The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c6.43

c6.43

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 ».