The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c9.127

Language: English

c9.127.1

(²) Cf. the procedure of distinction employed *ibid.*, figg. 152, 154-156, 164 *a* (cycle of the nativity), 197 (march to Vajrâsana), 212 (invitation to the preaching), 243 (preaching to the Trayastriṃças), 264 (descent from heaven), where we know that we have to deal at the same time with Çakra, the Indra of the Gods (cf. fig. 246), and with Brahmâ, the *Çikhin*. In the particular case with which we are concerned their positions are at times exchanged from one stele to another (cf. plate XXIV with plate XXV and p. 170, note 2), either because on this point the tradition was uncertain or It would take too long to enter further into the details of each variant; and besides on this point we may refer to the notices which accompany the plates : only, we should wish to be allowed to make three remarks of a general character. The first bears on the importance which already in the school of Gandhâra we have been led to attribute to the *lakshana*, or sign of recognition : it seems indeed that here we find a fresh proof of the antiquity and wide extension of this proceeding (¹). In this very case it is a lotus with a stem rising from the ground or from the waters, that serves as a distinctive mark for a whole series of monuments and has allowed us to follow the series for more than a thousand years, through the four corners of the peninsula.

c9.127.2

It is quite exceptional that, as on plate XXV, 2, the peduncle of the flower should be hidden and its pericarp covered by a cushion : and, if the artists of western India prefer that Buddha should cause his teaching to be heard from the height of a throne (*simhâsana*), the typical *padma* is retained at least as a stool for his feet. Henceforth, therefore, we may rank this « lotus emergent and usually attended by two Nâgarâjas », to use heraldic terms, side by side with, for example, the « wheel flanked by two gazelles, either back to back or face to face », among the specific symbols of the great events of Buddha’s life. In the second place, this identification seems to us to confirm another rule which we had thought ourselves in a position to lay down, and in accordance with which there is scarcely any Gandhârian bas-relief, however passive and motionless the characters therein may be, wich does not, even under the most strictly iconographic appearances, conceal the story of some episode in the legend of Buddha. We shall be the more readily excused for recalling the fact, inasmuch as we are the most to blame for having once ranged among the simply decorative motives, in default of finding a better place, several of the stelæ which now assume for us a definite meaning and one of legendary value, as being versions of the « great miracle » at Çrâvastî (¹).

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But at the same time — and this third observation is the most important of all — it is to be feared that we must relinquish the idea of indubitably distinguishing, in the whole repertory of the Greco-Buddhist school, an iconolatric group of « Buddha between two Bodhisattvas ». As far as concerns the great scene of the descent from heaven at Sâṅkâçya, the texts had already forced us to recognize in the two divine acolytes of the Master the gods Brahmâ and Çakra. Here again ought not the same evidence to constrain us to accept the same identification? Then will disappear our last hope of discovering by the side of the Blessed One an Indo-Greek Avalokiteçvara or a Mañjuçrî, as plates XXIV, 1 and XXVI, 1 seem specially to invite us to do. In fact, all that we can say is that we believe we discern already on these stelæ in the type, head-dress, attributes, meditative or pensive pose of the attendants the suggestion of the procedure which later served to represent, and to differentiate from one another, the great Mahâyânic divinities : but methodically we may not go further and light-heartedly oppose to the peremptory assertions of the texts any quasi-gratuitous conjectures. Even the sign of the ûrṇâ, so distinctly marked on the forehead of the acolytes in plates XXIV, 1 and XXV, 2 fails to induce us to lay