Ajanta: The Colour and Monochrome Reproductions of the Ajanta Frescoes Based on Photography v3.c12.s35: Scenes from the Life of the Buddha : Sujātā Offering Food to the Buddha, the Offering of Trapusha (Tapussa) and Bhallika (Bhalluka), the Visit of the King of Magadha

Ajanta: The Colour and Monochrome Reproductions of the Ajanta Frescoes Based on Photography v3.c12.s35

Language: English

Scenes from the Life of the Buddha : Sujātā Offering Food to the Buddha, the Offering of Trapusha (Tapussa) and Bhallika (Bhalluka), the Visit of the King of Magadha

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The scenes are painted on the wall of the right corridor in Cave XVI, above the third and fourth cell-doors from the right. They are reproduced in monochrome.

THE entire wall of the right corridor is covered with representations of scenes from the life of the Buddha, commencing from the nativity and continuing to his visit to Rājagriha after his enlightenment. The fresco has much deteriorated owing to climatic conditions, and in a few places acts of vandalism, such as cutting off the heads of figures with a view to selling them to visitors, may also be traced. But in spite of these depredations, what remains on the rock-wall suffices to enable us to identify the various scenes of the life of the Teacher and to admire the skill of the artist in depicting them.

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In this plate (LIX), commencing from the top of the left side, the scene of Sujātā offering food to the Buddha is first noticed. The Master is shown standing, and he holds a bowl in his hand. The figures of four hermits can also be traced around him. In front of the Buddha is a lady holding a round vessel in her hand, which is apparently the vase of water mentioned in the legend.¹ Behind this lady is another sitting near the fire-place, and stirring the contents of a pot with a ladle. She is evidently Sujātā of the story cooking the milk-rice for an offering to the tree-deity. Her cows, whose number in the legend is reduced from one thousand to eight with a view to enriching their milk, are shown as four only in the fresco. They are to be noticed behind Sujātā. The four hermits, who are seen around the Buddha, may be the four guardian angels of the story, who mixed vital sap in the rice-milk to increase the nourishing quality of the dish. These hermits may also be identified with those monks who accompanied the Buddha during the six years of his austerities, and whom he had promised to initiate into the Doctrine after his enlightenment. As these figures have become somewhat faint, it is difficult to study their artistic features, but the identification of the story with the offering of Sujātā is clear enough and there remains no doubt about it.

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¹ Warren has narrated the legend, translating it from the Introduction to the Jātaka (i. 685). A summary of Warren's translation is given here. There lived a girl in Uruvela, named Sujātā, who made a prayer to a certain banyan-tree that if she got a husband of equal rank with herself and her first child was a son, she would make a rich offering yearly to the tree. The prayer of Sujātā was granted; and to fulfil her vow she made preparation for the offering on the day of full moon of the month of Vesākha full six years after the Great Being commenced his austerities. She had pastured a thousand cows and from their milk nourished five hundred cows. From the milk of the latter she fed only two hundred and fifty, and so on down to feeding the milk of sixteen cows to eight only. This process was adopted by Sujātā to enrich the nutritive properties of the milk. On the day she wished to make the offering the milk flowed from the teats of the cows without their being sucked by the calves first, and Sujātā placed the milk in new vessels and herself lit the fire and began to cook the milk-rice. She noticed the four guardian angels helping her in preparing the dish, and by their superhuman power they collected and poured into the milk-rice the vital sap sufficient for the sustenance of the gods and men of the four great continents. Having seen the above miracle, Sujātā told her slave-girl, Puṇṇā, that the tree-deity was very graciously disposed to them and that she should go quickly to the tree and make everything ready for the offering. Puṇṇā, when she came to the tree, noticed the Buddha under it, and as his radiance had lit up the tree, she thought that the deity had come out of the tree to receive the offering in person. She ran back to her mistress and informed her of what she had seen. Sujātā was overjoyed by the news, and she poured the rice-milk into a gold dish worth a hundred thousand pieces of money, and covered it with another which was also of gold and equally costly. Afterwards she proceeded to the tree, and at the sight of the Future Buddha was exceedingly delighted, for she considered him to be the tree-god. She bowed in a respectful manner, and with some flower-scented water in a golden vase, she drew near the Future Buddha and took up a position near him. The earthenware bowl which the Future Buddha had kept so long and which had been given him by Ghaṭīkāra, the Mahā-Brahma God, at that

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To the right of the above scene there is another in which the Buddha is shown seated. There are two male figures, one on each side of his seat. The figure to the left holds a stick in his hand, while his companion towards the right has a halberd or a flag in his left hand and also a bundle on his back. The two figures apparently represent the merchants Trapusha and Bhallika of the legend, who offered honey and rice-cakes to the Buddha after his seven weeks' trance following the enlightenment.¹

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¹ The Buddha went into a seven weeks' trance after the enlightenment, at the end of which he stood in great need of food. At that time the caravan of two brothers, Trapusha and Bhallika (in Pali, Tapussa and Bhalluka), merchants of Orissa, coming near the grove where the Buddha was seated, they were warned by the deity of the grove, and thus enabled to make offerings of honeycomb and wheat to the Great Being.

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Below the last two scenes there are two more. The one on the left represents the Buddha again seated on a throne or a stone slab. In front of him are several figures, but as the fresco has much faded, only the figures of a bearded person, of another wearing a pearl necklace, and of a groom standing near the horse, can be made out with certainty. The head and neck of the horse are drawn with considerable artistic effect. The harness of the horse is the same as that of the horses in the *Mahājanaka* and *Vidhurapaṇḍita Jātakas* in Caves I-II.²

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² Thomas has given further details of the story, based on the *Jātaka, Vinaya*, and *Lalita* texts, in *The Life of Buddha* (pp. 85-6).

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Above the figure of the horse, the head and trunk of an elephant may also be traced, the head being adorned with an ornamental band. As elephants were generally used by royal personages, it may be assumed that among the votaries who are listening to the preaching of the Buddha there is also a king. This feature, coupled with the representation of the Buddha with the begging-bowl passing through a street, in the adjoining scene towards the right, has led scholars to identify the first scene with the visit of Bimbisāra to the Buddha after his renunciation, and the latter with his going over to Rājagriha from Anupiya after he had stayed seven days at the latter place.³ As the scenes tally with the accounts given in the Buddhist sacred texts, the identification seems to be correct.

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³ *Ajanta*, i. 19 (f.n. 3) and ii. 40 (f.n. 1). Thomas may be quoted regarding these events: ‘The Jātaka tells us that Gotama, after staying seven days at Anupiya, went on foot straight to Rājagaha, the Magadha capital, in one day, a distance of some two hundred miles, and began to beg. The royal officers reported his arrival to the king (Bimbisāra), who in astonishment

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instant disappeared, and the Future Buddha, stretching out his right hand in an attempt to find his bowl, grasped the vase of water. Afterwards Sujātā placed the dish of milk-rice before the Buddha and said, ‘Lord accept my offering, and go whithersoever it seemeth to you good’. *Buddhism in Translations*, pp. 71-4.

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In the street-scene where the Buddha is shown begging, the architecture of the shop is interesting. The first shop, to the left of the Buddha, has an eave of stone slabs, or of planks of wood, in the front for protection against sun and rain. The second shop, to the right of the former, has a flat ceiling with stone or wood rafters. As a roof of this design is noticed in the front corridor of Cave I (supra, p. 5) it may be inferred that houses with flat roofs supported by wooden beams had come into fashion in the Deccan by the fifth century A.D., the date of this cave.¹ The left side of this shop has a grill-design which is to be noticed also at two places in the front corridor of Cave I (Plates IX and XXXVII).² The figure approaching the Buddha with an offering of food is broken, and only a part of it can now be traced.