The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c9.120

c9.120

reproduced for the edification, and at the request, of the faithful. The series of these examples adjusts itself without effort in all its characteristic features — seat, attitude, gesture, surroundings of Buddha, etc. — to that in which we have already with certainty recognized versions of the « great miracle » of Çrâvastî. By virtue of the close relationship which we have often had an opportunity of noting between the Greco-Buddhist sculpture and the tradition of the Mûla-Sarvâstivâdins we must more than ever appeal to the *Divyâvadâna* for information concerning the identity of the various personages. In the two « kings of the serpents », who at times support the stem of the great lotus (pll. XXV, 2 ; XXVII ; XXVIII, 1), we naturally continue to greet our old acquaintances « Nanda and his junior », either accompanied or not by their wives. From these « fallen beings » we pass to the human bystanders. It has been asked whether the two lay devotees without nimbuses and of different sexes, who on plate XXVIII, 1 surround the seat of Buddha, are not merely donors of the stele (¹). But it will be noticed that their point of support is, like that of the rest of the figures, the enlarged pericarp of a lotus : they appear, therefore, to form an integral part of the scene. For the same reason we must refuse to see in them anonymous worshippers : rather should we seek here — exactly as in their kneeling counterparts on plate XXIV, 1 — that Lûhasudatta and his wife, « the mother of Riddhila » (¹), who in turn and in vain proposed to the Blessed One to accomplish the miracle in his stead. Likewise, on plate XXV, 2, the text expressly invites us to recognize in the monk and nun kneeling at each side of the Master the *agraçrâvikâ* Utpala-varṇâ (²) and the *agraçrâvaka* Maudgalyâyana, who also asked, and saw themselves successively refused, the same authorization. It is, then, these same four personages, rather than commonplace worshippers, whom we should prefer to recognize on plate XXIV, 2. We should be equally ready to find King Prasenajit, the impartial (³) president of this public manifestation : but, even where the number of spectators is increased, his royal equipage never appears, as later, to betray his incognito (⁴). In front of the four men of good caste seated at the bottom of plate XXVI, 2, it seems that we are rather, as on plates XXVII and XXVIII, 1, in the presence of the four guardian gods of our terrestrial horizon. Among the crowd of divinities we shall recognize immediately on plate XXVII, above the right shoulder of Buddha, his faithful companion Vajrapâṇi, to whom also by certain texts a part is given in the story, he being made to intervene in order to hasten the dénouement (⁵). The feminine figure facing him