The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c6.s1: VI
The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c6.s1
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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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but when his father, informed by the driver, runs up with his suite, full of joy, it is only to find him already transformed by the providential intervention of the king of the gods into an ascetic, and sitting in the shadow of the trees of his hermitage : and this forms the subject of the third and last episode, on the right top border of the medallion.
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The texts specify elsewhere that in this last existence the Bodhisattva had realised the perfection of « determination », in the life of Vidhura (XXII) that of « wisdom », in that of Mahâjanaka (XIX) of « heroism », in that of the ascetic with the lotus stems (XV) of « detachment », in that of the king of the monkeys (X) of « truth », in that of the stag (VIII) and the elephant with six tusks (VI) of « generosity » ; and we know from a detached fragment that at Barhut also was seen the birth in which, under the name of Prince Viçvantara, he attained by the gift of his goods, his children and even his wife, the acme of « charity ». Thus we recognize on our bas-reliefs some of the most celebrated jâtakas ; and of the ten cardinal virtues only « patience », « benevolence » and « equanimity » are not represented by name. Further, we must not forget that the researches of Cunningham have collected scarcely more than a third of the railing : the rest had been carried away and destroyed by neighbouring villagers, and this vandalism justifies the precaution, taken by the English archæologist, of transporting all that had survived to the Museum at Calcutta. Inversely, it is only right that I should warn you that we are far from having identified all the bas-reliefs which have been exhumed. We might draw up another list, almost as long, of those which still await (the greater number, but not all, for want of an inscription) a satisfactory explanation. Some motifs are evidently taken from jâtakas not to be read in the Pâli collection : and this is a salutary warning to us that the latter, considerable though it may be, is far from being complete. Besides, we might have drawn attention in passing to a number of discordances in detail, as regards the treatment of subjects certainly identified, between the prose part of this collection and the bas-reliefs, whilst we have remarked the almost literal harmony between a lapidary inscription and the text of one of the versified refrains known under the popular title of gâthâ (¹). But these are remarks which are of interest chiefly to specialists. I would mention only one point, namely, that they authorize us to believe that the sculptors of Barhut worked not in accordance with a given text, as did those of Boro-Budur, but according to a living tradition, as it echoed in their memory or was transmitted among them.
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¹ See below some remarks on the Ṣaḍdanta-jâtaka (Essay VII).
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I will add that they worked also according to nature : you have been enabled to judge for yourselves of their honest care for true detail. Each photographic reproduction of their works has shown you, as through a window opening upon the past, the costumes, weapons, tools, furniture and vehicles employed in India two thousand years ago ; and thus in one hour they have given you through your eyes more concrete ideas about that civilization than you would have been able to acquire in a year’s reading. But the greatest service that they have rendered us — for from it flow all the others — was when they carried their foresight to the point of engraving by the side of the majority of their compositions the titles of the subjects which they had intended to represent. What gratitude ought we not to feel towards them for that just distrust of their own talent, so rare among artists! It has given us the key to ancient Indian art. So much modesty, sincerity and conviction, do they not go far towards making up for the lack of technical skill? I am sure you will not be severe towards them in this respect : and if these fables, these fabliaux and moralities, have interested your eyes no less than your ears, you will thank not only the narrators of them, but also the worthy old image-makers of India.
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PLATES V-VI
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The Barhut sculptures here reproduced are borrowed, with the permission of the Secretary of State for India, from the beautiful publication of General A. CUNNINGHAM, *The Stūpa of Bharhut* (London, 1879).
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| Pl. V. | 1 (C., pl. XXVI, 5) : | described on p. | 38 |
| » | 2 (C., pl. XXVII, 9) : | » | » 40 |
| » | 3 (C., pl. XXV, 1) : | » | » 40-41 |
| » | 4 (C., pl. XXXIII, 4) : | » | » 41-42 |
| » | 5 (C., pl. XXV, 3) : | » | » 50 |
| » | 6 (C., pl. XXV, 4) : | » | » 56 |
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| Pl. VI. | 1 (C., pl. XLVI, 8) : | » | » 43 |
| » | 2 (C., pl. XLV, 5) : | » | » 44 |
| » | 3 (C., pl. XLVI, 2) : | » | » 45 |
| » | 4 (C., pl. XLVIII, 7) : | » | » 45-46 |
| » | 5 (C., pl. XLIV, 2) : | » | » 52 |
| » | 6 (C., pl. XLVIII, 2) : | » | » 55 |
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ON THE RAIL COPING
Linked texts (6)
- Daśakumāracarita — Daṇḍin, Sanskrit
- Mahābhārata — Vyāsa, Sanskrit
- Kathāsaritsāgara — Somadeva Bhaṭṭa, Sanskrit
- Jātaka — Pāli
- Mahāvastu — Sanskrit
- Bharhut