story or how she succeeds in exonerating herself by making a false oath true, a device equally well known to our folk-lore : the important thing is that in this Indian heroine you have been allowed to salute in passing the type of the eternal Agnes.

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XVIII. Even the single story consecrated to the praise of woman fails not to be well-known to our mediævalists under the name of « Constant du Hamel ». Certainly, we must immediately deduct from this last story some details which truly smack too much of its native soil : I refer to the vengeance exercised by the villain on the wives « of the provost, the forester and the priest ». This manner of applying the law of retaliation, and even with interest — for the peasant does to another what the other has merely had the intention of doing to him — is a trait eminently Gallic; and you will not be in any way astonished to observe that it was evidently the part which La Fontaine desired to retain of the story, when he put it into verse in his tale of « the people of Rheims » : you will understand no less clearly that the Indian versions contain nothing of the kind. For the rest, the accord would be truly too astonishing, if it were not a case of a borrowing by European literature from that of India (*Jât.* 546; *Kathâsaritsâgara*, I, 4 etc.). Taken on the whole, it is the Pâli text which most nearly approaches the bas-relief of Barhut (pl. V, 5) : there also Amarâ, the virtuous wife, whose husband is absent, has four suitors to whom she assigns an interview for each of the watches of the same night, and it is also in great esparto baskets that she causes her tricked lovers to be packed by her servants. At the moment chosen by the sculptor we are in the midst of the court : the king is seated on his throne, surrounded by his ministers, and at his right side one of the women of the harem is waving a fly-flapper. Amarâ is standing on the other side, her left hand on the shoulder of her attendant, and at her order the covers of three of the baskets have already been raised and the heads of three of the delinquents uncovered, whilst two coolies bring the fourth. But the Singhalese compilation dismisses this story in ten lines, as an episode in a long narrative, and consents to see in Amarâ only the wife of the absent Bodhisattva : for it is quite resigned to represent the latter as an animal, a pariah or even a bandit, but never, no! never, a woman, be she, as in this case, a paragon of all the virtues. If, however, we come to realize that the *jātaka* in question has the honour of a complete medallion and that these representations have no edifying interest except on the condition that the future Buddha there appears in person, it will soon be granted that there are great chances that the sculptor regarded him as incarnated here in the feminine form. Even if the author had not himself made this identification, everything invited the spectator to do so. The inscription on the bas-relief (*yavamajhakiyam jātakama*) does not contradict it : for the Pâli tradition also makes Amarâ to be born in one of the four suburbs *Yavamajjhaka*, situated at the four gates of the capital of Mithilâ.

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However it may be as regards this particular point, the tremendous buffoonery of the situation could not escape the worshippers, and they must have been at least as much amused as edified. If we ourselves look at it more closely, we shall not be able to avoid the impression that, with all her virtue, Amarâ was not exempt from mischief. Doubtless she had recourse to the arsenal of her tricks only for a good motive; but we tremble at the thought of what would happen to her husband, if this astute woman employed in deceiving him a quarter of the malice that she displays in keeping herself faithful. In one word, and with all taken into account, whether the story be written in praise of the fair sex or not, it is always the same creature of perfidy, if not of voluptuousness, with whom we have to deal : or, to put it better, we observe that the quite monastic mistrust and aversion which Buddhism professed towards woman are (we may say) never disarmed. Of all the snares of Mâra the Malignant, is she not the worst? And was it not solely in the rupture of all family ties, commencing with the conjugal tie, that the assured pledge of salvation was supposed to be found?

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XIX. Among our bas-reliefs we find still another fairly picturesque illustration of this moral conception. It is taken from the history of Mahâjanaka (Jat. 539). A son, born in exile, of the widow of a king of Mithilâ, I will pass over the adventures which finally re-establish him on the throne which his uncle has usurped, and at the same time win for him the hand of his beautiful cousin Sîvalî. What is of importance to us here is the resolution, which he soon forms, of taking to the religious life and the useless efforts to which his wife resorts in order to retain him in the world. At last he departs; but his wife belongs to that variety of woman which our writers of vaudevilles call « clinging » ; and she obstinately adheres to his steps. Vainly does a remnant of politeness lead him to make use of various symbols in order to mark his decided intention to deprive himself henceforth of a companionship which he looks upon as an obstacle to his deliverance : she will listen to none of them, not even the plainest, such as the one represented, with the names of the persons to vouch for it, on the railing at Barhut (pl. VI, 5). The king, who has already cast aside his diadem, is standing, still followed by the queen, in front of an armourer's bench and with the two first fingers raised is speaking in parables. The artisan is about to straighten an arrow which he has just put through the fire, and, closing one eye, is examining with the other whether it is straight. To a premeditated question from Mahâjanaka he replies that one can judge the straightness of things much better with a single one eye than with two : for, except in solitude, there is no salvation for man.

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XX. This monkish moral is, however, susceptible of a quite touching revulsion, or rather of quite gracious oversight. Evidently it was impossible for the compilers of this great collection of folk-lore to bring all the narratives within their narrow range of edification : and thus it is that a delightful story of love must have found grace in their eyes. It is not preserved to us at Barhut, except by a miserable sketch (CUNNINGHAM, XXVII, 12); but it is still in existence on the Boro-Budur of Java (¹), where the human bust of the kinnara is no longer terminated by foliage, but by the body of a bird. The king of Benares, while out hunting, perceives a couple of these marvelous beings covering each other with caresses and tears. He questions them, and learns from the mouth of the woman — always the more talkative — that they were once separated by the storm and had to spend the night on either side of the river. Now it will soon be seven hundred years since this mischance, and their life is a thousand years : however, they have not yet quite consoled each other for the separation of a few hours, and since then have been unable to help mingling tears with their caresses. — What an example for lovers, thinks the king; and it will not surprise you to learn that, with the help of this simple legend, Buddha forthwith reconciled the king and queen of Kosala, very much in love with one another, who were sulking (Jat. 504; reject 481 and 485).

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*The Bodhisattva and the castes.* — This last story is less a « fableau » than a fairy tale. As for the preceding one, it should rather be classed in the category of those « examples », wherewith our preaching friars of the Middle Ages were accustomed to stud their sermons. The five that still remain to be reviewed are all edifying stories which

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(¹) See below, Essay VIII.

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similarly served the needs of the Buddhist preaching. They will perhaps seem to you only moderately amusing : but in India morality must always have its turn. In them the Bodhisattva is constantly reborn in the state of man, that state so difficult to attain, we are told, which, while the one most favourable of all to the acquisition of merits, is also the only one in which the candidate for the Bodhi ever has a chance of attaining his object. Each time this marvellous being, whatever may be his caste, astonishes us with the proofs of his skill, wisdom and disinterestedness : but it is especially in his royal births that he gives free course to his virtue. Let us not forget that the Buddhists professed to place the class of the Kshatriya, or, as we should say, the nobility of the sword, to which their Master belonged, above that of the Brahmans : naturally, we shall have to follow the order established by them in the hierarchy of the castes.

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XXI. The Bodhisattva knew all social positions, even that which consists in being under the ban of society, as is the case with the pariah. However, in the lowest position in which we recognise him on the bas-reliefs of Barhut, he has already arrived at the third class, that of the Vaiçyas, that is to say, of peasant proprietor or town shopkeeper. It is as a son of a citizen of Çrâvastî that by an ingenious stratagem he consoles his father, who was still inconsolable for the death of his grandfather (Jāt. 352; CUNNINGHAM, XLVII, 3). He brings water and food to the dead body of an ox, abandoned at the gates of the town; and when his father, informed by friends, runs up to remonstrate with him, he answers him in the same tone and has not much trouble in proving to him that the more foolish of the two is not the one whom people think. For it is folly, according to Buddhist ideas, to weep for the dead.

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XXII. Elsewhere the Bodhisattva has become the Pandit Vidhura, minister of the king of Indraprastha. The fame of his wisdom and eloquence is so great, that the wife of a Nâga conceives a fancy for hearing him speak. In order to make more sure of him being brought to her, the undine pretends to have a « desire », that of eating his heart. Behold the husband much disturbed : « As well ask for the moon », he remarks (*Jât.* 545). But what is there that women cannot do? The four panels of one pillar are consecrated to the description of how the daughter of the Nâga was not long in finding a young captain of the genii, who, for love of her « beaux yeux », charges himself with the commission; how the young gallant challenges the king of Indraprastha to play, and with one cast of the dice wins his minister from him; how he vainly endeavours to kill the latter by throwing him down from the top of a mountain; and how, in the end, he decides to take him alive to the house of the Nâga, to the great satisfaction of his future mother-in-law, who thus obtains from the mouth of the sage the little private lecture which she desired (CUNNINGHAM, XVIII). And, as is always the case with these Buddhist tales, all is well that ends well.

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XXIII. But, as I have told you, it is especially when the Bodhisattva is born again as a Kshatriya that his acts foretell the great renunciation of which he is to offer a perfect model in the course of his last existence. Once, at a time when human life was exceedingly long, he renounces the throne and the world from the moment of the appearance of his first white hair (*Jât.* 9). His barber is ordered to show it to him as soon as he perceives it : and it is for that reason that, on pl. VI, 6, he interrupts the combing of his master’s long hair. King Makhâdêva, although he still has 84.000 years to live, abdicates at once in favour of his son — apparently the third person in the scene — and retires to lead in his own park of mango-trees the ascetic life.

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XXIV. Another time he does not wait so long to abandon his throne, and he is still in full youth when he yields place to his youngest brother (*Jât.* 181; *Mahâvastu*, II, 73). The jealousy and suspicions of the latter soon force him to go into exile, and, thanks to his talent as an archer, he earns his living in the service of a neighbouring king. The bas-relief represents this Asadisa at the moment when, by means of an arrow skilfully shot, he gathers for his master a mango from the very top of a high tree (CUNNINGHAM, XXVII, 13). The continuation of the story makes him again protect his ungrateful brother against the seven hostile princes who were besieging him, and finally he enters — or rather, according to the Indian expression, he « departs » — into religion.

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XXV. Once even it is from his earliest infancy that he gives evidence of his resolution to know nothing of this world, and he feigns to be dumb, deaf and paralyzed (*Jât.* 538). In vain are many experiments tried to prove him; neither privations nor delicacies, nor toys, nor noises, nor lights, nor fear, nor suffering, nor (when he is nearly sixteen years old) voluptuous temptations can draw from him a gesture, a cry, or any sign whatever of sensibility or intelligence. That is why you see him lying so stiff in the lap of his father, the king of Benares (pl. V, 6). The latter ends by becoming weary of such a son, and orders his chariot-driver to take him out of the town and bury him, dead or alive. Thus, at the bottom, we see Prince Sêmiya standing near an empty quadriga, whilst on the right the driver is busy with a hoe, hollowing out a grave. However, the prince suddenly decides to move and speak:

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