The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c9.127.2

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).