The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c7.s1.t2.37

c7.s1.t2.37

Such is the manifest meaning of this long scene : but we still have to account for the sacred tree — the parasol surmounting it, and the railing which surrounds it, are a proof of this sacredness — which occupies the centre of the panel. Assuredly it is there for reasons of symmetry; but this position of honour demands also that it shall have a meaning : and this meaning will come to us the very moment that we recognize in it (thanks always to the comparison with the inscribed bas-relief of Barhut, CUNNINGHAM, pl. XLVIII, 11) a jambu tree (*Eugenia jambu*). A jambu tree so close to Kapilavastu cannot be, in Buddhist art, anything but the one whose shadow ceased one day to turn to the sun, in order to continue to shelter « the first meditation » of the still young Bodhisattva. We shall notice how three persons, without ceasing to associate themselves with the principal action, form around the tree of the miracle the necessary group of worshippers. Thus the artist has been able to combine most ingeniously in one and the same picture a summary indication of the commencement, and a detailed representation of the dénouement, of the religious vocation of the Predestined. And who can say even whether the quadruple repetition of the horse and the procession leaving the town were not connected in his mind with the intervening episode of the famous « four outgoings », which by the successive encounter with an old man, a sick person, a dead man and a monk, revealed to the future Buddha the miseries of life and the only way of salvation?