Indian Sculpture c8.43

c8.43

21. Roundel from stūpa of Bhārhut. Second half, second century B.C. Indian Museum, Calcutta. Dream of Māyā Devī. The queen dreams of the Buddha to be born, who, flying through the air as a white elephant, is to enter her body. The relief shows the sleeping queen on her bed, three female attendants, the flying Buddha elephant, a lamp and a water-kettle. Conspicuous is the relative approximation of sizes of the various figures and objects. The situation furthermore is clearly indicated; that it is night is shown by the burning lamp, that the whole happens in a dream, by the drowsy maiden in front. The bed tilted, with its surface into that of the relief, the substitution of above for behind (sitting girls in back view and bed, etc.), the linear rhythm, which so closely connects the Buddha to be born with his future mother, the parallel and continuous rhythm of his legs and her arms, the neat distribution on the flat ground of sparsely modelled figures which are well fitted into the frame, all these are characteristic features of the major part of the work Bhārhut.