The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c7.25

c7.25

One other example is from this point of view still more characteristic. On the posterior frontal of this same gate (pl. VII, 2) is figured a row of vacant thrones under trees, between human and divine worshippers. They were counted. There are seven of them : and thereupon an expert student of Buddhism, the Rev. S. Beal, had not been long in rediscovering in the legend of the Master seven miraculous trees : unfortunately it would be easy to enumerate still more of them. The analogy of certain series in Gandhâra or at Ajaṇṭâ would to-day furnish a much more satisfactory explanation by suggesting that it was a symbolical manner of representing the seven traditional Buddhas of our æon, the last being Çâkya-Muni. But you perceive that this conjecture would remain suspended literally in the air... Well, the inscribed bas-reliefs of Barhut have made it a certainty. In fact, they show us in succession all these same trees, of easily recognizable species, above these same seats of stone, between these same worshippers; but in this case each of them bears as on a label the name of the Buddha whose memory it evokes; and thus we can no longer doubt that the intention of the old image-makers was indeed to represent the seven Enlightened Ones of the past by the seven trees under which they sat in order to attain to enlightenment (²).