The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c7.37

c7.37

However well the Indian school proper may have been served in its ungrateful entreprise by the monotonous character of this perpetual course of visits and preaching, of conversions and offerings, which forms the career of Buddha, it is self-evident that its system of composition accommodated itself infinitely better to subjects subsequent to the *Parinirvâna*, the only ones in which the absence of the Master's figure became quite plausible. If its regular development had not been very soon interrupted by the adoption of the Indo-Greek type of Buddha, which came from the north-west of India, it would probably have been led by the natural course of things to assign a growing importance to this sort of historical pictures, side by side with the pictures of piety. Therefore, we do not hesitate to recognize at once a few attempts of this kind at Sânchî, notably among the bas-reliefs which are freely displayed over the whole width of the lintels. It is scarcely necessary to state that these scenes are not less legendary in fact, or less edifying in intention, than the others. We shall recall, first of all, on the southern gate that vivid representation of the famous war of the relics, which by an ironical return of the things of this world came near to being precipitated by the death of the Apostle of Benevolence. We know that fortunately it was averted (¹): the « Seven before Kuçinagara » at last obtained from the inhabitants of the town a portion of the ashes of the Blessed One; and each of these eight co-sharers, keeping his portion or carrying it in triumph to his native land, built a stûpa in its honour. It was these eight original deposits — or rather seven of them — that towards the middle of the third century B. C. the famous Açoka, piously sacrilegious, violated, with the sole aim of distributing their contents among the innumerable Buddhist sanctuaries which were then beginning to be scattered all over India. As to the eighth, that of Râmagrâma, it seems to have been already lost in the jungle; and a well-known tradition (although not known to be so ancient) will have it that in regard thereto the royal pilgrim was confronted by the courteous, but definite refusal of the Nâgas, who were its guardians. Now such, surely, is the spectacle offered to us, a century after the event, by the central lintel of this very southern gate (¹). A hundred years are amply sufficient, especially in India, to create a complete cycle of legends. Reflect, on the other hand, that at a few paces from the future site of the gate Açoka had already caused his famous « edicts » to be engraved upon a column. According to all probability the erection of this column was contemporary with the building of the *stûpa*, which may very well be one of the « 84.000 » religious foundations ascribed to the devout emperor. Finally, we have reasons for thinking that the latter had remained a kind of local hero in the district : at least it is in the immediate neighbourhood of Sânchî that the *Mahâvamsa* places the romance of his youth with the beautiful daughter of a rich citizen of Besnagar. All this may help us to understand that two other pseudo-historic scenes on our eastern gate may in the same way be borrowed from his cycle. The one on the reverse side of the lower lintel (pl. VII, 2) must have some connection with the Râmagrâma *stûpa*, if it is not simply another version of the legend which we have just cited. As for the other on the front of the same block, we cannot help believing that the solemn procession to the Bodhi tree (pl. X, 2) is the figured echo, if it is not the direct illustration, of a passage in the *Açokâvadâna* (²).