The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c6.36

c6.36

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.