The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c9.204

c9.204

The two divine attendants are again seated on rattan seats; both rest their elbows symmetrically on their raised knees, while their foreheads, marked with the *ûrṇâ*, recline upon the tip of one finger: we know that this pensive pose has been ascribed by Sino-Japanese art to Avalokiteçvara. The attendant on the right, who, like Brahmâ, has no head-dress other than his hair, holds in his right hand the book (in the form of a palm-leaf manuscript) which will be one of the attributes of Mañjuçrî; the turbaned one on the left holds in his left hand an object which, from its granular appearance and the fold which it makes at the bottom, we believe to be again a purse, fastened by a kind of clasp in the form of a medallion and analogous to those in the hands of the attendants on the left of pl. XXIV, 2 and right of pl. XXV, 1, but which on plate LXVIII, *c*, of the *Arch. Surv. Rep., 1903-1904* is plainly a lotus.