The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c7.s1.t2.15

c7.s1.t2.15

*a)* We will begin this time with the upper panel of the inner face. Apparently it represents the rural country town of Uruvilvâ, whose immediate approaches had been a few months previously the scene of the *Sambodhi*, and later — after Buddha’s first journey to Benares — of the conversion of the Kâçyapas. Above, at the left, women are doing their household work on the thresholds of their huts; one is husking rice in a wooden mortar with a huge pestle; another winnows it with a fan in the form of a shovel; two neighbours are one of them rolling out pastry-cakes and the other grinding curry-powder. The attention of the latter seems to be distracted by the (perhaps amorous) conversation of the man seated beside her. Further down to the right two more women with round pitchers upon their hips are going in the direction of the river Nairañjanâ (now the Lilañj), where a third is already stooping to fill her ghaṭī. Some men are coming and going, the bamboo-pole on their shoulders laden or empty. It is the village life of two thousand years ago : it is also the village life of to-day, and there is not one of the utensils represented there that we have not somewhere seen in use. Troops of oxen, buffalos, goats, sheep add life to the picture. In what does its edification consist? Simply in this, that the invisible Buddha is felt to be seated under a parasol and on a throne, behind which two devotees are standing. Before the gate of the village a third person is likewise to be seen, with his hands clasped; and the attitude of this villager is the only connecting link between the genre scenes, so complacently treated, and the religious subject, which is decidedly a little sacrificed. As for the two worshippers, we believe, after carefully weighing everything, that we must recognize in them the gods Indra and Brahmâ, paying a visit to the Blessed One in his residence, which was near to, but distinct from, that of the oldest of the Kâçyapas, the Kâçyapa of Uruvilvâ. This interpretation not only has the advantage of connecting the subject with the series of wonders which in the end determined the conversion of the Brahmanical ascetics : it also provides a place moreover for the third and fourth of those prâtihâryas, besides containing an implicit allusion to the second, in the order in which the Mahâvagga (I, 16-18) counts them. If it is objected that these miracles are given in the text as taking place during the night, we shall reply that our sculptors have systematically ignored this detail, for the very good reason that it was not within their competence (cf. below, § 11 a).