Ajanta: The Colour and Monochrome Reproductions of the Ajanta Frescoes Based on Photography v3.c12.s26: The Hasti Jātaka (?), or the Story of the Benevolent Elephant

Ajanta: The Colour and Monochrome Reproductions of the Ajanta Frescoes Based on Photography v3.c12.s26

Language: English

The Hasti Jātaka (?), or the Story of the Benevolent Elephant

The subject is painted in the front corridor of Cave XVI, to the left of the small door towards the left of the main entrance. As the painting is dim, it has been reproduced in monochrome with an outline.

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LIKE the previous fresco (XLVIII *a*), this also has been cleaned recently, and two episodes of the story can be made out with certainty.¹ The first episode, painted on the right, represents a party of wayfarers clad in single sheets which cover mainly the lower parts of their bodies, but the sheets are also seen in a rolled form across their chests and backs. The wayfarers have loose dishevelled hair and bulging stomachs, the latter indicating the irregular development of their bodies. The hands and fingers are well shaped, and with the latter they are making gestures, perhaps pointing to a white elephant, shown on conventional hills in front of them. On their backs they carry sacks, the tops of which, pulled over their shoulders, they grip with their left hands.

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¹ Professor A. Foucher has identified the story with No. 30 of the *Jātaka-mālā*. According to the text of the latter the story may be summarized as follows: Once upon a time the Bodhisattva was a mighty ele-

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On the left side of the fresco is another scene in which the benevolent elephant is lying prostrate with his trunk stretched in front of him. Two of the wayfarers are cutting pieces of flesh from the elephant’s body with large knives. The scene becomes gruesome when one of the wayfarers, second in the top row from the left, is seen with a piece of flesh in his mouth and another holding a piece in his left hand to roast it in a fire which is burning in front of him. The flames of the fire have been painted rather conventionally, but nobody can say that the drawing represents anything but fire. Behind the last two wayfarers there are two more looking eagerly to their companions who are cutting pieces of flesh with knives. Near the left end of the fresco there are three more of the party who have gone to fetch water, for below them are wavy lines representing conventionally the waters of a river or lake.

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The subject is interesting only from the point of view of the story; otherwise the painting in the original fresco is somewhat flat, and the drawing also, except that of the hands, is of an inferior quality.