Maurya and Shunga Art c11.10.3

c11.10.3

I am even inclined to think that the various miracles of the Buddha portrayed in the reliefs are also nothing but celestial forms referred to by the Mauryan monarch and which he was so much averse to. We have seen above that popular religious demonstrations included the exhibition of ‘charaṇa-chitras’ or portable picture-galleries and that the ‘charaṇa-chitras’, according to Buddhaghosha, were pictures of happy and unhappy destinies of men after death with appropriate labels attached to them. I would consider that the reliefs of Barhut whether in rectangular panels or in medallions are nothing but ‘charaṇa-chitras’, with appropriate labels, translated into stone, and hence not portable. And, is it contrary to facts to suggest that the Jātaka scenes depicted are nothing but lively pictorial records of the happy and unhappy destinies of men after death? Besides, the method of the arrangement of the various scenes depicted on the upright pillars and posts of the gates and the railings, i.e. their general layout in square or rectangular panels, one below the other, in more or less continuous narration, can not but invariably suggest similar arrangement of scenes in ‘caraṇa-chitras’ or ‘paṭa-chitras’ of later folk pictorial tradition. One may go still further and argue that the top horizontal panels of the gate with their sides rolled up at the two ends are nothing but adaptations in stone of ‘paṭa-chitras’ spread out for exhibition with their sides rolled up.