The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c7.20

c7.20

From the first moment that we find ourselves in the presence of our fellow-creatures the problem of identification becomes infinitely more complicated. Even as regards isolated persons we cannot content ourselves, as in the case of animals, with a simple designation of species. We must at least discern their real nature, whether human or divine; next, try to determine their social rank on earth or in heaven; then finally, if possible, assign a proper name to each. It is a great deal to ask. Certainly we have very little difficulty in recognizing in a frequent feminine figure, seated on a lotus and copiously doused by two elephants, the prototype of the modern representations of Çrî, the Hindu Goddess of Fortune (¹). On the other hand, we should scarcely have known what to say concerning the beautiful ladies who connect the jamb with the first lintel, if it were not that we find them again on the Barhut pillars. They have retained, here as there, in addition to their opulent charms and somewhat scanty costume, their eminently plastic pose, and they continue, as is written, « to bend their willow-forms like a bow » and « to lean, holding a mango-bough in full flower, displaying their bosoms like golden jars » (Buddhacarita, II, 52 and IV, 35, trans. COWELL). But there, in addition to what we have here, they bear also a little label which teaches us to see in them, instead of simple bayadères, divinities, of an inferior order, it is true, belonging to those whom we should call « fairies ». At the same time, in the lay persons who, upright at the foot of the jambs, reveal to us for their part the masculine fashions of Central India in the centuries immediately preceding our era (pl. VIII, 2), we learn to recognize demi-gods and genii, guardians of the four entrances to the sanctuary, as also of the four cardinal points (¹).