Ajanta: The Colour and Monochrome Reproductions of the Ajanta Frescoes Based on Photography v4.c16.s5: The Mother and Child Before the Buddha and Other Buddhist Deities

Ajanta: The Colour and Monochrome Reproductions of the Ajanta Frescoes Based on Photography v4.c16.s5

Language: English

The Mother and Child Before the Buddha and Other Buddhist Deities

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*These figures are painted on the side walls of the second window, to the right of the main entrance, in the veranda of Cave XVII.*

THESE paintings until quite recently were concealed under a pall of smoke and dirt, but although the colours of the paintings are almost destroyed, the figures can be made out by the outlines of their drawings. On the left wall of the window the figure of the Buddha can easily be identified by his robe and the begging-bowl which he holds in his right hand (Plate VII *b*). In front of him is the figure of a woman with a child, who is looking at the Buddha with astonishment. The woman has been identified as Yaśodharā and the child as Rāhula, the wife and son of the Buddha. The painting refers to the visit of the Buddha to Kapilavastu after his ‘enlightenment’, when Yaśodharā led Rāhula to his father in the womanly hope that he would bring his father back to her.¹ The figures of the mother and child are not clear in the reproduction, but they can easily be made out in the original painting.

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¹ The subject is painted on a grand scale in the antechamber, left of the shrine-door, in this *vihāra* (Plates XI*b* and XLI). It is also to be noticed in the bas-reliefs of Amarāvatī. Foucher is inclined to identify the subject with the ‘offering of a handful of dust’, made to the Blessed One by the child who afterwards became Aśoka. *Jour. Hyd. Arch. Soc.*, Part V (1919-20), pp. 86-87.

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The subject on the opposite wall included the representation of the Buddha in the oval, and on the right the figures of a young hermit and a lady. As a large portion of the fresco is destroyed, the figures of the hermit and the accompanying lady are not entire, but such portions as are intact show graceful features and careful modelling of the different parts of their bodies. Their poses are also artistic: the hermit has inclined his head towards the lady, while she has curved her arm and placed the fingers of her hand on her chin as if to listen with attention to what the young hermit is saying to her. The material of the lady’s *sārī* is a silk fabric of attractive design. These two figures may represent Prince Siddhārtha and Yaśodharā, immediately after he had donned the robe of a mendicant, and thus the painting may be connected with the one painted on the right wall of the window (Plate VII*a*).²

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² In the process of cleaning carried out recently, some figures have been revealed on the side walls of the first window well. They are not reproduced in the Plates accompanying this Part (IV), but they may be described here. On the right side is the representation of the Buddha with a youngish face. A *gandharva* may be noticed flying