The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c6.29

c6.29

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).