The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c8.15

c8.15

Fig. 10. The two reliefs of fig. 10, with their crowded scenes and almost bewildering details, are also telling examples of the same methods of composition. The story in the top panel (fig. 10a) is the well-known Śyāma Jātaka—the story of the young anchorite Śyāma, only son of a blind hermit and his wife, who is accidentally shot by the king of Benares on a hunting expedition. Though the several episodes are grouped in a single frame, the meaning is clear enough. In the centre, the figures of the king and the boy, who carries a pitcher on his shoulder, are a sufficient label for identifying the Jātaka. Then, to the left, the figure of the king, now in hunting attire, twice repeated: first transfixing the boy with an arrow in the lotus pool, and then standing repentant with his bow by his side. On the banks of the pool, are cattle and deer and beyond them, to the right, the blind hermit and his wife seated in front of their huts. Finally, in the top left-hand corner, the father, mother and son (now restored to life through the intervention of the god Indra) are reunited in a happy group, together with the king and Indra himself. When we come to fig. 106, we shall have an opportunity of seeing how very differently the same Jātaka story was told by a sculptor of Gandhāra.