The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c6.s1.1

c6.s1.1

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 ».