The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c6.s1.5

c6.s1.5

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.