The Buddhist Art of Gandhara: The Story of the Early School, its Birth, Growth and Decline c8.7

c8.7

Another outstanding motif of Buddhist symbolism was the lotus, which is still the national flower of India. Thanks to the miracle of its own strange birth beneath the waters, it was pre-eminently the symbol of birth—particularly of divine birth. But it was more than that. It was also a ‘Tree of Life and Fortune’, and it is in this aspect of a ‘wishing-tree’ that it is so often depicted at Bhārhut and Sāñchī, laden with fruits and jewels and magic talismans—all symbolic of the countless blessings that Buddhism had to offer to mankind. A fine example of this lotus wishing-tree, carved on the lowest architrave of the Southern Gateway of the Great Stūpa, is reproduced in fig. 2. Here, the tree sprites, in the form of kumbhaṇḍas, are spouting out the lotus plants and their treasures as if spouting out summer itself, the plants and figures together making a pattern of singular richness and beauty, though one could wish perhaps that the snake-like convolutions of the lotus stems at the centre had been omitted. Parenthetically we should note that the horror vacui, the dislike of empty spaces, which distinguishes this design is characteristic of Indian decorative art throughout the ages, and is one of the chief features in which the sculpture of the Early Indian School contrasts with that of Gandhāra.