Maurya and Shunga Art c11.10.2

c11.10.2

Nor were ceremonial religious processions as a method of popular religious education abandoned. The reliefs of Barhut portray many such popular demonstrations of religion in which chariots, elephants, horses, luminous celestial sights etc, find their proper place. Indeed, one can not help thinking that such demonstrationstions showing actual or artificial representation of ‘vimānas’, ‘hastis’, ‘agikhamḍhas’ and other ‘divya rūpas’ etc. were actually practised for the edification of the people, which is very usual in all popular anthropomorphic religions. One of the medallion-carvings of Barhut depicts the Bodhi tree of “Bhagavato Vipasino”; according to Buddhaghosha’s description, one reads in the story of luminous celestial groves like Chitralatā, Nandana etc. which were sighted by the people.83 Another scene depicts the story of the flight of five ṛishis during the Śākya plough festival. According to the ‘Lalitavistara’ the sudden arrest of the progress of the ascetics in flight was due to the overpowering majesty, of the Bodhisattva in the forest grove beneath. The story relates that the Bodhisattva appeared to the ascetics as a luminary shining with light emitting from his body, and to Suddhodana, as a fire issuing from a mountain peak and glorious like a lamp.84 These fires and luminous celestial forms are nothing but the ‘agikhamḍhāni’ and the ‘divyāni rūpāni’ of the Asokan edict.