Ajanta: The Colour and Monochrome Reproductions of the Ajanta Frescoes Based on Photography v3.c12.s36: Scenes from the Life of the Buddha : The First Meditation and the Four Signs

Ajanta: The Colour and Monochrome Reproductions of the Ajanta Frescoes Based on Photography v3.c12.s36

Language: English

Scenes from the Life of the Buddha : The First Meditation and the Four Signs

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

T HE first scene is painted in the middle, where a young hermit is seen sitting under a tree. He is the Future Buddha of the legend, who fell into a trance during the Ploughing Festival when his parents had taken him to the fields to watch the celebrations.³ This event seeing him from the palace ordered them to follow and observe. If he was a non-human being he would vanish, if a divinity he would go through the air, if a nāga into the ground, but if a man he would eat his alms. He was seen to go to the Paṇḍava hill, and, overcoming his disgust at the unusual food, to eat it. The king then came, and, pleased at his deportment, offered him entire sovereignty, but Gotama refused, saying that he had left the world with the desire for the highest enlightenment. Yet though he rejected the repeated requests of the king, he promised to visit his kingdom first on becoming Buddha, and then journeyed by stages to the teachers Āḷara and Uddaka. The Therigāthā commentary, which is probably a later work, says that he first went to the hermitage of Bhaggava.

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³ Warren has described the festival, and a summary of his account is here given.

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The Jātaka adds that the full account is to be found in the sutta of the Going-forth (Pabbajjā-sutta) with its commentary. Yet this sutta, found both in the Pali and in the Mahāvastu, differs curiously from the Jātaka. The king sees him first, and, noticing his beauty and downcast eyes, sends messengers to find where he lives, then visits him, offers him wealth, and asks of what family he is. Gotama tells him, but does not mention that he is a king's son, and says that he has no desire for pleasures, but seeing the evil of pleasures and looking on renunciation as peace, he is going to strive. Here the sutta ends, but the Mahāvastu adds two verses in a different metre containing Bimbisāra's request and Gotama's promise that he will return and preach the doctrine in his kingdom. This incident is also added by the Pali commentator on the sutta. The Life of Buddha, pp. 68–9.

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The Sowing Festival was celebrated with great pomp. The whole city was bedecked, and the people put on new dresses and assembled at the king's palace, which by its decorations looked like an abode of gods. King Suddhodana in celebrating the festival took the young prince, Siddhattha, along with him to the fields. The king issued forth with a large retinue, and on that occasion there were has been associated with the Future Buddha during his early age; according to one text, at a time before he could even walk, according to another, when he was old enough to walk about, according to a third, when he was quite grown up.¹ In the present painting (LX) the Future Buddha has been shown as a lad with a sprouting moustache, but he is surrounded by nurses who are offering him food. Behind him is the figure of a hermit, and below a pair of white oxen yoked to a plough, and also the figure of the driver, whose head is broken. The oxen appear to be of a good breed, and the pair and the plough may represent those used by Suddhodana on the occasion. There were some figures connected with the scene towards the right, but owing to the peeling of the fresco, except for the bust of one figure, these have completely disappeared.

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¹ Thomas has discussed the difference and referred to the Majjhima, the Nidāna-kathā, the Mahāvastu, the Lalita-vistara, and the Divyāvadāna. The Life of Buddha, pp. 44-6.

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To the left of the above scene is another representing a palace-room in which a rājā and his wife are seated on a throne and there are several attendants in front of them. The fresco is damaged at this place also, and the right half of the figure of the rājā and the upper half of the body of the rānī have completely perished. Among the attendants, a male figure with long wavy hair and a woman with an elaborate coiffure can be traced with certainty. The features of both of them are coarse, perhaps in contrast to the beautiful features of the rājā and the rānī, for the artists of Ajanta were always fond of emphasizing beauty by contrast. The scene represents Suddhodana and Māyā conferring together to devise plans which may dissuade their son from adopting the life of a monk. The fresco is much damaged, but when it is examined with the retinue painted below, the identification of the subject with the Future Buddha’s drive and his seeing the Four Signs becomes certain.² The first three signs are represented in the

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² The story is given in various Buddhist texts, and may be summarized as follows: Since the eight Brahmans had prophesied on the name-giving day that the young prince, if he saw the four signs, i.e. an old man, a sick person, a corpse, and a monk, would renounce the world, his parents appointed guards to ward them off from the sight of their son. But when the prince was twenty-nine years old and the gods thought that the time of his leaving the world was at hand, the prince showed an inclination to go to the park and ordered his charioteer to get ready the vehicle for his drive. The latter readily obeyed the command of his master and brought the chariot, to which four white horses of Sindhava breed had been harnessed. The prince drove therein towards the park and saw on the way a decrepit old man, broken-toothed, grey-haired, crooked and bent of body, leaning on a staff and trembling through

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one hundred and eight ploughs, all but one having the trappings of the oxen and the cross-bars of the ploughs ornamented with red gold, as also the horns, the reins, and the goads for the oxen. In the field where the festival was to be celebrated there was a rose-apple tree (jambu) under which the king left his son and appointed nurses to watch him. Afterwards he proceeded with his attendants to plough. He himself drove the gold plough, his courtiers the silver ones, and the farmers the ordinary: they dug and harrowed the soil, moving forward and backward with great speed and magnificence until the function reached its climax. The nurses who were left by the king to look after the Future Buddha went away to enjoy the festival. The young prince looked around him, and finding himself alone, he sat cross-legged, and mastering his inspirations and his expirations entered on the first trance (First Meditation). The nurses delayed a little, being occupied in partaking of dainty articles of food, and when they returned they noticed that the shadows of the other trees had passed over towards the East while that of the rose-apple tree under which the Future Buddha was sitting had remained stationary, encircling him like a canopy. They also found him seated cross-legged. They announced the miracle to the king, who hastened to the place and bowed before him, saying, ‘This, dear child, is my second obeisance’. *Buddhism in Translations*, pp. 53-5.

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frieze carved on the façade of Cave I, and one may be tempted to surmise that the scene here relates to his seeing the fourth sign. But as some Buddhist texts state that the Future Buddha saw all the Four Signs on one and the same day,¹ such a conjecture cannot be justified until the figure of a monk, the fourth sign, be traced in the fresco. The figure of a monk is, however, not visible, although the chariot to which ‘four state-horses of the Sindhava breed’ are harnessed and a large number of attendants, armed with shields and swords, are clear in the painting. The swords are short and curved like the *kukṛīs* of Gurkhas, as noticed in other frescoes also,² and the faces of the shields have conventional check patterns. There are some banners and also a fly-whisk attached to a long pole, all these emblems suggesting a royal cortège.

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¹ *Digha-Nikāya*, General Introduction.

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² *Ajanta*, i. 19, f.n. 1.