/T/7
The beginnings of Buddhist art, and other
3 1924 009 002 308 *....
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LIBRARY
THE WASON
CHINESE COLLECTION
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THE BEGINNINGS OF
BUDDHIST ART
AND OTHER ESSAYS IN INDIAN AND CENTRAL-ASIAN ARCHEOLOGY
BY
A. FOUCHER
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS
REVISED BY THE AUTHOR AND TRANSLATED BY
L. A. THOMAS and F. W. THOMAS
WITH A PREFACE BY THE LATTER
PARIS PAUL GEUTHNER
13, RUE JACOB, 13
LONDON HUMPHREY MILFORD
AMEN CORNER. E. C.
MCMXVll
THE BEGINNINGS
OF
BUDDHIST ART
Printed for PAUL GEUTHNER by A. BURDIN. — F. GAVLTIER and A. THtBERT, Succ", Augers, France.
HARITt. THE BUDDHIST MADONNA
Essay IX
.■aiK^Kim
Dsmoulin lr»r*». Sc
PAINTING FROM TURFAN
NOW IN MUSEUM FUR VOI-KERKUNDE, BERLIN
THE BEGINNINGS OF
BUDDHIST ART
AND OTHER ESSAYS IN INDIAN AND CENTRAL-ASIAN ARCHEOLOGY
BY
A. FOUCHER
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS
REVISED BY THE AUTHOR AND TRANSLATED BY
L. A. THOMAS and F. W- THOMAS
WITH A PREFACE BY THE LATTER
TARIS PAUL GEUTHNER
13, RUE JACOB, 13
LONDON HUMPHREY MILFORD
AMEN CORNER, E. C
MCMXVII
v/ y ;^c\3
^DEDICATED
WITH PROFOUND RESPECT AND AFFECTIONATE REGARD
TO
M. AUGUSTE BARTH
Member of the Institute :
MASTER OF PENETRATING AND CREATIVE CRITICISM IN ALL BRANCHES OF SANSKRIT LEARNING
Jane 1914.
"PREFACE
To the rather limited circle of scholars interested in Indian Art and Archeology the work of M. Foucher requires no introduction. His numerous studies devoted to these subjects, and in particular his comprehensive treatise on the Grasco-Buddhist Art of Gandhdra, have fully established his position as a leader in this sphere. A collective edition of his essays and addresses, dispersed in various serial and periodical publications, will therefore be sure of a warm welcome.
The translators do not disavow a hope that this English version may appeal not only to those readers, chiefly in the East, to whom the author s original presents a difficulty, but also to a rather wider public in England and America. Aware of the interest which in Paris attended the delivery of M. Boucher's lectures, they would regret ij the charm had so far evaporated in translation as to forfeit a share in the growing appreciation of Oriental art.
Buddhism — for it is especially Buddhist monuments that are here sur- veyed — is. of course, a subject oj vast extent. We may add that it is a highly organic subject, and that the study of it is still at a specially interesting stage, the stage of discovery. We cannot touch it in any part without evoking res- ponses from distant and unexpected quarters . We might compare it to a magic carpet ; we fix upon some well defined topic, relating, let us say, to the Greeco- Buddhist school of Gandhdra, and promptly, even without our volition, some analogy or connection transports us to the Central Asia, China or Japan of many centuries later, even if we have not to continue our flight to Java in the ninth century or Cambodia in the twelfth. The reader will find in these pages abundant examples of such transitions. The first essays reach back by a highly ingenious and probable hypothesis to the very origins of Buddhist art in India itself, and give us the measure of its possibilities by what it has achieved at Sdnchl and Barhut. Already we detect some traces of foreign influence, from the Persia of the Achxmenids. Soon an abrupt irruption of Hellenistic art
friU PREFACE *
overwhelms the native schools, and creates a repertory of religious composi- tions, which the Buddhist propaganda carries to Central Asia, the Far East, and the Malay islands. Thus is established a genetic connection between the religious art of Europe and Asia, a double efflorescence from one root, most strikingly exemplified in the case of the Buddha type, which closely resembles the earliest sculptural type of Christ, and most curiously in that of the 'Tute- lary Pair', found throughout the whole Buddhist sphere and at the same time in ancient Gaul : or shall we claim the highest degree of interest for the case of the 'Madonna' group (Essay IX), which — ultimately derived, in all probability, from ancient Egypt — has ended by conquering the whole world 1 This splendid generalization cannot fail to be fruitful, both on the European and on the Asiatic side, in inspiration for future researches : in the mean- while it may be welcomed as reestablishing by the aid of art that feeling of solidarity and sympathy between India and Europe, which flourished during the palmy days of Vedic studies, but latterly has been somewhat discouraged by specialism.
Need we remark that, where religious art and archxology are the theme, literature and literary history cannot be far away 1 M. Voucher has commented upon the predominantly narrative character of the bas-reliefs with which he is dealing : it may indeed be said that, apart from purely decorative figures and symbols, the great bulk of them are illustrations of scenes from the life of the Buddha. The life must, indeed, he conceived in an ample sense, according to that grandiose Indian conception whereby, as M. Foucher opportunely reminds us, the biography is not confined to a single span, hut covers the whole series of countless births, under all forms of existence, which were necessary for the accumulation of the positive and negative characteristics manifested finally in the Great Being, the Perfectly Illuminated. The scenes therefore need to be read, and at first the very alphabet was wanting. The problem was of far greater obscurity than in the case of what M. Foucher terms the magnificent illustrated bible constituted by the sculptors of the cathedral of Chartres. The texts of the Buddhist religion have only gradually been made known : those events in the life which wen specially marked out for illustration — the twelve acts of Buddha and so forth — had not been separated out ; the Jataka book, recording the tales of previous births, was not at first available. The names of those scholars to whom we are indebted for the first tentatives at decipherment, such as the inspired, if not impeccable, archseologist. General Sir Alexander Cunningham, Prof. Grtinwedel of the Berlin Ethnographical Museum, Dr. Serge d' Oldenburg, Perpetual Secretary of the Imperial
PREFACE IX
Academy of St. Petersburg, and others will be found recurring in M. Fou- cher's pages. But undoubtedly the matter has in M. Foucher's own work made a long step forward : the reader will remark not only the artistic insight which gives so much ease and certainty to the identifications in this volume, but also the emergence of principles fitted to serve as a guide for future discovery and criticism in this field of study. In a word, we see taking shape, not only an art, but also a science of discovery and interpretation in regard to Buddhist, and by consequence to Indian, illustration.
xA history of Buddhist Art is a task for the future ; may we some day have the pleasure of welcoming a systematic treatise upon the subject from M. Foucher's own pen. For the present we are only at the commencement. Nothing guarantees us that in its beginnings the Art shall be found on a level with the doctrine, or that it shall follow a parallel course, or again that it shall develops with a proportional rapidity. Gn the contrary, we see already that at Sdnchi and Barhut, after centuries of active speculation, it makes its appeal primarily to a community characterii^ed by naive and simple piety. In the case of Christianity how many centuries of dogmatic strife precede the age of the primitives I Nevertheless the reader who turns from the essays on Barhut and Sdnchi to those dealing with the Great Miracle and with Boro-Budur — much clearer would be his impression, if he embraced in his view the mediaeval and modern art of China, fapan, and Tibet — cannot fail to note the metaphysical contemplation which has grown upon the decay of the older popular piety. Yet even here we have a warning as to the partial reversions which may result from the transplanting of religion to a less sophis- ticated society : since in the sculptures of Boro-Budur we find again — in an atmosphere, it is true, of hypertropical softness — no small admixture of that frank pleasure in mere story-telling which is the special charm of Sdnchi and Barhut.
London. June, 1914.
F. W. Thomas.
We are indebted for the use of photographs to the Secretary of State for India. Dr. J. Bdrgess, and Prof. A. A. Macdonell (England) ; to Prof. Ed. Chavannes, Mr. Henry H. Getty and M. V Golodbew (France) ; to Prof. A. Grunwedel and Dr. A. von Le Coa (Germany) ; to Mr. J H. (now Sir John) Marshall, Sir Aurel Stein and Mr. (now Prof.) J. Ph. Vogel (India) ; to Major Van Erp (Java) : — and for the loan of blocks to the Acaddmie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, the Soci6t6 Asiatique and MM. Esperandieu, Guimet, Hachette et C'% E. Lerodx (Paris), and to the Ecole frangaise d'Extrfime-Orient (Hanoi).
In the body of the work and in the descriptions attached to the plates will be found indications in detail of what we owe to this kind cooperation. We tender here our grateful thanks for help in the absence of which the majority of these essays either would never have come into being or could not have been combined to form of a volume.
Some faults of impression and minor errata will perhaps be judged excu- sable in an English book printed in France.
P. .S". — It should moreover be stated — in view of some few details which the reader himself may notice — that this volume, with exception of the index and tables, has been in print since June 1914. Through the enforced postponement of its appearance, the dedication to M. A. Barth has become (since April 15, 1916) unfortunately only a tribute to his memory.
CONTENTS
Pagts
I. — The BEcrNNiNGS of Buddhist Art i
II. — The Representations of « Jatakas » on the Bas-
Reliefs of Barhut 29
ni. — The Eastern Gate of the Sanchi Stup A .... 61
IV. — The Greek Origin of the Image of Buddha . . . 1 1 1 ,
V. — The Tutelary Pair in Gaul and in India . . . 139
VI. — The Great Miracle at ^ravasti 147
VII. — The Six-Tusked Elephant 185
VIII. — Buddhist Art IN Java 205
IX. — The Buddhist Madonna 271
Index 293
ILLUSTRATIONS
Hiriti, the Buddhist Madonna : painting fromTurfan... frontispiece
Page
Plates I-IV. — Beginnings of Buddhist Art 28
1. Buddhist symbols on ancient Indian coins. II. The three last Great Miracles :
1° at SdncU ; 2° at Amardvati.
III. The first Great Miracle :
1° in Gandhdra ; z° at Amardvati.
IV. The four Great Miracles :
1° in Gandhdra ; 2° at Amardvati ; 3" at Benares.
Plates V-VI. — Jatakas at Barhut .... ... 60
v. In medallions.
VI. On the rail-coping.
Plates VII-X. — The Eastern Gate of the SAnchi Stupa. i 10 VII, I. General view taken from the East.
2. Back- view of Lintels of Eastern Gate. VIII, I. Eastern Gate (front view).
2. Divine guardian at entrance.
Interior face of left jamb. IX. I. The Conversion of the Ka^yapas.
Interior face of left jamb. 2. The Return to Kapilavastu.
Interior face of right jamb. X, I. The Vocation, or Great Departure.
Front view of middle lintel. 2. A Procession to the Bodhi-Trce.
Front view of lower lintel.
XIV ILLUSTRATIONS
Pago
Plates XI-XVI. — Greek Origin of the Buddha Type . . 138
XI, I. Buddhas in the Lahore Museum.
2. Buddha in the Guides' Mess, Mardin.
XII, I. The Village of Shihbaz-Garhi. 2. The Ruins of Takht-i-Bahai.
XIII, I. The Village of Sahri-Bahlol.
2. Excavations near Sahri-Bahlol.
XIV, I. Shah-ji-ki-Dheri (Kanishka Stupa). 2. Indo-Greek and Indo-Scythic Coins.
XV, I. The Relic- casket of Kanishka. 2. The Bodhisattva Type.
XVI, 1. Types of Bodhisattva, Buddha and monk.
2. Graeco-Christian Christ and Graeco-Buddhist Buddha.
Plates XVII-XVIIL — The Tutelary Pair 146
XVII. In Gaul. XVIII. In Gandhara.
Plates XIX-XXVIII. — The Great Miracle of Cravasti . 184
XIX. At Benares. XX. At Ajanta. XXI, I . At Ajanta : after a wall-painting.
2. In China : in the Ta-t'ong-fu Caves,
XXII. On the Boro-Budur, Java.
XXIII. I. InMagadha.
2. In the Konkan.
XXIV. In Gandhira.
XXV. In Gandhara. XXVI. In Gandhara.
XXVII. In Gandhara. XXVIII, I. InGandhsLra. 2. At Barhut.
Plates XXIX-XXX. — The Six-tusked Elephant . . . 204
XXIX, I. At Barhut.
2. AtAmaravati. XXX, I. In Gandhara. 2. At Ajanta.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Plates XXXI-XLIV. XXXI, I. Boro-
2.
XXXII.
XXXIII, I.
2.
XXXIV, I.
XV
Page
270
XXXV, I.
2.
XXXVI, I.
XXXVII, I.
2.
XXXVIII, I.
2.
XXXIX. XL, I.
— Buddhist archjEOlogy in Java . .
Budur : General view (^from the north-west).
— First Gallery (part of west fafude) .
— Section and plan.
— Silhouette.
— Staircase (north side).
— Story of Sudhana, no. 3 : Incantation
against theNaga (central portion) .
— Story of Sudhana, no. 1 1 : Manohara's flight. Above : The Bodhisattva's farewell to the
gods.
— Story of Sudhana,no. i2:ThePrince'sreturn. Alove : The Bodhisattva's descent upon
earth.
— Story of Sudhana, no. 16 : At the fountain
(right-hand portion).
— Story of M4ndhltar, no. 12 : The rain of
garments. Ahove : The Bodhisattva chooses his bride.
— Story of king Qihi, the Dove and the Hawk. Above : The first of the Bodhisattva's four
promenades.
— Story of Rudrayana, no. 6 : Presentation ot
the cuirass (left-hand portion) .
— Story of Rudrayana, no. 9 : Mahikatyi-
yana's visit. Above : The Bodhisattva with his first Brahman teacher.
— Story of Rudrayana, no. 10 : The nun
^aili's sermon (left-hand portion).
— Story of Rudriyana, no. 11 : Queen CanJra-
prabhi's ordination (central portion).
— Story of Rudrayana, fragments of nos. 12,
13 and 14.
— Story of Rudriyana, no. 16 : After the
parricide. Above : The ascetic Bodhisattva declines the aid of the gods.
— Story of Rudriyana, no. 19 : The rain of
jewels (left-hand portion).
XVI
ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
XLI, I. Boro-Budur : Story of the pair of Kinnaras {central por- tion of the second scene"). 2. — Story of Maitrakanyaka, no. I : The purse-
offering (central portion'). XLII, I. — Story ofMaitrakanyaka, no. 2: The mother's
supplication (left-hand portion). 2. — Story of Maitrakanyaka, no. 7 : In the
Inferno city (right-hand portion) . XLIII, I. The unfinished statue of Buddha.
Under the central cupola, Boro-Budur. 2 Trailokya-vijaya.
Bronze in the Batavia Museum. XLIV. The Goddess Cunda between two Bodhisattvas. On the south western wall of the Chandi Mendut,
Plates XLV-L. — The Buddhist Madonna 292
XLV. After a wall-painting from Domoko (Chinese Turkestan). I . Side view before removal ;2.As set up in British Museum. XLVI. Suckling Madonna : i. Romanesque; 2. Coptic. XLVII. Indo- Greek images of Hiriti. XLVin, I. Hiriti and her partner in Gandhira. 2. Hiriti in Java. XLIX. Japanese images of Ki-si-mo-jin. L, Chinese images of Kuan-Yin.
N. B. — A detailed description of each plate will he found either in the body of the work or on the page de garde opposite the plate.
The Beginnings of Buddhist Art.C)
Buddhism is a historical fact; only it has not yet been completely incorporated into history : sooner or later that will be achieved. Meanwhile its initial period remains, we must confess, passably obscure. To add to our difficulty, the little that we think we know of the social and political state of India in the times of its birth has been learned almost entirely through its medium : thus the frame is no better defined than the picture. But the task, arduous though it may be, is not impossible. The fifth century B. C. is not so remote a period that it must always elude archaeo- logical research ; the interval between the death of Buddha and the first information transmitted to us concerning him is not so considerable that we cannot flatter oursel- ves with the idea of discerning across it the veritable phy- sionomy of the work, if not — in conformity with the pious, but too tardy wish of later generations — the « actual features » of the worker. This hope is still more confident, and the ambition less audacious, when it is a question of the beginnings of Buddhist art. The appearance of the latter is a relatively late phenomenon, since it pre- supposes not only the development of the community of monks, but also a certain organization of worship on the part of the laity. If among the productions of this art the sculptures are almost the sole survivors, we have at least preserved to us, notably in the labelled bas-reliefs
(^i) Journal Asiatique, Jan. -Feb. 1911.
2 THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART
of Barhut, documents of the very highest rank. Cert- ainly the stones are by no means loquacious : but they atone for their silence by the unalterableness of a testimony which could not be suspected of rifacimento or interpo- lation. Thanks to their marvellous grain, they are to-day as they were when they left the hands of the image-makers Qi'upakdrakd) two thousand years ago; and upon this immu- table foundation we can construct inferences more rigo- rous than upon the moving sand of the texts. In the ever restless and changing play of the doctrines we are never quite certain that the logical sequence of the ideas is exact- ly parallel to the historical succession of the facts. On the other side, the routine character of all manual technique will allow us to detect with certainty, in the still existing monuments, the material traces of the procedures which must have been usual earlier : inversely, and by a kind of proof backwards, the correctness of these postulates will be verified in that they alone will be found to render a satisfactory account of the often uncouth character of that which has been preserved to us. All these reasons seem to us to justify the task which we have undertaken. In the assault delivered from various quarters upon the origins of Buddhism we beUeve even that the attempt to go back to the very beginning of its art is, among all the methods of approach, that which has for the moment the most chances of success.
None, indeed, of the monuments known at the present time, building or sculpture, takes us further back than the Maurya dynasty. Does that mean that art was created entire
THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART 3
in India towards the year 250 before our era, by a decree of the Emperor A^oka? Of course it would be absurd to believe this. From the Vedic times Indian civilization had at its disposal the services not only of the carpenter, the wheel-wright and the blacksmith, of the potter, the wea- ver and other fabricators of objects of prime necessity, but also of those whom we call art- workers, painters, gold- smiths, carvers in wood or ivory. If the texts were not there to tell us this in words, the evidence of the sole surviving monuments would be sufficient to establish it. Fergus- son has proved once for all that the oldest constructions in stone, by the servile manner in which they copy the fra- ming and joining of timber work, testify to the previous existence of wooden buildings. On the other hand — as we know from a rehable source by means of an explicit inscription — it was the ivory-workers of Vidi^a who car- ved, in the immediate vicinity of their town, one of the monumental gates of Sanchi. Besides, it is obvious that the finished and well polished bas-reUefs, which for us are the first in date, represent not by any means the first attempts of beginners, but the work of sculptors long familiar with their business and changing their material, but not their technique. The whole transformation which was accom- plished during the third century before our era is limited to the substitution, in religious and royal foundations, of the reign of stone for that of wood. Unfortunately, there are no worse conditions, climatic and historical, for the preser- vation of monuments than those of India. All that was of wood was condemned beforehand to fall into dust; all, or nearly all, that was of stone and that the climate might have spared has been destroyed by the vandalism of man. Thus is explained why the most ancient remains of Bud- dhist art are at once so late and so rare. If we leave aside
4 THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART
the great monolithic pillars dear to Agoka, as well as the caves excavated for the benefit of all the religious sects in every place where the geological formation of the rocks lent itself thereto, we find on the ground level, and pend- ing more systematic excavations, scarcely anything to mention, except the debris of the balustrades, of Bodh- Gaya and of Barhut, and the four gates of Sanchi. The mention of the kings Brahmamitra and Indramitra, inscribed on the first, on the second that of the dynasty of the ^ungas, and on one of the last that of the reign of Satakani suffice to date them generally, but with certainty, as belonging to the second, or first, century before our era. It is doubtless to the same epoch, if we may judge by the style, that we must refer the oldest fragments of the balustrades exhumed both at Amaravati and at Mathura. If to these few stray remnants of sculptures we add the remains of the most archaic paintings of Ajanta, we shall very soon have finished compiling the catalogue of what may be styled — in opposition to the later school, of the north-west frontier, much more penetrated by foreign influences — the native school of Central India.
Let us go straight to the most striking feature of this old Buddhist school. Although well known to speciahsts, it will not fail to surprise uninformed readers. When we find the ancient stone-carvers of India in full activity, we observe that they are very industriously engaged in carrying out the strange undertaking of representing the life of Bud- dha without Buddha. We have here a fact which, improba- ble as it may seem, Cunningham long ago demonstrated. It is established on the written testimony of the artists them- selves. Those of Barhut inform us by an inscription, that such and such a person on his knees before a throne « is rendering homage to the Blessed One ». Now, without
THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART 5
exception, the throne is vacant; at the most, there is a symbol indicating the invisible presence of Buddha 0). The latest researches have only opened our eyes to the extent of the field of application of this constant rule; it holds good for the years which preceded as also for those which followed the SambodU, for the youth as also for the old age of the Master. The facade of the middle lintel of the eastern gate of Sanchi illustrates his departure on horseback from his house : the embroidered rug which serves as a saddle for his steed is empty Q. A medallion of Bodh-Gaya represents his first meditation : empty again is the seat before which the traditional ploughman is dri- ving his plough Q. Some panels of Amaravati show us his birth and presentation to the sage Asita; only his footprints — a direct ideographic transcription of the for- mula which was in use in India to designate respectfully a « person » — mark the swaddling clothes on which in one place the gods, in another the old rishi are reputed to have received him into their arms (*). These selected examples suffice to demonstrate that the ancient Indian sculptors abstained absolutely from representing either Bodhi- sattva or Buddha in the course of his last earthy exis- tence (^). Such is the abnormal, but indisputable fact of which every history of Buddhist art will have at the outset to render account.
(i) A. Cunningham, Stupa of Barhut, pi. XIII-XVII.
(2) See below, pp. 75 and 105; cf. pi. X, i.
(3) ^rt greco-bouddhique du Gandhdra, fig, 177 and p. 345.
(4) See on the staircase of the British Museum, n"' 44 and 48, or Fer- GDSSON, Tree and Serpent Worship, pi. XCI, 4, and LXI, 2.
(5) Let us add, in order to be quite correct, « at least under his human form » ; for we know that a bas-relief at Barhut represents the Blessed One descending into the bosom of his mother in the form of an elephant (cf. below, p. 20).
6 THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART
As far as we know, no perfectly satisfactory explanation of this fact has until now been given. First of all we tried to dispose of the matter more or less by the supposition, as evasive as gratuitous, that the ancient school had either not desired or had not been able to figure the Blessed One ; neither of these two reasons appears to us to have the least value in proof. Shall we speak of incapacity ? Assuredly, one can see that the concrete realization of the image of the « perfect Buddha » was not an easy task : and the difficulty could not but increase with the years, in proportion as the time of the Master grew more distant and his features faded more and more into the mists of the past. Nevertheless, we must not form too poor an opinion of the talent of the old image-makers, and the argument becomes moreover quite worthless, when one attempts to apply it to the youth of Buddha. What was he, in fact, up to the time of his flight from his native town, but a « royal heir apparent » ? Now the type of rdja-kumdra, or crown-prince, is common on the gates of Sanchi, as also on the balustrade of Barhut Q; what material hindrance was there to their making use of it to represent the Bodhisattva ? It is clear that they could have done so, and yet they carefully abstained from doing so. Shall we fall back, then, upon the other branch of the dilemma and say that they did not dare ? Assuredly the gravest members of the order must long have held to the letter the stern saying that « the master gone, the law remains Q » ; and we are quite willing to beheve that the law alone was of import for them. The reverend Naga- sena still teaches king Menander that henceforth the
(i) See Cunningham, Stupa of Barhut, pi. XXV, 4 {Mugapakkha-jdtaka n" 538 : cf, infra, p. 56 and pi. V, 6) and p. vi (mention of the Vifvaniara- jataka) ; north gate of Sanchi, lower lintel (Vi^vantara), etc.
(2) Mahdparinibbdna-sutta, VI, i.
THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART 7
Blessed One is no longer visible except in the form of the dharmakdyaQ), of the « body of the doctrine » ; but of any express prohibition of images we have in the texts no knowledge. Since when, moreover, and in what country does popular devotion trouble itself about the dogmatic scruples of the doctors ? Certainly it was not so in ancient India : for otherwise we could not at all understand the enthusiasm with which the valley of the Ganges and the rest of the peninsula welcomed the Indo-Greek type of Buddha. From Mathura to Bodh-Gaya, and from Cravasti to Amaravati, we see it installed in triumph on the circum- ference of the stupas as in the interior of the temples. So rapid a conquest is a sufficient proof that the objections of conscience, if any such existed, were far from being insur- mountible.
But, it will be said, if it is true that the ancient Indian image-nakers asked for nothing better than to represent the Blessed One, and that, on the other hand, they were capable ^f it, why then have they so carefully abstained ? To this we see but one reply, in appearance, we must confess, simple-m'nded enough, but one which, in India, is still sufficient for all : « If they did not do it, it was because it was not the custom to do it ». And, no doubt, it would be easy to letort : oc But you confine yourself to putting off the question ; if it does not arise with regard to the sculptors whose worcs we possess, it still holds good entirely with regard to their predecessors... » — Certainly, and far from contradcting, that is just the point at which we wished to arrive. We hold that this monstrous abstention, such as we observe on the monuments of Barhut and Sanchi, remaiis perfectly incomprehensible, unless we
(i) Milindapanha,id. Trenckner, p. 73; trans. Rhys Davids, p. 113.
8 THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART
enquire into the traditional habits which it supposes and which, for that very reason, it is capable of revealing to us. Like certain anomaUes in animal species, it can only be explained as an inheritance from a nearly obso- lete past, which this survival helps us to reconstitute. In other words, it is vain for us to seek a solution of the problem in the few relatively late specimens at present known to us ; it is to the anterior history, to what is still the prehistoric period of Buddhist art that we rnust go to discover it. To such a typical case of artistic Tera- tology it is the evolutionist method of embryology that it is proper to apply.
II
To begin, we have the best reasons for thinking that the habit of adoring human images, and even^he art offabricating them, were stillless general in thelndaofthe Brahmans before Alexander than in the Gaul of th- Druids before the time of Caesar. Certainly this absence of idola- try properly so-called did not in any way excludf, the exis- tence of more rudimentary forms of fetichism ( } : never- theless, the fact remains that Buddhism did noldevelope, like Christianity, in a world long infected by 1,'ie worship of images and prompt to contaminate it in it,^ turn. Not
(i) We allude to the golden purusha -which formed a pjt of the altar of sacrifice (Qat.-Brahm., 7, 4, i., 15) and to the effigy krtya of the magic rites (Ath. Veda, X, i), etc. — For what is to be underst/od by the Gallic simulacra of Cassar (Bdl. Gall., VI, 4), see the article/)! M. S. Reinach on L'art plastique en Gaule et le druidisme (Revue Celtiqje, t. XIII, 1892, pp. 190 sqq..), where are cited also corresponding testimonies of Hero- dotus (I, 131) and Tacitus (Germ., IX) as to the non-ffiistence of idolatry among the Persians and the Germans.
THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART 9
only did the first century already know symbolical or alle- gorical representations of Christ ; but from the second cen- tury we meet with his portrait on the paintings of the catacombs (*). When that of Buddha makes its appearance in India, the religion which he had founded was already four hundred years old : even so it had required the contact of the civiHsation, and the influence of the art, of Hellenism. On the other hand, Buddhism was not born, like Islam, in an environment beforehand and deliberately hostile to idolatry. We do not find that the Vedic texts breathe a word about it, either for or against : and their silence is explained precisely by the fact that the idea of it had not even presented itself to the Indian mind. As soon as the time for it shall have come, the grammarians will not fail to mention in the employment of the learned language the mode of designating the new fact of the Brahmanic idols Q. Likewise, when the question of the images of the Master presents itself to the faithful Buddhists, their writings will supply explicitly the opportune solutions; and if these suc- cessive solutions are, moreover, contradictory, it is simply that in the interval the needs ofthe religious conscience have changed at the same time as the conditions of artistic pro- duction. But, as far as concerns the most ancient period with which we have to deal, investigations into the litera- ture have remained from an iconographical point of view as sterile as the researches on the spot. For the moment the history of rehgious art in India, previous to Buddhism, is,
(i) M. Besnier, Les Catacomies de Some, Paris, 1909, pp. 204, 208, 223- 224.
(2) Cf. Scholia to Pdnini, V, 3, 99, excellently discussed by Prof. Sten KoNOw in his interesting Note en the use of images in ancient India (Ind. Ant., 1909) : but they have no value as proof for the pre-Mauryan epoch with -which we are here concerned.
10 THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART
whether it must remain so or not, philologically a blank page, archseologically an empty show-case.
That in Buddhism, as in all religions, art is at first only a simple manifestation of worship, every one will will- ingly admit. The only question is to know what branch of Buddhist worship has supplied this special excrescence with an opportunity for its production. It is evidently not in the periodical reunions of the monks that we shall find the smallest decorative pretext. The veneration shown to the mortal remains of the Blessed One explains the leading role of the funeral tumulus in Buddhist architecture. It will not escape us that it is still the same veneration which, thus advantaged, has offered in the obligatory surroundings of those rehquary monuments the natural support to the sculptures, the sole destination of which for a long time was to decorate the balustrades of the stupas. We might even suspect a mark of its influence in the almost entirely bio- graphical character that this decoration has assumed, just as, by the rite of circumambulation, it has fixed the direc- tion in which the scenes must succeed one another and be read. But, beyond this general orientation, we discover at the basis of this kind of devotion nothing that could have determined the mode of compositon of the bas-reliefs. There remains the third and last ancient form of Buddhist worship, that which Buddha himself is supposed to have taught on his death bed to his well-loved disciple, « There are four places, O Ananda, which an honorable worshipper should visitwith religious emotion. What are these four? »... They are, as we know, those where the Predestined One for the first time received illumination and preached and those where for the last time he was born and diedQ. Now
(i) Mahdparinibbdna-suta, V, 16-22.
THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART n
just in this devout practice of the four great pilgrimages resides any hope which we have of at last coming upon the long-sought point of departure. In order that we may grasp atoncetlie germ and the directing principle of Buddhist art, it is necessary and sufficient to admit that the Indian pil- grims were pleased to bring back from these four holy places a small material souvenir of what they had there seen.
We can scarcely believe that the reader will refuse to grant us this small postulate. Can he be so ignorant of the outer world that he does not know the universal em- pire of the mania, innocent in itself, for souvenirs of tra- vels? The innumerable manufacturers and shopkeepers who everywhere live by it would quickly demonstrate it to him. Has he never in the course of his migrations, whatever may have been the object or the cause of them, bought curios, collected photographs, or sent away pic- ture post-cards? These are only the latest modes and a profane extension of an immemorial and sacred custom. If he doubts this, let him lean, for example, over one of the cases at the Cluny Museum (') which contain the emblematic metal insignia of all the great pilgrimages of the Middle Ages, as they have been fished out of the Seine in Paris. Mediaeval India has also left by hun- dreds evidences of this custom. Most frequently they are simple clay balls, moulded or stamped with a seal, and without doubt within the reach of all pockets, which served at the same time as memento and as ex-voto. They are to be picked up nowadays on all Buddhist sites, even
(i) Unless it is more convenient for him to try the same experiment at the British Museum, where a case in the Medieval Room also contains a collection of these signacula.
12 THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART
in the peninsula of Malacca and in Annam Q. Do we compromise ourselves very much by conjecturing that these sacred emblems are in Buddhism the remains of a tradition which goes back to the four great primitive pil- grimages ? The worst that could result from it would be that Buddhist art must have owed its origin to the satis- faction of a need everywhere and always experienced, and, we may almost say, of one of the religious instincts of humanity. It would be difficult to imagine a theory more humble and more prosaic : it is in our opinion only the more probable for that, nor do we see what other we can substitute, if, at least, we are unwilling to attribute to that art any but a rational origin.
In fact, this point once gained, all the rest follows. Nothing is more easy than to guess what must have been the souvenirs brought back by the pilgrims from the four great holy places. To take the modern example mostfstmi- har to the French reader, what is represented by the images or medals offered for sale and bought at Lourdes? First and foremost,, the miraculous grotto. What must have been represented on stuffs, on clay, wood, ivory, or metal by the first objects of piety manufactured at Kapilavastu, at Bodh-Gaya, at Benares, or at Kuginagara? Evidently the characteristic point towards which, at the approach of each of these four towns, popular devotion was directed. Now we know these points already from the picturesque expres- sions of the texts. What was first visited at Kucinagara was the site, very soon and quite appropriately marked by
(i) For specimens from India, see Cunningham, Mahdbodhi, pi. XXIV; J. R. A. S,, 1900, p. 432, etc. ; from Burmah, ArdiBol. Survey of India, Annual Teport, 1905-1906, pi. LIII; from Malacca, Bull, de la Commission Archiologique de I'lndo-Chine, 1909, p. 232; from Annam, B. E. F. E.-O., 1901, p. 25, etc.
THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART 13
a stupa ('), of the last death of the Master. In the same way, the essential miracle of Benares having taken place at the « Mriga-dava », the Gazelle-park, it was inevitable that its consecrated description as « putting the wheel of the law in motion » should be translated in concrete terms by a wheel, usually accompanied by two gazelles. What was contemplated at Bodh-Gaya, on the other hand, was the evergreen fig-tree, at the foot of which the Blessed One had sat to attain omniscience. Finally, what would be worshipped at Kapilavastu ? Here the answer is less cer- tain ; undoubtedly the great local attraction consisted in the recollection of the nativity of Buddha ; but, without mentioning his paternal home, the most ardent zeal might hesitate between the place of his material birth and that of his spiritual renaissance, between the parkof Lumbini, where he issued from the right side of his mother, and the no less famous gate, through which he escaped from the miserable pleasures of the world. Whatever might in this case be the difficulty of choice, with regard to the three other sites at least no hesitation was possible. A tree, a wheel, a. stupa, these suffice to recall to our memory the spectacle of those holy places, or even, by a constant asso- ciation of ideas and images, to evoke the miracles of which they had been the theatre. Again, these things could be indicated as summarily as one could wish : if human weakness cannot dispense with the material sign, imagi- nation makes up for the poverty of artistic means.
(i) « A Stupa of A^oka », says Hiuan-tsang; that is, of archaic form ; cf. alsoFa-hian (Beal, Records, I, p. ui, and II, p. 32).
14 THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART
III
Such is the sole part which hypothesis plays in our theory. The whole subsequent development of Buddhist art flows logically from these premises ; and henceforth there are none of the still surviving documents which do not successively corroborate the various stages of its evolution. The oldest monuments which have come down to us from Indian antiquity are a few rectangular coins of copper or silver. Now it is very remarkable that, among the symbols with which they are punch-marked, the tree, the wheel and the stupa play a considerable, and indeed, on many of them, a predo- minant part Q. Thanks to the chance of their discovery, the existence of the signacula, which we imagined to have been made for the use of pilgrims, ceases to be, for as far back as we can go, a pure conjecture (see pi. 1, B, C, D). Better still, we can clearly discern in the infantile simphcity of these emblems the style of the most ancient manifesta- tions of the rehgious art of the Buddhists. They are, properly speaking, less images than hieroglyphics endowed for the initiated with a conventional value : and, at the same time, we succeed in explaining to ourselves what we have already more than once had occasion to note, that is, the abstract and quasi algebraical character of this art at its commence- ment Q. Moreover, we easily conceive that, in conse- quence of being conveyed beyond the great centres of pil-
(i) To quote only the latest study, cf . D. B, Spooner, A new find of punch- marked coins, in Arch. Survey of India, Annual Report 1^0 ^-1^06, 1909, p. 150. According to the excellent analysis which Dr. Spooner has given of this dis- covery, out of 61 coins 22 bear all three synabols at once and 22 others as- sociate the two last together.
(2) Cf. for instance, Art greco-houddhique du Gandhara, p. 608.
THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART 15
grimage, artistic emblems of this sort may have seen their initial signification modified. They came, by degrees, to be regarded less as mementos of sacred spots than as figurative representations of miracles, the memory of v^hich was connected with those places. In other words, in pro- portion as they were propagated further and further from their place of origin, their topographical and local character diminished more and more, to the advantage of their sym- bolical and universal value, until they ended by becoming the common patrimony of the image-makers and being fabricated everywherewithout distinction where a Buddhist donor ordered them. It is just this state of diffusion and subsequent generalisation that is proved to us even in the IV"* century by the banality and dispersion of the so-cal- led « Buddhist » coins.
But we must hasten, in this rapid sketch, to come to the monuments whose Buddhist character can no longer be disputed. We know what impulse was towards the middle of the third century given by the imperial zeal of Acoka to the religious foundations of the sect. It is, therefore, only the more curious to observe how, even a hundred years after him, the school of Central India continues to follow faith- fully in the beaten track of the past. From this point of view, the four gates of Sanchi, which we have had the good fortune to retain almost intact, may furnish a fairly safe criterion of the degree of persistence of the ancient usages. Now Fer- gusson long ago remarked there the extreme frequency of what he called « the worship » of the tree, the stupa and the wheel. According to statistics hardly open to suspicion, since they were drawn up in support of theories quite diffe- rent from ours, the first emblem is repeated no less than 67 times, the second 32 times ; and if the last does not reappear more that 6 times, this number suffices, never-
i6 THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART
theless, to assure it the third place in the order of impor- tance of the subjects ('). We have not, of course, to follow Fergusson in the strange anthropological speculations which he has engrafted on to these observations. All that we should be tempted at first to read in his table would be the preponderance of the miracle of the Sambodhi, or of the Parinirvdna, over that of the Dharmacakra-pravartana. In reality the larger number of the first two symbols de- pends upon another cause. The artists proceeded to apply to the Buddhas of the past the formulas which had at first served for the Buddha of our age. People were pleased to level all the seven by representing them at one time by their funeral tumulus, at another, and much more frequently, by their empty throne under their Tree of Knowledge Q : the wheel alone had re- mained the special apanage of our ^akya-muni, and con- sequently was repeated only at rarer intervals. But these are only subsidiary details ; taking these figures all together, their imposing total testifies loudly enough to the cons- tant repetition in traditional form of what we know, from the evidence of the coins, to have been the first attempts at Buddhist art. Being forced to cover the relatively extensive surfaces placed at their disposal, the sculptors of
(i) Cf. Fergusson, Tree and Serpent-Worship, a""* edition, 1873, pp. 105 and 242. Here is the table, in which he has included the data of the sole gate of one of the small neighbouring siupas :
Tree,
Great Siiipa. South Gate i6
North Gate 19
East Gate 17
West Gate 15
Small Stupa. Only Gate 9
(2) See helovt, Eastern Gate of Sdnchi, pp. 72 and 104. The decisive reason for the predominance of the inspired compositions of the type of the Sam- bodhi over all the others will be given a little further on, p. 19.
|
Stupa, |
Wheel |
|
5 8 |
I 2 |
|
9 10 6 |
I 2 4 |
THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART 17
Sanchi evidently commenced by re-editing profusely, right in the middle of the second century before our era, the summary and hieroglyphic compositions which they had inherited from their direct predecessors, the makers of religious objects in the fifth century (see pi. II).
IV
This is a first and certainly very important, but purely material, verification of our hypothesis. There are proofs more subtle than the proof of statistics, which open up deeper views of the development of the ancient Buddhist school. The years have passed, technical skill has increased, the iconographic types of gods and genii have been formed, the gift of observation and a sense of the picturesque have awakened in it :but it remains nevertheless, as regards the capital point of the figuration of Buddha, the docile cap- tive of custom. Around the old themes of the studios, it embroiders, it is true, some variations : it embellishes the stupas, surrounds the wheels with wreaths, or, care- less of the anachronism, gives beforehand to the tree of the Sambodhi the curious stone surround which, more than two and a half centuries after the miracle, it owed to the piety of A?oka (*) ; but for all that it does not go beyond the ancient formulas. Weary of eternally repeating the sacred miracles, does it risk treating some still un- published episode? The idea of taking advantage of this, in order to break free from routine, never occurs to it. It can- not but know that its business is no longer to supply pil- grims with a memento of what they had seen with their own eyes in the course of their visits to the sacred places ;
(i)See below. Eastern Gate of Sdnchl, p. 102.
i8 THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART
it is fully conscious that what it has now to do is to illus- trate on a permanent monument the biography of Buddha; but it appears hardly to grasp clearly the fact that for this new purpose the old procedures, formerly perfectly appro- priate to their object, are no longer suitable. Evidently, it was too late to rebel and to shake off the yoke of an artistic tradition which had ere long been strengthened by religious legends ; at least it is about this same time that the texts, until then silent on the question, suddenly decide to pro- claim — with an excessive precipitation to be contradicted soon after by posterity — the previous incapacity of the artists to portray during his hfetime the ineffable linea- ments of the Blessed One ('). And how otherwise, in fact, explain the persistent absence of his image, whilst so many of the popular divinities were paraded on the pillars of Barhut and Sanchi ?
Henceforward there is only one way, in conformity with the hving reality, of conceiving the study of the ancient Indian school. Its history is that of a struggle, more or less surreptitious, between the two tendencies which divided it against itself, an irrepressible desire for new scenes and a superstitious respect for its precedents. On the one hand, it experiences a growing need for the form of Buddha to serve as a centre or pivot for the scenes of his life ; and on the other hand, it accepts as an axiom that, in order to represent the Blessed One, it suffices to do what until then had always been done, that is, to evoke him by the sight of one of his three speaking emblems. Watch it at work. The tumulus of the Parinirvdna, the ultimate end of the career of the Master, was ipso facto beside the point, when it was a question of representing some incident in that career. The
(i) Divydvaddna, p. 547,
THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART 19
symbol of the wheel, specialized in the representation of the « First Preaching », could scarcely be employed again, except on the occasion of the similar miracle wrought at ^ravasti for the greater confusion of the rival sects ('). There remained for ordinary employment in miracles of the second rank the heraldic emblem already utihzed for the Sambodhi. And, in fact, we can well see how the studios of Central India resign themselves once for all to this proce- dure and accommodate themselves more or less success- fully thereto. All the same, they cannot resist slipping in here and there a few variants, or even trying on occasions some different course. It is under an empty throne, sur- mounted by a tree, that at Barhut Buddha receives the visit of the ndga Elapatra; when he preaches in the heaven of the Thirty-three Gods, the motif is in addition graced with a parasol; and this latter, in its turn, takes the place of the tree on the occasion of the visit of Indra or Ajata- ^atru. At times the throne by itself does the work. In two cases, on the eastern gate of Sanchi, the school even ventures so far as to avail itself solely of the « promenade », or cankrama, of the Master in order to suggest his pre- sence Q). But the boldness of its innovations goes no further, and we very quickly reach the limits of its auda- city. We have indeed sketched them above (pp. 4-5), and it would have been superfluous to return to the matter, did we not now believe that we have divined the raison d'etre, and actually the manner of production, of the strange ano- malies which at the beginning of this study we had to confine ourselves to stating.
We have, likewise, explained above how — and now we
(i) See below, Essay VI.
(2) Cf. Cunningham, Stupa of Barhut, pi. XIV, 3; XVI, 3; XVII, i; XXVIII, 4 etc., and below, Eastern Gate of Sanchi, pp. 93 and 100.
20 THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART
understand why — the artists came into collision with the impassable barrier of ancient usages, when they had to represent the form of the Predestined One in the course of the first twenty-nine years of his life, at the time when his princely surroundings still hid under a mundane cloak the Buddha about to appear. In truth, we were not able as yet (p. 13) to determine exactly, by the aid of the texts, which episode of his youth the faithful had cho- sen as the principal object of commemoration, nor in what manner the old image-makers must have set to work to commemorate it. It is curious to note that the sculptors of the second century shared our perplexities in this regard. Those of Barhut adopted the precise moment when the Bodhisattva descended into the bosom of his mother, when, at least, the latter dreamed that he descended there in the form of a little elephant ('). Those of Sanchi do not represent the Conception, save incidentally; on the other hand, they complacently detail all the circum- stances of the prince's entry into religion, that is, of his flight on horseback from his native town : they portray the gate of the town and several times the horse, the groom and the Gods : they leave to be understood only the hero of this Hegira ('). As to those of Amaravati, on the stelas where they have set one above another the four grand miracles, they employ indifferently, in order to fill the panel reserved for Kapilavastu, — side by side with the tree of Bodh-Gaya, the wheel of Benares and the stupa of Ku^inagara (see pi. II, 2) — now the same cc great abandonment of home », where we see nothing but the horse passing under the gateway, now a « nati-
(i) Cunningham, Stiipa of Barhut, pi. XXVIII, 2.
(2) See hdow Eastern Gate of Sanchi, pi. 75 and p. 105 (cf. pi. X, i).
THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART 21
vity », where we see only the mother, to the exclusion of the new-born child ('). Which of these three compo- sitions (see pi. Ill) is the most archaic and best preserves for us the aspect of the « souvenirs » which the pilgrims of the fifth century were already able to purchase at Kapi- lavastu? This is a question which we at present find very difficult to answer. If, again, on this point we confide our- selve to the numismatic documents, they will persuade us that from the beginning a certain wavering manifested itself in the choice of the artists and the faithful. Most ot the Buddhist coins devote two abbreviations, instead of one, to the Nativity alone; at least, of the five usually associated symbols, the lotus, the bull, the tree, the wheel and the tumulus, the two first must correspond simultaneously to the first of the four great miracles. Apparently, the lotus recalled those which had sprung up spontaneously under the seven first steps of the Master, whilst the bull, almost always flanked by his zodiacal emblem, incarn- ated the traditional date of the birth, the day of the full moon of the month Vaigakha (see pi. I, A). On other occasions, but more rarely, the bull is replaced by an ele- phant, a plastic reminder of the Conception (^). It may be
(i) Fergusson, Tree and Serpent-Worship, pi. XCIII-XCVIII. With regard to this we may note that much later stelas of Benares continue to groupe in the scheme of Kapilavastu the birth (with or without the conception, the seven steps, or the bath) and the great departure (see pi. IV, 3 A and cf. Anc. Mon. Ind., pi. 67-68, etc.).
(2) Cf. the tables of D. B. Spooner, loc. cit., pp. 156-157. As for the above mentioned interpretations of the lotus and the bull, we, for our part, give them as simple conjectures. In any case, we may at this point observe that in later Buddhism the lotus has retained the symbolical signifi- cation of « miraculous birth ». and that the bull appears again with its astro- nomical value on one of the best-known bas-reliefs of the Lahore Museum (cf. A. GRiiNWEDEL, BuddUsHsche Kunst in Indien, 2<i ed., p. 121, or Bud- dhist Art in India, p. 129). The lamented D'Th. Bloch in one of his last
22 THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART
also, although we possess no concrete proof of this, that the gate through which the Bodhisattva had been cast by his vocation out of the world may, at an early date, have found copiers and amateurs. But these are merely accessory questions : what is important here is that only the traditional avoidance of images, inherited from the humble pioneers of former days, can give us the key to the later improbable compositions, child-births without chil- dren, rides without riders.
V
This is not all. The sculptors of the second century verify our hypothesis not only in what they reproduce and in what they imitate of the works of the past : we may main- tain that they do this, also, indirectly, in what they inno- vate. However unreflecting and mechanical their submis- sion to custom may have been, the forced absence of the protagonist from the scenes of his own biography could not help but inconvenience them considerably. Let the career of the Blessed One be no m,ore than a monotonous tissue of conversations more full of edification than move- ment ; yet only a small number of episodes allowed of being portrayed independently of the principal personage. With the aid of what subjects were the artists to cover the numerous medallions, the long stretches, or the high gates of the stupa balustrades? The first expedient of which they
articles (Z. D. M. G. 1908, vol. LXII, pp. 648 and sqq.) thought he reco- gnised in a defective photograph of this bull Virith the hanging tongue the image of a wild boar, and he built up a whole theory on this mistake : it suffices to refer the reader anxious to clear up this matter with his own eyes to Bdrgess, Anc. Mon. Ind., p. 127.
THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART 23
bethought themselves was to turn to the previous existences of the Master, at the time when under all animal torms, and later under all social conditions, he was quali- fying by means of perfections for the final attainment of the Bodhi. Thereby we explain why the sculptors of Barhut preferred to dip into this treasure of tales and fables ('). In treating this new matter they were no longer trammel- led, as when illustrating the last life of the Master, by a custom which had been elevated into a law. Accordingly they have no scruples in representing the Bodhisattva in each scene, and it is with a perfect Hberty of mind that, at the time of his penultimate terrestial existence, they give to Vicvantara the features which they so jealously abstained from lending to Siddhartha (cf. above, p. 6). Representa- tions oi jdtakas are far from being unknown at Sanchi : but the decorators of the gates had recourse once again to ano- ther stratagem in order to shp between the links of tradi- tion. It goes without saying that in all the scenes posterior to the Parinirvdna the absence of the figure of the Blessed One became perfectly justified and at the same time ceased to be an inconvenience to the artist. Thus, they soon took pleasure in cultivating this part of the Buddhist legend. According to all probability they began by illustrating the famous « war of relics », which the death of the Blessed One nearly precipitated. Encouraged, apparently, by this trial, they did not fear to attack even the cycle of Acoka and to represent at one time his useless pilgrimage to the stupa at Ramagrama, and at another his solemn visit to the tree of the Sambodhi Q. Thus, under the pressing incentive of necessity, the native school, incapable of openly shaking
(i) See below, Representation of Jdtakas on the Bas-reliefs of Barhut (Essay U). (2) See below, Eastern Gate of Sanchi, pp. 78-79 and 108-109.
24 THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART
off its slavery, had artificially created for itself a double means of escape, in the legends previous to the last renais- sance or posterior to the final death of Buddha. For our part, we do not doubt that, if it had continued to develop normally and according to its own rules, we should have seen the number of these sham historical pictures or these illustrations of popular stories increase at the expense of the old fund of pious images.
It is no longer a secret to anyone that the regular sweep of this evolution was brusquely interrupted by a veritable artistic cataclysm. The Hellenized sculptors of the north- west, strangers to the native tradition of Central India, satisfied to the full, and even outwent, the wishes of their Buddhist patrons by creating for their use the Indo-Greek type of Buddha. Immediately their colleagues of the low country, seduced by this wonderful innovation, greeted with no less enthusiasm than the laity the rupture of the magic charm which had weighed so heavily and so long upon the ancient Buddhist school. We have already remarked upon the fact of the rapid diffusion of the new type (p. 7) : it is now clear to us that its adoption did not come into direct collision with any dogmatic pre- judice. Always docile interpreters of current ideas, the texts set themselves henceforth to guarantee, by the aid of apocryphical traditions or an abundance of miracles, the authentic ressemblance of those portraits whose possi- bility they were a moment ago denying (*). The reason is
(i) By apocryphal traditions we mean those relative to the statue of san- dal wood, carved even during the life-time of Buddha and attributed by Fa-hian (trans. Legge, p. 56) to Prasenajit of Qravasti, and by Hiuan-tsano- (trans. Stan. Julien, I, pp. 283 and 296) to Uda5'ana of Kaucambi, whose example had only been imitated by Prasenajit (cf. Beal, Records, I, p. xliv and 235 ; II, p. 4). As regards the miracles, see those which are related to us
THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART 25
that, in reality, the new mode (see pi. IV) did not ex- pressly infringe any ritualistic prohibition : it did nothing but overthrow the artistic procedures of composition, and the bonds which fell were of a purely technical kind. We have seen clearly enough how the image-makers of the basin of the Ganges had slowly suffered the spider's web of custom to weave itself around them, and how, not daring to tear it apart, they had already endeavoured to free themselves from it. Under the stroke of the revelation which came to them from Gandhara their emancipation was as sudden as it was complete : but even through this unexpected development we are prepared to follow up the test to which we have submitted our theory and from which it seems to us to have so far issued with honour.
The history of the ancient regime in Buddhist art prior to the Gandharian revolution may, in fact, be summed up somewhat as follows. We have every reason to suppose that there was, first, from the fifth century onwards, local production at the four great centres of pilgrimage, and con- veyance into the interior of India, of rude deUneations copying the « sacred vestiges » actually still visible above ground in the sites of the miracles. It was these natu- rally unpeopled tableaux which, thanks to time and dis- tance, ended by being regarded as systematic representa- tions of the four principal episodes in the life of the Blessed One, and which, joined to some routine variations composed in accordance with the same formula, served, before as well as after A^oka (middle of the third century B. C), for the decoration of religious foundations ; finally, on the monuments of the second century (still before our era)
concerning the image of the temple of Mah^bodhi by Hiuan-tsang (trans. Stan. JDLIEN, I, p. 465 ; Heal, II, p. 120) and Taranatha (trans. Schiefner, p. 20).
26 THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART
we remark already tentatives towards freedom from the tyranny of the ancient customs by recourse to subjects previous or subsequent to the last existence of Buddha. However, the school of the north-west comes on the scene. By reason of the very fact that it has been almost entirely removed from these traditional influences, it must, in our system, present characteristic signs quite different from those of the ancient school. Now, the conclusions of an extensive study which we have long dedicated to the Greco-buddhist bas-reliefs, seem to have conspired in favouring, point for point, the reverse of the preceding propositions. What we have observed at Gandhara is, first, the almost total disappearance of legendary scenes later than the cycle of the 'Parinirvdm, as also a marked diminution in the number of jdtakas; in the second place, there is an indefinite multiplication of episodes borrowed from the youth or the teaching career of the Master, whose corporeal image occupies now the centre of all the com- positions; finally and correspondingly, there is an extreme rarity of symbolical representations ('). In any case — and this is our concluding argument — the old emblems do not disappear completely. Not only at Gandhara, but even on the latest productions of mediaeval India, not to men- tion the Lamaist images of the present day, these survivals of a former age continue to manifest themselves. If the stupa is regarded as having on nearly all the new represen- tations of the Parinirvdm become superfluous, the Tree of Knowledge never fails to rear itself behind the Buddha of the Sambodhi, whilst the wheel between the two gazelles, either back to back or face to face, continues to mark the throne of his First Preaching (see pi. VI, 2). And thus
(i) Cf. Art greco-iouddhique du Gandhara, pp, 266, 270,427 etc.
THE BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART 27
the decline of Buddhist art is linked to its most distant visible origins, the only ones (need we specify?), which have been taken into consideration here (').
Such, at least, is the theory which we could not refrain from submitting to the appreciation of Indianists. Taken altogether, it is only an attempt at synthesis, an effort first to coordinate logically, then to organize in accordance with the laws of an historical development, a series of facts already known. In this sense there is not one Buddhist archaeologist, commencing with Fergus- son and Cunningham, who has not contributed to it, and it may be found more or less devoid of originality. Our whole ambition would be precisely that it should give, when read, the impression of being already public property. That would be the best of symptoms ; for none is better adapted to produce a belief that — except for the retouches which the progress of research will inevitably give to it — it is destined to endure.
(i) Cf. Art greco-bouddhique, figg. 208 and 209 and Iconographie bouddhique de I'Inde, figg. 29 et 30 : the latter is a representation of the Parinirvdna, still surmounted by a stupa.
PLATE I
Cf. pp. 14, 21.
The elements ot this plate have been obligingly . sketched by M. Lemoine, Professor of Drawing at the Lyc^e at Quimper, from the following publications : A. Cunningham, Coins of Ancient India (London, 1891) ; Vincent Smith, Catalogue of the Coins in the Indian Museum, Calcutta (Oxford, 1906); D. B. Spooner, A new find of punch- marked coins (in Arch. Surv. of India, Annual Report, ipoj 6, pp. 150 sqq.) : cited respectively as C, Sm., Sp..
A. i(C.,pl. XI, 2, 4); 2 (C, pi. I, I, 5, 6); 3 (Sp-,pl. LIVfl, 3, 14); 4 (Sm., pi. XIX, 13) : variants of the lotus, the symbol of the miraculous birth of the Bodhisattva. The most characteristic form, with eight petals, is found on the coins of Erin (no. i) : we give here in addition two fantastic, but current, forms — composed of three para- sols and of three ((taurines ov nandi-padas,{vamed{no . 2),or not (no.3). in petals — and one quite stereotyped form (no- 4).
5 (C, pi. I, 23 or pi. II, 8 etc.); 6(Sm., pi. XX, 8); 7 (C, pi. 11, 20) ; 8 (Sm., pi. XIX, 15, etc.) : variants of the « taurine » or nandi-pada symbol, denoting the zodiacal sign Taurus, the Bull (Ski. Tdvura), which, during the month of Vaigikha (April-May), presided over the Nativity of the Bodhisattva. The most simple form, and the star- ting-point of the development, is composed of a point surmounted by a crescent (no. 5). In the most elaborate form a vardhamdna, a trifdla, or even a triratna have in turn been detected : we do not per- ceive any reason why in becoming more complicated it should have changed its name and signification.
9(C.,pl. Ill, 2); 10 (C, pi. I, 26): II (C, pi. Ill, 3); 12 (C, pi. Ill, 2) : from the Buddhist point of view these four sacred animals typify respectively, the elephant the Conception, the bull the (date of the) Nativity, the horse the Great Departure, and the lion, generally, the « lion among the ^akyas » {^dkya-simha, that is ^akya-muni).
B. I (Cpl.I, i); 2 (Sm., pi. XIX, 11); 3 (C , pi. II, 7-8); 4(Sm. pi. XX> 5) : variants of the tree of the Perfect Illumination (^Sambodhi). Nos. I and 2 present fairly well the form of the leaf of the afvaitha, or ficus religiosa ; the foot of the tree is always surrounded by a railing.
C. I (Sm., pi. XIX, i,etc.);2 (C, pi, III, 13): variants of the Wheel of the Law (Dharmacakra). On no. 2 it is surrounded by small parasols.
D. I (C, pi. I, 4, 5) ; 2 (Sp., pl- LIV b, 1, 13); 3 (C , pi. II, 15) ; 4 (Sm., pi. XX, II, 12) ; variants of the stupa, or tumulus, of the Parinirvdna. Later the form of no. i was mistaken for a bow with its arrow ; we seem to recognize in origin a stdpa crossed by the staff {yashti) of its parasol (chattra) : we need only compare the parasols which enter into the composition of the lotuses of nos. A. 2 and 3.
BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART
PL. I
'<
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BUDDHIST SYMBOLS ON ANCIENT INDIAN COINS
PLATE II
Cf. pp. 17, 20, 73, 148.
The three S^nchi panels belong to the western gate of the great- stApa, B to the front facade, C and D to the rear : the photographs were kindly lent to us by Mr. J. H. Marshall. — The stele of Ama- rivati is reproduced from the photograph published by Fergusson, Tree and Serpent Worship, 2°'' ed., pi. XCIV.
B. Miracle of the Perfect Illumination {Samhodhi), near to Gayi ; represented by a tree above a throne. Note the characteristic leaf of the tree of ^ikya-muni (cf. pi. I, B).
C. Miracle of the First Preaching, or Putting in motion the Wheel of the Law (JDharma-cakra-pravartana), near to Benares ; represented by a wheel above a throne.
D. Miracle of the Final Extinction {Parinirvdna), near to Ku^ina- gara; represented by a stilpa.
Worshippers — on the earth human and of both sexes, in the air divine — press round each of these symbolical representations. Those in the top corners of B i and D i have a human bust terminating in the stereotyped body of a bird. We are not long in remarking the constant contrast, both in the material objects and in the persons, be- tween the still heavy and clumsy style of S4nchi and that of Amari - vati, almost too elegant and affected. What here concerns us most is that the fundamental identity of the subjects is not in the slightest- degree compromised by these differences of treatment.
BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ART
PL. II
£i£imi£ tc E5£5?E
THE THREE LAST GREAT MIRACLES
1" AT SANCHl
2" AT AMAnAVATi
PLATE III
Cf. pp. 21, 148.
r. The three Gandh^ra panels are reproduced : A', from a photo- graph taken by the author in the Lahore Museum; A', from a photograph in the Lahore Museum, copy kindly lent by Prof. A. A. Macdonell; A', from a photograph by Mr. A. E. Caddy in the Calcutta Museum. — 2. The three Amar^vati panels : A', from a photograph taken by the author in the Madras Museum (Cf. Burgess, Buddhist Stapa of ^mardvali, pi. XXVIH, i) ; AS from Fergusson's photograph, Tree and Serpent Worship, pi. LXV, 3 ; A', from the same source, pi. XCVL 3- The locality of the scene is in all cases Kapilavastu. We shall not here insist further on the differences of type, costume, furniture and ornamentation.
A'. The Conception {Garbha-avakrdnti) : the Bodhisattva descends into the right side of his mother's bosom in the form of a Httle elephant. The school of Amaravati always places at the four cardinal points of the room the four Lokapdlas, or Guardians of the World; but sometimes, as here, it forgets to represent the elephant, and. as little as at Barhut (Cunningham, pi. XXVIII, 2) and at Sinchi (see infra, pi. IX, 2, at the top), does it think of making Miy^ lie in such a manner that she can properly present her right side to the Blessed One. The school of Gandh^ra is never guilty of these negligences, which are contrary to the letter of the texts (Art g.-b. du Gandh , I, figg. J49 and 160 a ; cf. however ibid., fig. 148, from Amar^vati).
A2. The Nativity Qdti) : the Bodhisattva issues from the right flank of his mother, who is standing and holding a branch of a tree. There- fore in both views we see in the centre of the composition May^ standing, with one arm raised, between the gods on the right and her women on the left. But it will be noticed tliat on this occasion also her attitude is in Gandh&ra more rational, leaving free the right hip, by which the child is supposed to issue. As regards the latter, who on the panel at Lahore is perfectly visible, we perceive at Amaravaii only the imprint of his sacred feet on the cloth, which is held by the four Lcka- pdlas together, and no longer by Indra alone.
A°. The Great Departure (^Mahdbhinishkramana') : the Bodhisattva leaves his native town on horseback. At Amarivati we perceive only the gate of the town (cf. the gates at S^nchi on our pll. VI- VII) and the riderless horse, preceded by a god and followed by a squire holding the parasol. In Gandhira the indication of the gate has in our repro- duction (but cf. Art g.-b. du Gandh., I, fig. 187) been cut away; yet Chandaka is to be seen holding high the parasol, while Yakshas raise the horse's feet and Mira, armed with his bow, stands at its head. Above Chandaka, again, is seen a half-length figure of Vajrap^ni, armed with his thunderbolt, and above Mira, between two divinities, the personification (recognizable by the turreted crown) of the town of Kapilavastu. Finally and above all, the Bodhisattva is this time shown on the back of his horse.
BEGINNINGS OF BUDDHIST ABT
PL^ III
t**iV)!il
THE FIRST GREAT MIRACLE
(CONCEPTION, NATIVITY OH VOCATION) 1" IN GANDHARA 2' AT AMARAVATI
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Q
CQ
W X
The Representations of "Jatakas" on the Bas-reliefs of BarhutQ.
Ancient India has bequeathed to us a considerable mass of texts and a very restricted number of sculptures : this means that for our instruction concerning its civilization we possess many more written documents than carved monuments. The latter deserve all the more to attract our attention. Their most ancient remains may, in fact, furnish us, as regards the external appearance and the material side of Indian life in the second century before our era, with a number of concrete and precise details which we should never have been able to expect from the most extensive or the most profound study of the literature. I hasten to add that I do not conceive the identification of these works of art as possible without their confrontation with the texts. These latter alone can help us to understand the mute language of the stones and, even in the absence of any explanatory inscription, to assign names to the characters, speech to the gestures, in one word titles to the subjects. In practice it is precisely thus that matters fall out. We find ourselves possessing in the holy scriptures of Bud- dhism a ready made commentary for the greater part of the surviving ancient bas-reUefs ; and these pieces of sculpture, rare or scattered though they be, are, for their part, a mine of illustrations quite appropriate to as many episodes of the Buddhist legend. You divine without difficulty the interest
(i) Lecture at the Musee Guimet, in Bibliotheque de vulgarisation du Musee Guimet, vol. XXX, 1908.
3
30 JATAKAS AT BARHOT
of this intimate accord between the written and the figured versions of the same stories and the advantage still to be obtained from it for the comprehension of both. This is what I should like to verify experimentally by study- ing, in accordance with the texts and the monuments, the traditions relating to some of the previous existences of the Buddha (Jakya-Muni. For this purpose we will make use, on the one hand, of the PaU collection of the Jdtakas (*) and, on the other, of the bas-reliefs of the stupa of BarhutQ. From their rapprochement will quite natu- rally emerge for our convenience a small illustrated collec- tion of some twenty-five Indian tales; and you shall judge if I exaggerate their charm.
I
The Jdtakas. — I owe however (by way of preface) some explanations which may allow you better to under- stand the meaning and more to enjoy the flavour of these tales and images, as amusing as naive. But these necessary explanations may be extremely brief, and it will suf- fice if I rapidly recall to your mind three essential notions.
The first is that, according to Indian ideas, every living being, whoever he may be, is not only sure of dying : it is no less certain that he must be born again in one of the five conditions of lost soul, ghost, animal, man or
(i) Jdtaka, dd. Fausb0ll, 6 voll. iti-S" and one volume of index, London, 1877-1897 ; translated into English under the direction of Professor E. B. Co- well, 6 voll. in-8°, Cambridge, 1895-1907.
(2) Cunningham, The Stupa of Barhut, London, 1879 (published by order of the Secretary of State for India, who has kindly authorised the repro- ductions given in this book). — Cf. S. d'Oldenborg, Notes on Buddhist Art, St. Petersburg 1896 (in Russian; translated into English in the Journal oj the American Oriental Society , XVIII, I, Jan. 1897, PP- 183-201).
JATAKAS AT BARHUT 31
god; after which he will have to die again, in order to be born once more, and so on for ever, unless he attains sal- vation, which is nothing else than the final escape from this frightful circle of transmigration.
The second point is that not only the attainment of this deliverance, but the conditions even of each of the ephe- meral existences are regulated automatically by a moral law as general and as unavoidable as the physical law of gravity, the law of « works », or (to employ a Sanskrit word, the use of which has been popularized by the theoso- phists) of Karma. At the death of each being there is drawn up a kind of debit and credit account, with assets and liabilities, between the sums of the merits and demerits accumulated by him in the course of his anterior exist- ences : and an immediate sanction, resulting mechani- cally from this simple mathematical operation, fatally decides his future destiny.
In the third place, it is a belief no less generally admitted in India that whoever has attained to sanctity possesses, among other supernatural faculties, the privilege of remem- bering his past existences and even those of others. This gift of extra-lucid intuition, or, as it was called, of « divine sight », no one, of course, was considered to possess in a more eminent degree than Buddha. Now it was, we are told, his habit, with regard to incidents arising in the bosom of his community, to point or justify his prohib- itions or his precepts by the opportune reminiscence ot some analogous occasion which had already confronted him in the course of his previous lives.
These three points agreed, all becomes perfectly clear. We admit fully henceforth that ^akya-Muni, like all others, must have traversed a long series of successive re- births. We understand, also, why he accomplished on the
52 JATAKA.S AT BARHUT
way so many good actions, displayed so many virtues, rea- lized so many superhuman perfections : nothing less was required to enable him to acquire merits capable of con- veying him to the supreme dignity of Buddha. Nor could we get our information concerning his past lives from a better source, since — if we believe the tradition — it is from the mouth of the Master himself that the story had been gathered before being consigned in writing to the works which have come down to us and which it would be useless to-day to enumerate and criticize. If we proceed to make use of the Pali collection, it is not that I am under any illusion as to the antiquity of the prose com- mentary on the versified, the only canonical, part C) : the reason for this choice is simply that, as containing nearly five hundred and fifty narratives, that collection is by far the most considerable of all.
II
The Bas-reliefs of Barhut. — Thus famiharized afresh with the jdtakas, you will not be surprised to note that the sculp- tors charged with the decoration of the ancient Buddhist edifices of central India have drawn copious inspirations therefrom. Not only did they, as we beheve we have demonstrated above Q, feel themselves under less restraint in the treatment of subjects of this kind, but moreover no subject could answer better to the needs and the aim of the artist. Seeing that it was a question of religious foundations, thai aim was quite naturally the edification of the faithful, both sedentary and pilgrim : and what could
(i) On this subject see below, essay VII on the Saddania jataka (2) See^ p. 23.
JATAKAS AT BARHUT 33
be more edifying, in default of scenes derived from the last life of the Master, than narratives of which he himself had previously been the hero before becoming the narrator? On the other hand, their familiar and picturesque character fit- ted in marvellously — certainly much better than moral considerations or metaphysical speculations — with the exigences of an art so concrete as sculpture and necessita- ting so much precision in material detail. Thus the good stone-cutters of Barhut and Sanchi have had recourse, like the sculptors of our cathedrals, to the treasure of their « Gold- en Legend », and have created, by the very force of things, a plastic art at once narrative and religious, which recalls in many ways the formulas of our artists of the Middle Ages. Thus it is, for example, that they did not, any more than these latter, prohibit the juxtaposition of episodes and repe- titions of persons in the framework of one and the same panel. We shall have many opportunities of remarking this naive proceeding.
But it is well to form beforehand some idea of the monuments which these bas-reliefs adorned. The Buddhist sanctuary was preeminently the stupa, that is the « tumu- lus », and its principal role was to cover up a deposit of relics. As we see it in India from the third century before our era, it was already a stereotyped edifice of brick or stone, which presupposed the art of the architect and utili- zed that of the sculptor. Its chief feature was a full hemi- spherical dome, usually raised on a terrace. This dome, which was called the egg (andd), supported a sort of kiosk (harmika), itself surmounted by one or several parasols, an emblem of which you know the honorific signification in the East. The whole was surrounded, like all sacred places in India, by a high barrier, at first of wood, then directly imitated in stone from its wooden prototype. This
34 jAtakas at barhut
enclosure was flanked at the four cardinal points by monu- mental gates (toranfl), with triple curved lintels of which we have fine examples at Sanchi (*). On the most ancient specimens from the basin of the Ganges the decoration was strictly limited to the doorways and railing. At Barhut medalhons were strewn over the upright pillars and cross- bars of the latter, whilst all along the inner face of the coping further motifs were ensconced in the intervals of the undulations of a serpentine garland. You will recognize one or other alternative of this double provenance in all the reproductions which are about to defile before your eyes (PI. V-VI).
One last question : Why have we chosen by preference the bas-rehefs of Barhut? The answer is easy : because most of them are accompanied by an inscription written in the oldest alphabet of central India, the one which towards the middle of the third century before our era was used by the famous king Agoka for his pious edicts. On one of the jambs of the eastern gate, found in situ, we read, in a somewhat later script, a mention of the ephemeral suze- rain dynasty of the ^urigas, which succeeded the Maur- yas towards the year i8o B. C. ; it relates to the erection of the gate, or, to be more exact, the replacement an old wooden model by a « stone work » ; and thus we feel certain that towards the end of the second century the final touch must have been given to the decoration of the stupa, commenced, no doubt, during the third. This is not all. Among the hundred and sixty graffiti, more or less, observed on the recovered debris of the balustrade more than half are restricted to giving merely the name of the donor, male or female, of such and such a pillar or
(i) See below, pp. 65-66, and cf. pi. VII and VIII, i.
JATAKAS AT BARHUT 35
such and such a transverse bar; but the rest give us expli- cit information concerning the subjects which the sculp- tures claimed to represent. Thus we have to deal with bas- reliefs sufficiently dated and identified beforehand by their authors for the benefit of their contemporaries and of the most distant posterity. In the moving sands of Indian an- tiquity we can find no better data, nor firmer ground on which to work.
Ill
The animals. — After this indispensable preparation we may with full knowledge broach the examination of the twenty-five jdtakas, of which, possessing the text, we recog- nize also the representation . A perfectly natural plan will be imposed upon us : it will be, if we may so express it, the bio- graphical sequence of these successive lives, as well as the hierarchical order of the conditions into which the future Buddha had successively to be born. We shall see him mount one by one the rungs of the ladder of beings, first animal, then woman, and finally man. And indeed, putting aside all one's complacency as Indianist, I do not think that the imagination of any race has ever created a finer or vaster subject for a poem than this destiny of a single being in whom are shown all aspects of life, in whom is concen- trated all the experience of past ages, in one word, in whom the evolution of the entire human race is reflected. Unfor- tunately, as usually happens in India, the execution comes infinitely short of the conception. To sum up in one work, spacious and substantial, in view of the immense and varied career of the Predestined One, the original Indian system ot the universe, would have required the powerful constructive genius of a Dante : Buddhism had not that good fortune.
36 JATAKAS AT BARHUT
And this is why we do in Indian literature not meet with more than scattered fragments of the epic of the Bodhi- sattva, or future Buddha,
To-day we are concerned only with the period of his previous lives, beginning with the most humble of them : but even within these Hmits we cannot help but regret the manner in which the monks, more solicitous for edification than for poetry, have bungled the subject. In the same way as, according to the naturalists, the embryo of mammaha reproduces in the course of its development the divers characteristics ofthe inferior species, so we should like to follow through the course of the animal forms which he remembered having assumed one after the other — fish, reptile, bird, quadruped, quadruman — the whole embryology of a Bodhisattva. But for that we should have to give ourselves up, in the midst ofthe disorder — or of the still more outlandish order (') — of the texts, to a veritable task of patchwork, joining together here and there the scattered portions of a poem which was never written. Evidently the idea of following out any series and grada- tion whatever did not occur to the minds of the compilers of these stories. We must say in excuse for them that the theory of evolution troubled them, for reasons easy to guess, much less than it does us. Furthermore, if they are incapable of composing a harmonious whole, they make up for it in detail by the naive savour and, at times, humourous attractiveness of their style : it is impossible to deny them a veritable talent as narrators. Once we have renounced for them higher ambitions, the compensation will appear to us very appreciable. Their stories of ani-
(i) We know that in the Pali collection of Jdtakas, for example, these are classed solely according to the increasing number of verses which they contain, without regard to subject.
JATAKAS AT BARHUT 37
mals form in fact a veritable « Jungle Book » long before that which did so much for the reputation of Rudyard Kipling : moreover, the latter was, in his, directly inspi- red by popular Indian tradition.
Let us examine first the stories which present ani- mals only, and which, consequently, are pure « fables ». There were related in India two thousand years and more ago tales with which we are still to-day familiar from infancy. I will cite, for example, that of « the Tor- toise and the two Ducks », which is depicted already on the ancient balustrade of Bodh-Gaya. Among the fragments of Barhut which have survived until our time we do not find any equally celebrated. On the other hand, when we see the Bodhisattva appear there, he has already arrived at the state, or if you prefer, at the genus of bird.
I. Here (Cunningham, XXVII, 11) in his character of royal swan he refuses, if we may so express it, the « hand » of his daughter to the peacock, in spite of his magnificent plumage and because of his indecent dance (Jdt. 32).
II. There (Cunningham, XLV, 7) under the form of a pigeon, he reprimands the lazy and gluttonous crow, whom the cook punishes so cruelly for an attempted raid upon his pots(/4^ 42; cf. 274 and 375).
III. Elsewhere (Cunningham, XLVII, 5) he is the cock perched on a tree, who wisely resists the treacherous seductions of a she-cat {Jdt. 383). — La Fontaine (^Fables, II, 5) says : of a fox.
IV. Still further on (Cunningham, XXV, 2), born an elephant, he exterminates, with the help of his faithful wife, a terrible enemy of his race, an enormous crab, cc as broad as a threshing-floor », which, in order to devour them, had Ridden itself at the bottom of the lake in which the pachyderms were accustomed to bathe (Jdt. 267).
38 JATAKAS AT BARHUT
V As we cannot see all in detail, I will detain you only a moment with the fifth jdtaka, spoken (and even written) of as « of the Quail ». As usual, the text (/i/. 3 5 7) indicates first of all on what occasion the fable was related . It was not the first time that Devadatta, the traitor cousin of Buddha and the Judas Iscariot ofhis legend, proved the hardness of his heart. At that time the Bodhisattva was born in the form of an elephant, chief of a troop of 80,000 others — India is very fond indeed of this round number. A quail, which had made her nest within their pasture ground and whose young, scarcely hatched, were still incapable of moving, begs him to spare her offspring. He wilHngly consents to this, and by his orders his 80,000 subjects respect the young birds as they file past : doubtless, this is what they are in the act of doing on the right lower part of the medallion (pi. V, i).But he warns the quail that a fierce solitary is following him. The latter, deaf to all prayers, crushes the nest : you perceive one o^ the young ones under his right hind foot, exactly on the edge of the break in the stone, whilst the weeping mother is perched on a tree in front of him. But vengeance is not long delayed : for already on the bulging forehead of the cruel elephant a crow is busy, pecking out his eyes with its beak, whilst a big « blue fly » deposits its eggs in the sockets. A third ally of the quail, its gossip the frog, is sea- ted at the top of the medallion in a conventional rocky landscape. Its role, in the story as on the bas-relief, is by its croaking to attract the enormous animal, which is blind and burning with fever, by making it believe in the proxi- mity of water. Thus it leads him right to the edge of a sharp precipice, where he falls headlong : only his hind part has not yet quite disappeared into the abyss. Appli- cation : the Bodhisattva was the leader of the troop of
JATAKAS AT BARHUT 39
elephants, D^vadatta was the solitary. — « Well, what about the quail »,you will ask. — You desire to know too much.
IV
The Bodhisattva under an animal form and mankind. — In these five fables man does not intervene. Here are five others in which he is seen and, at first, hardly to his credit.
VI. In order to follow up the two preceding births, let us take a new one in the form of an elephant and even of an elephant « with six tusks » Qdt. 514). The wonder- ful animal is standing in the foreground, leaning against the banyan tree (pi. XXIX, i) which the oldest tradition assigns to him for a shelter. Behind him, likewise in profile, is his first wife, her left temple adorned with a lotus, whilst, seen full face in the background, his second wife, furious at not having herself received any such flowery ornament, is showing unmistakable signs of jealous anger. She goes so far as to suffer herself to die of hunger, while forming the aspiration of being born again as a woman and becoming queen of Benares. Scarcely has her double wish been ful- filled than she charges the cleverest hunter in the country to carry out her vengeance. Hidden at the bottom of a pit, the latter discharges a poisoned arrow into the bowels of the elephant, as is written and is elsewhere found figured, on the sculptures of Amaravati and of Gandhara. But at Barhut, when we again (on the left of the medallion) see the hero of the story, it is already the moment when, wounded to death and practising the virtue, which was Buddhist before becoming Christian, of pardoning all oJ0Fences, he docilely stoops down, in order to allow his enemy to cut off his triple tusks with the help of an enor-
40 JATAKAS AT BARHUT
mous saw. We must turn to the Pali collection or to the paintings of the Ajanta Caves to learn that the wicked queen, at the sight of the tusks of her former husband, which her emissary brought back to her, felt nevertheless a revulsion of conscience, of which she died heart-broken Q.
VII. No less naively illustrated is the ne-birth as an antelope, kurunga. On pi. V, 2 we read as plainly as in the text {Jdt. 206) that there were once an antelope, a tortoise and a wood-pecker, which, united by friendship, lived toge- ther on the shores of a lake in the depths of the woods. The antelope has just been caught in a trap : and, whilst the tortoise exerts itself to gnaw through the fetters, the wood-pecker, represented a second time on the right, does all that it can, in its character of bird of ill-omen, to delay the coming of the hunter. Soon — but no room could be found in the picture for this second adventure — the antelope will in its turn deliver the tortoise :
Ainsi chacun en son endroit S'entremet, agit et travaille,
as we are told by La Fontaine, who to our trio of friends has added also a rat {Fables, XII, 15).
VIII. Another medallion (pi. V, 3) contains no less than three episodes. At the bottom the tender-hearted stag, ruru, saves the son of the merchant, who was going to drown himself in the Ganges, and brings him on his back to the bank, where one of his roes is stooping to drink at the river. At the top, on the right, the king of Benares, guided by the young merchant, who is evidently acting as his infor- mant, is preparing with bent bow to kill the great rare stag, the object of his desires as a hunter. But the words ad-
(i) We shall have an opportunity later (Essay VII) of recurring more in detail to the Saddanta-jdtaka (cf. pi. XXIX and XXX).
JATAKAS AT BARHUT 41
dressed to him by the latter quickly cause the weapons to fall from his hands, and we find him again in the centre in edifying conversation with the wonderful animal, whilst the treacherous informer seems to be hiding behind the royal person. We know from another source that the Bodhisattva, always charitable, intercedes with the king in favour of his perfidious debtor Qdt. 482 ; not to be confused with 12).
IX. Of the two births as ape, which we meet next, the one (Jdt. 516) contains a story with a quite analogous moral, but the bas-relief is very much damaged (Cunnin- gham, XXXIII, 5), A Brahman, saved by the Bodhi- sattva, who rescues him from the bottom of a precipice, repays him with the blackest ingratitude, attempting to assassinate his benefactor during his sleep. On this occa- sion also the magnanimous animal forgives.
X. More original and much better preserved is the other jdtaka of Mahakapi (Jdt. 407; pi. V, 4). At that time the Bodhisattva was in the Himalayas, king of 80.000 monkeys, and he took them to feed upon a gigantic mango-tree — others say a fig-tree, and the bas-rehef agrees with this — whose fruits were delicious, but the branches of which unfor- tunately spread over the Ganges. In spite of the precautions prescribed by the foreseeing wisdom of the « great mon- keys, a fruit, hidden by a nest of ants, escapes the investi- gations of his people^ ripens, falls into the stream of water, and is caught in the nets which surround the bathing-place of the king of Benares. The latter fmds it so much to his taste that, in order to procure others like it, he does not hesi- tate, when he has obtained information from the « wood- rangers » , to follow the river to its source, until he arrives at the wonderful tree. At night the monkeys gather together as usual : but the king of Benares has the tree surrounded
42 JATAKAS AT BARHUT
by his archers, with fixed arrows and only awaiting the day to begin the slaughter. There is alarm in the camp of the Bandar-log, as Kipling expresses it. Their leader reas- sures them and promises to save their lives. With a gigantic spring, of which he alone is capable, he clears a hundred bow lengths as far as the opposite bank of the river, there cuts a long rattan, the one end of which he fixes to a tree on this bank, whilst he attaches the other to his foot, and with another spring returns to his own people. But the vine which he has cut is a httle too short, and it is only by stretching out his hands that he can reach the branches of the fig-tree. Nevertheless, the 80,000 monkeys pass over this improvised bridge and descend in safety on the other side of the river. This latter is, as usual, indicated by sinuous lines, in which a tortoise and some fish are swim- ming. But already two men of the court of the king of Benares are holding by the four corners a striped coverlet, into which the Bodhisattva, exhausted with fatigue, has only to let himself fall when the last of his subjects has been saved. At the bottom (and this is the second picture within the frame) we find him sitting in conversation with his human colleague, who is amazed at his vigour, his inge- nuity, and his devotion to his people. Between them a person, of whom we see only the bust and the hands respectfully joined together, is, if we may judge from the absence of the turban, a man of low caste, apparently that one of the « wood-rangers » who guided the royal caravan towards the Himalaya.
V
The Bodhisattva in human form and animals. — In this last narrative the king of Benares gives a proof of good
JATAKAS AT BARHUT 43
feeling : therefore he is presented to us as an ancient incar- nation of Ananda, the well-beloved disciple. In the four preceding fables man appears to us in the odious form of a hunter, except when he reveals himself as a monster of ingratitude, whilst the brute continues to show an example of the most difficult virtues. However, we must not be in too great a hurry to conclude that, in the Jdtakas, the better part always belongs to the animals : in fact, it only falls to them when they incarnate the Bodhisattva. In other words, in the Buddhist adaptation to which these tales have been subjected the Bodhisattva has been incarnated in animal form only in those cases where it was decidedly more flattering to be beast than to be man. Here are four other examples which will abundantly prove to us that ingrati- tude, foolishness, the aggressive instinct, and dishonesty are not, in the minds of our authors, the privilege of humanity alone, as you might have been led to believe. The stories ought indeed to come a little later in the plan which we have adopted, since the Bodhisattva is there already cloth- ed in the human form par excellence, I mean that of a man : but for the advantage of warning ourselves against a wrong idea it is worth while slightly to disarrange the hierarchical order of the sexes.
XI. Do you desire further simian stories? Look on the left of pi. VI, I atthis young novice, or Brahmanic student, who is giving a thirsty monkey something to drink. Now he goes away towards the right, having loaded on his shoulders, at the two ends of a stick placed like a balancing beam, his two round pitchers, suspended in nets of cord after the manner of the time and of the present day; mean- while the animal, who has mounted into the tree again, makes grimaces at him as a reward for his charity : « Oblige a villain, and he will spit in your face », says our proverb.
44 JATAKAS AT BARHUT
If we are to believe the text, the monkey did worse still on the head of the Bodhisattva, a thing which is quite among the habits of these horrid beasts. It is needless to repeat to you that he was none other than Devadatta Qdt. 174).
XII. Another time Qdt. 46 and 268), a gardener, wishing to take his hoHday, has charged the monkeys which haunt his garden to water it in his stead. And in fact they set about it with pitchers (pi. VI, 2); but on a suggestion ot their king, who by nature prefers to do things methodi- cally and does not intend his water to be wasted, they begin by pulling up every shrub in the nursery, so as to measure by the length of its roots the exact quantity of water which it will require. The Bodhisattva is the « wise man », who enters by the left and surprizes them while thus occupied. He does not restrict himself to stating that hell is paved with good intentions : there is no lack of moralizing, also, about the stupidity of the king of the monkeys : if he is the most intelligent, what must be thought of the rest of the troop ?
XIII. On another fragment of the coping (Cunningham, XLI, 1-3) is figured in two successive scenes the story of a stupid fighting ram, who is inspired by his warlike instincts to charge a Brahmanic ascetic : we must say in his excuse that the latter was wearing a garment of skin (Jdt. 324). The whole humour of the affair is that the monk imagines, at the moment when the ram stoops, ready to rush upon him, that even the beasts bow before his worth. It is in vain that a young merchant, no other than the Bodhi- sattva, warns him of his imprudent mistake : there he is soon on his back, upset along with the double burden which he was balancing on his shoulder.
XIV. Again in another place it is the turn of the Bodhi- sattva to carry the water-vessel and wear the big chignon
JATAKAS AT BARHUT 45
and the summary costume of an ascetic (pi. VI, 3); and it is in this guise (and not that of a tree-god. as the commentary gives it, Jdt. 400) that he is present as a simple spectator at a very amusing scene. Two otters, by uniting their efforts, have dragged a big fish to the dry ground on the bank of a river, the one holding it by the head, the other by the tail; but, their united exploit accomphshed. they quarrel about the sharing of the booty and take a passing jackal as arbiter. The latter is represented twice, first seated between the litigants, then walking proudly away to the right : he is carrying the best piece in his mouth and leaving to the two deceived otters only the head and tail of their prey. The moral is easily guessed. The text states very explicitly that the best law-suits in the world only serve to enrich the coffers of the king; and you, for your part, have in the « Jackal and the two Otters » already recognised an Indian variant of the « Oyster and the Litigants »of La Fontaine. XV. For the rest we must not in the presence of the extreme variety of these tales claim to set up too general rules. A little further on (pi. VI, 4) animals reappear side by side with another identical incarnation of the Bodhisattva, and this time they play a most honou- rable part. The bas-relief is here much simplified in comparison with the version of the Jdtaka (488), which gives to the hero a sister, six brothers and two servants. At Barhut we see at his side only a woman — likewise clo- thed in the ascetic costume — who may very well in the intention of the sculptor be the wife of his lay years, and of whom the Pali prose, with its accustomed and perhaps excessive modesty, will have made his sister : has it not been bold enough Qdt. 461) to give us Rama as the brother, and not the husband, of Sita? On the other hand, a monkey and an elephant likewise take part in this scene, ■
46 JATAKAS AT BARHUT
unless the latter is merely the mount of ^akra : for the cc Indra of the Gods » looks upon it as a duty to bring back the bundle of lotus stalks (rather similar to our bundles of asparagus and just like those which I have seen sold, nowadays, in Kashmir, in the market of Srinagar), which gave its name to the story. That is all the food of the ascetic, and on three days in succession ^akra, in order to prove him, has stolen it, but without succeeding in moving him. At the moment when he repents, each one of the characters, both human and animal, was about to exonerate himself from this theft by a veracious oath, even the monkey declaring himself incapable of it; for, it is said somewhere, « in the company of saints everyone becomes a saint ».
VI
The Bodhisattva and women. — With these reserva- tions, these two series of examples, preserved by chance, suffice to prove what I was just now saying concerning the double attitude of the Jdtakas with regard to animals. If from the beasts we now pass — without any idea of comparison, be it said — to the women, we observe that at the very first the same distinction seems necessary. Either we are in the presence of one of those beautiful types of faithful wife which are an honour to Indian litera- ture, and then we may safely wager that the Bodhisattva is this time incarnated in the feminine form; or else it is a masculine role which is assigned to him, and in this case the texts, giving free scope to an instinct for satire worthy of our Gaul of the Middle Ages, becomes inexhaustible on the subject of the malice and perversity of the fair sex. The stories which they tell of it (we shall, of course,
JATAKAS AT BARHUT 47
adduce only those which are figured, more or less, at Barhut) lack neither raciness nor verve. In fact, whilst the stories which have come before us up till now were pro- perly fables, we have now to do with the kind of jolly tales which in the Romance languages of mediaeval Europe were called « fabliaux » or « fableaux ».
XVI. On a medalhon which can hardly with propriety be reproduced (Cunningham, XXVI, 7), we witness the conception and birth of the rishi Rishya^rihga (Ante- lope-horn) or Ekagririga (Unicorn), as celebrated in the Brahmanic epic as in the Buddhist legend. Son of an anchorite and a roe, he knows nothing of a sex to which he is not even indebted for his mother, and conse- quently he will be an easy prey to the first women he meets. On this common trunk are grafted two groups of stories. In the first, the young hermit is scarcely adolescent and lives with his father. A neighbouring king, in order to put an end to a famine, or simply because he has no son, forms the design of taking him for his son-in-law : and his own daughter, or, in the less ancient versions, some courtesans charge themselves with the task of leading him astray and bringing him back to the court Qdt. 526; Mahdvastu, III, 143; Mahdbhdrata, III, 110-113 etc). Without great difficulty they succeed, as soon as the father has turned his back, being helped as much as they could desire by the naive candour of the young man, who as yet has seen nothing of the world, for whom a rebounding ball seems a marvel, who takes cakes for delicious fruits without pips, and who calls carriages « moving huts ». He appre- hends still other causes of amazement, not less ingenious, but already less innocent, at the aspect, so new to him, of his feminine visitors: and you can easily conceive that this theme of the spontaneous awakening of the sexual instinct
48 JATAKAS AT BARHUT
in the most ignorant of young men should have served as an example to Boccacio and for a story to La Fontaine {Conies, III, i, « The Geese of Brother Philip », taken from the preamble to the fourth day of the Decameron).
Of the second form of the legend the clearest summary that we at present possess has been preserved to us by the Chinese pilgrim Hiuan-tsang with reference to a ruined convent of Gandhara, in the extreme north-west of India. « It was in this place, he tells us, that formerly there lived the mk' Unicorn; thism^f, having allowed himself to be led astray by a courtesan, lost his supernatural powers; the courtesan mounted on his shoulders and thus returned to the town » (cf. Jdt. 523 ; DagakumAracarita^ II, 2 etc.). Here there is no longer any question of the father of the hermit, and the age of the latter is left undetermined. On the other hand, what we are told of him reminds us of the fables detailed in our relations of animal stories, the so-called « Bes- tiaria » of the Middle Ages, concerning the Unicorn which only a young girl is able to capture : « And she (says their source, the Physiologus) commands the animal and it obeys her; and she leads it away to the king's palace ». Why there rather than elsewhere? This unexpected trait forms, on the contrary, an integral part of the adventure of the shy anchorite Unicorn, whom the king's daughter very natu- rally leads to her father, or whom the courtesan has wagered that she will bring back to the court. And, again, the piquant detail that this latter mounts astride on the shoulders of the wise rishi awakens invincibly the memory of the celebrated « Lay of Aristotle » .
XVII. A fragment of another medallion, found only by the greatest chance, bears as title the three first words of the one stanza which constitutes the ancient nucleus of Jataka 62 : « The music that the Brahman... » :and, in fact,
JATAKAS AT feARHUT 49
it shows US a caste man seated, with his eyes bandaged and playing the harp, whilst a couple dance before him (Cunning- ham, XXVI, 8). He is the chaplain of the king of Benares, and had, we are told, a habit of gaming with his master. But the king, each time he threw the dice, used, in order to bring himself good luck, to hum four verses, taken from some popular song, which were not very respectful to the virtue of women, and by force of this truth he won every time. The Brahman, in a fair way to being ruin- ed, gives up playing and decides to rear a new-born girl- child without her ever seeing any other man than himself. She has scarcely reached marriagable age when he, in his turn, challenges the king, whose word, having become false, is no longer efficacious, so that he loses game after game. Thwarted, and guessing what is the snake under the rock, he charges one of his agents to seduce the only real virtue in his kingdom . This plan does readily succeed ; and it must be believed that intelligence comes to a girl still more quickly than to a boy. The young novice's mind is so readily and so effectually enlightened, that she consents to organize the little scene of comedy represented by the bas-relief, and it is with her lover that she is dancing to the sound of the harp played by the Winded Brahman. I lay no stress upon the rest of the story or how she succeeds in exonerating herself by making a false oath true, a device equally well known to our folk-lore : the important thing is that in this Indian heroine you have been allowed to salute in passing the type of the eternal Agnes.
XVIII. Even the single story consecrated to the praise of woman fails not to be well-known to our medisevahsts under the name of « Constant du Hamel ». Certainly, we must immediately deduct from this last story some details which truly smack too much of its native soil : I
50 JATAKAS AT BARHUT
refer to the vengeance exercised by the villain on the wives « of the provost, the forester and the priest ». This manner of applying the law of retaliation, and even with interest — for the peasant does to another what the other has merely had the intention of doing to him — is a trait eminently GaUic ; and you will not be in any way astonished to observe that it was evidently the part which La Fon- taine desired to retain of the story, when he put it into verse in his tale of « the people of Rheims » : you will un- derstand no less clearly that the Indian versions contain nothing of the kind. For the rest, the accord would be truly too astonishing, if it were not a case of a borrowing by European literature from that of India {Jdt. ')46;Kathd~ saritsdgara, I, 4 etc.). Taken on the whole, it is the Pali text which most nearly approaches the bas-relief of Barhut (pi. V, 5) : there also Amara, the virtuous wife, whose husband is absent, has four suitors to whom she assigns an interview for each of the watches of the same night, and it is also in great esparto baskets that siie causes her tricked lovers to be packed by her servants. At the moment chosen by the sculptor we are in the midst of the court : the king is seated on his throne, surrounded by his minis- ters, and at his right side one of the women of the harem is waving a fly-flapper. Amara is standing on the other side, her left hand on the shoulder of her attendant, and at her order the covers of three of the baskets have already been raised and the heads of three of the dehnquents unco- vered, whilst two coolies bring the fourth. But the Singha- lese compilation dismisses this story jn ten lines, as an episode in a long narrative, and consents to see in Amara only the wife of the absent Bodhisattva : for it is quite resigned to represent the latter as an animal, a pariah or even a bandit, but never, no ! never, a woman, be she, as in
JATAKAS AT BARHUT 51
this case, a paragon of all the virtues. If, however, we come to realize that the jdtaka in question has the honour of a complete medallion and that these representations have no edifying interest except on the condition that the future Buddha there appears in person, it will soon be granted that there are great chances that the sculptor regarded him as incarnated here in the feminine form. Even if the author had not himself made this identification, everything invited the spectator to do so. The inscription on the bas- relief (jvflfflw^//'ct%aw jdtakam) does not contradict it : for the Pali tradition also makes Amara to be born in one of the four suburbs Yavamajjhaka, situated at the four gates of the capital ofMithila.
However it may be as regards this particular point, the tremendous buffoonery of the situation could not escape the worshippers, and they must have been at least as much amused as edified. If we ourselves look at it more closely, we shall not be able to avoid the impression that, with all her virtue, Amara was not exempt from mischief. Doubt- less she had recourse to the arsenal of her tricks only for a good motive ; but we tremble at the thought of what would happen to her husband, if this astute woman em- ployed in deceiving him a quarter of the mahce that she displays in keeping herself faithful. In one word, and with all taken into account, whether the story be written in praise of the fair sex or not, it is always the same crea- ture of perfidy, if not of voluptuousness, with whom we have to deal : or, to put it better, we observe that the quite monastic mistrust and aversion which Buddhism professed towards woman are (we may say) never disarmed. Of all the snares of Mara the Malignant, is she not the worst ? And was it not solely in the rupture of all family ties, com- mencing with the conjugal tie, that the assured pledge of salvation was supposed to be found?
52 JATAKAS AT BARHUT
XIX. Among our bas-reliefs we find still another fairly picturesque illustration of this moral conception. Itis taken from the history of Mahajanaka (Jat. 539). A son, born in exile, of the widow of a king of Mithila, I will pass over the adventures which finally re-establish him on the throne which his uncle has usurped, and at the same time win for him the hand of his beautiful cousin Sivali. What is of importance tons here is the resolution, which he soon forms, of taking to the religious life and the useless eftorts to which his wife resorts in order to retain him in the world. At last he departs; but his wife belongs to that variety of woman which our writers of vaudevilles call « cHnging » ; and she obstinately adheres to his steps. Vainly does a remnant of politeness lead him to make use of various symbols in order to mark his decided intention to deprive himself henceforth of a companionship which he looks upon as an obstacle to his deliverance [: she will listen to none of them, not even the plainest, such as the one represented, with the names of the persons to vouch for it, on the railing at Barhut (pi. VI, 5). The king, who has already cast aside his diadem, is standing, still followed by the queen, in front of an armourer's bench and with the two first fingers raised is speaking in parables. The arti- zan is about to straighten an arrow which he has just put through the fire, and, closing one eye, is examining with the other whether it is straight. To a premeditated question from Mahajanaka he repHes that one can judge the straio-ht- ness of things much better with a single one eye than with two : for, except in solitude, there is no salvation for man. XX. This monkish moral is, however, susceptible of a quite touching revulsion, or rather of quite gracious over- sight. Evidently it was impossible for the compilers of this great collection of folk-lore to bring all the narratives
JATAKAS AT BARHUT 53
within their narrow range of edification : and thus it is that a delightful story of love must have found grace in their eyes. It is not preserved to us at Barhut, except by a miserable sketch (Cunningham, XXVII, 12); but it is still in existence on the Boro-Budur of Java ('), where the human bust of the kinnara is no longer terminated by foliage, but by the body of a bird. The king of Benares, while out hunting, perceives a couple of these marvel- lous beings covering each other with caresses and tears. He questions them, and learns from the mouth of the woman — always the more talkative — that they were once separated by the storm and had to spend the night on either side of the river. Now it will soon be seven hun- dred years since this mischance, and their life is a thou- sand years : however, they have not yet quite conso- led each other for the separation of a few hours, and since then have been unable to help mingling tears with their caresses. — What an example for lovers, thinks the king ; and it will not surprise you to learn that, with the help of this simple legend, Buddha forthwith reconciled the king and queen of Kosala, very much in love with one another, who were sulking (/d^ 504; reject 481 and 485).
VI
The Bodhisattva and the castes. — This last story is less a a fableau » than a fairy tale. As for the preceding one, it should rather be classed in the category of those « exam- ples -B, wherewith our preaching friars of the Middle Ages were accustomed to stud their sermons. The five that still remain to be reviewed are all edifying stories which
(i) See below, Essay VIII.
54 JATAKAS AT BARHUT
similarly served the needs of the Buddhist preaching. They will perhaps seem to you only moderately amusing : but in India morality must always have its turn. In them the Bodhisattva is constantly reborn in the state of man, that state so difficult to attain, we are told, which, while the one most favourable of all to the acquisition of merits, is also the only one in which the candidate for the Bodhi ever has a chance of attaining his object. Each time this marvellous being, whatever may be his caste, astonishes us with the proofs of his skill, wisdom and disinterestedness : but it is especially in his royal births that he gives free course to his virtue. Let us not forget that the Buddhists professed to place the class of the Ksha- triya, or, as we should say, the nobihty of the sword, to which their Master belonged, above that of the Brahmans : naturally, we shall have to follow the order established by them in the hierarchy of the castes.
XXI. The Bodhisattva knew all social positions, even that which consists in being under the ban of society, as is the case with the pariah. However, in the lowest posi- tion in which we recognise him on the bas-reliefs of Barhut, he has already arrived at the third class, that of the Vai^yas, that is to say, of peasant proprietor or town shop- keeper. It is as a son of a citizen of gravasti that by an ingenious stratagem he consoles his father, who was still inconsolable tor the death of his grandfather Qdt. 352; Cun- ningham, XL VII, 3). He brings water and food to the dead body of an ox, abandoned at the gates of the town ; and when his father, informed by friends, runs up to remons- trate with him, he answers him in the same tone and has not much trouble in proving to him that the more foolish of the two is not the one whom people think. For it is folly, according to Buddhist ideas, to weep for the dead.
JATAKAS AT BARHUT 55
XXII. Elsewhere the Bodhisattva has become the Pandit Vidhura, minister of the king of Indraprastha. The fame of his wisdom and eloquence is so great, that the wife of a Naga conceives a fancy for hearing him speak. In order to make more sure of him being brought to her, the undine pretends to have a « desire », that of eating his heart. Behold the husband much disturbed : « As well ask for the moon », he remarks Qdt. 545). But what is there that women cannot do ? The four panels of one pillar are consecrated to the description of how the daughter of the Naga was not long in finding a young captain of the genii, who, for love of her « beaux yeux », charges himself with the commission; how the young gallant challenges the king of Indraprastha to play, and with one cast of the dice wins his minister from him ; how he vainly endeavours to kill the latter by throwing him down from the top of a mountain; and how, in the end, he decides to take him alive to the house of the Naga, to the great satisfaction of his future mother-in- law, who thus obtains from the mouth of the sage the little private lecture which she desired (Cunningham, XVIII). And, as is always the case with these Buddhist tales, all is well that ends well.
XXIII. But, as I have told you, it is especially when the Bodhisattva is born again as a Kshatriya that his acts foretell the great renunciation of which he is to offer a perfect model in the course of his last existence. Once, at a time when human life was exceedingly long, he renounces the throne and the world from the moment of the appear- ance of his first white hair (JAt. 9). His barber is ordered to show it to him as soon as he perceives it : and it is for that reason that, on pi. VI, 6, he interrupts the combing of his master's long hair. King Makhad^va, although he still has 84.000 years to live, abdicates at once in favour of his
56 JATAKAS AT BARHUT
son — apparently the third person in the scene — and retires to lead in his own park of mango-trees the ascetic life.
XXIV. Another time he does not wait so long to abandon his throne, and he is still in full youth when he yields place to his youngest brother (Jdt. i8i ; Mahdvastu, II, 73). The jealousy and suspicions of the latter soon force him to go into exile, and, thanks to his talent as an archer, he earns his living in the service of a neighbouring king. The bas- relief represents this Asadisa at the moment when, by means of an arrow skilfully shot, he gathers for his master a mango from the very top of a high tree (Cunningham, XXVII, 13). The continuation ofthe story makes him again protect his ungrateful brother against the seven hostile princes who were besieging him, and finally he enters — or rather, according to the Indian expression, he « departs » — into religion.
XXV. Once even it is from his earliest infancy that he gives evidence of his resolution to know nothing of this world, and he feigns to be dumb, deaf and para- lyzed (/flL 538). In vain are many experiments tried to prove him ; neither privations nor dehcacies, nor toys, nor noises, nor lights, nor fear, nor suffering, nor (when he is nearly sixteen years old) voluptuous temptations can draw from him a gesture, a cry, or any sign whatever of sensibility or intelligence. That is why you see him lying so stiff in the lap of his father, the king of Benares (pi. V, 6). The latter ends by becoming weary of such a son, and orders his chariot-driver to take him out of the town and bury him, dead or alive. Thus, at the bottom, we see Prince Semiya standing near an empty quadriga, whilst on the right the driver is busy with a hoe, hollowing out a grave. However, the prince suddenly decides to move and speak :
JATAKAS AT BARHUT 57
but when his father, informed by the driver, runs up with his suite, full of joy, it is only to find him already trans- formed by the providential intervention of the king of the gods into an ascetic, and sitting in the shadow of the trees of his hermitage: and this forms the subject of the third and last episode, on the right top border of the medallion.
The texts specify elsewhere that in this last existence the Bodhisattva had realised the perfection of « determination » , in the hfe of Vidhura (XXII) that of « wisdom », in that of Mahajanaka (XIX) of « heroism », in that of the ascetic with the lotus stems (XV) of « detachment », in that of the king of the monkeys (X) of « truth », in that of the stag (VIII) and the elephant with six tusks (VI) of « gene- rosity » ; and we know from a detached fragment that at Barhut also was seen the birth in which, under the name of Prmce Vi^vantara, he attained by the gift of his goods, his children and even his wife, the acme of « charity ». Thus we recognize on our bas-reliefs some of the most celebrated jdtakas; and of the ten cardinal virtues only « patience » , « benevolence » and « equanimity » are not represented by name. Further, we must not forget that the researches of Cunningham have collected scarcely more than a third of the railing : the rest had been carried away and destroyed by neighbouring villagers, and this van- daUsm justifies the precaution, taken by the English archaeo- logist, of transporting all that had survived to the Museum at Calcutta. Inversely, it is only right that I should warn you that we are far from having identified all the bas-rehefs which have been exhumed. We might draw up another list, almost as long, of those which still await (the greater number, but not all, for want of an inscription) a satisfactory explana- tion. Some motifs are evidently taken from jdtakas not to be
58 jAtakas at barhut
read in the Pali collection : and this is a salutary warning to us that the latter, considerable though it may be, is far from being complete. Besides, we might have drawn atten- tion in passing to a number of discordances in detail, as regards the treatment of subjects certainly identified, be- tween the prose part of this collection and the bas-reliefs, whilst we have remarked the almost literal harmony between a lapidary inscription and the text of one of the versified refrains known under the popular title of gdthd ('). But these are remarks which are of interest chiefly to specialists, I would mention only one point, namely, that they autho- rize us to believe that the sculptors of Barhut worked not in accordance with a given text, as did those of Boro- Budur, but according to a living tradition, as it echoed in their memory or was transmitted among them.
I will add that they worked also according to nature : you have been enabled to judge for yourselves of their ho- nest care for true detail. Each photographic reproduction of their works has shown you, as through a window opening upon the past, the costumes, weapons, tools, furniture and vehicles employed in India two thousand years ago ; and thus in one hour they have given you through your eyes more concrete ideas about that civilization than you would have been able to acquire in a year's reading. But the greatest service that they have rendered us — for from it flow all the others — was when they carried their foresight to the point of engraving by the side of the majority of their com- positions the titles of the subjects which they had intended to represent. What gratitude ought we not to feel towards them for that just distrust of their own talent, so rare among artists! It has given us the key to ancient Indian
(i) See below some remarks on the Saddatiia-jdtaka (Essay VII).
JATAKAS AT BARHUT 59
art. So much modesty, sincerity and conviction, do they not go far towards making up for the lack of technical skill? I am sure you will not be severe towards them in this respect : and if these fables, these fabliaux and mora- lities, have interested your eyes no less than your ears, you will thank not only the narrators of them, but also the worthy old image-makers of India.
PLATES V-VI
The Barhut sculptures here reproduced are borrowed, with the permission ofthe Secretary of State for India, from the beautiful publi cation of General A. Cunningham, The StUpa of Bharhut (London, 1879).
PI. V. I (C, pi. XXVI, s) : 2 (C, pi. XXVII, 9) : » 3 (C, pi. XXV, i) :
4 (C, pi. XXXIII, 4)
5 (C, pi. XXV, 3) :
6 (C. pi. XXV, 4):
PL VI. I (C, pi. XLVI, 8) : » 2(C.,pl.XLV, 5):
>, 3 (C, pi. XLVI, 2) :
,, 4(C.,pl. XLVIII,7):
5(C.,pl. XLIV, 2): „ 6(C.,pI. XLVIII, 2):
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JATAKAS AT BARHUT
PL. V
IN MEDALLIONS
JATAKAS AT BARHUT
PL. VI
«?-.'r:S|nwilET5»Wrw(^riD«r' CTrar-.'ri^' f*r>
ON THE RAIL COPING
The Eastern Gate of the Sanchi Stupa <*>
The visitor to the Indian Museum in London, the Musee Guimet in Paris, or the Museum fur Volkerkunde in BerHn, cannot fail to notice among the objects therein exhibited a monumental gate covered with bas-reliefs; but there is every chance in the world that he will confine himself to casting a quick, heedless glance towards it in passing. A reproduction of a remote Indian original, this moulding naturally cannot have any claim to speak to our European eyes or to awaken in our minds the remem- brance of any traditional legend. But then let us bring before it any native of India; he will remain as puzzled and, if he is candid, as silent as we. Do not, however, hastily conclude from this that these sculptures have never had any meaning for anyone, because to-day their compatriots themselves no longer understand anything about them. Only imagine a similar experiment to be tried with us, and that we were set down, for example, before one of the porches of the cathedral of Chartres ; how many would be able to read without preparation in the magnificent illustrated Bible so suddenly opened before them ? You know that in the eighteenth century no one would have been found capable of this : and in the nine- teenth it required a whole phalanx of patient investigators to rediscover the lost meaning of the scenes and figures painted on the windows, or carved under the vaults, by
(i) Lecture at the Musde Guimet, in Bibliolheque de Vulgarisation du Musee Guimet, vol. XXXIV, 1910.
5
62 EASTERN GATE OF SANCHl
our image-makers of the Middle Ages. The conditions are exactly the same for this. Gate of Sanchi; with time the subject of its bas-reliefs has ended by becoming, even for the descendants of those who once built or carved it, a veritable enigma. I invite you to join me in investigating its meaning.
I will add that, disagreable or not, this research is a kind of obligation, which we may no longer with decency shirk. It was in fact the original building, and not the reproduction, that just missed coming to Paris. In 1867-8 the Begum of Bhopal was instigated to o£Fer to the Emperor of the French one of the four great gates of the stupa of Sanchi, that is to say, a portion of the most beautiful, and even of the unique architectural whole that we have retained from Ancient India. The Begum, indifferent, desired nothing better; but the English resident intervened, and this act of vandalism — we are all the more ready after this lapse of time to designate it as such, since the project fell through — was fortunately notperpetrated('). However, the Anglo-Indian government understood that there were there archaeological remains capable of arousing the interest of artists and scholars. From 1 869 it caused to be executed at great cost several mouldings of the eastern gate, one of the only two which had remain- ed standing; and with great Kberality it divided them between London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Berlin, Paris, etc. The one which fell to our share had already known some vicissitudes, till at last it found an asylum — if not a shel- ter — in the courtyard of the Mus^e Guimet. On the other hand, this costly and somewhat embarrassing present
(i) See RoDSSELET, rinde des Rajahs, pp. 522-25 and cf. H. Cole, Great Buddhiit Tope at Sanchi, introd. (Tope is the Anglo-Indian equivalent of the Sanskrit siupd) .
EASTERN GATE OF SANCHl 63
has not yet been made in France the object of any special study. It is this too prolonged neglect that we are about to endeavour to repair.
I
The Great Sdnchi Stiipa.— The numerous ruins which are scattered over the environs of the village of Sanchi-Kana- keda (in Sanskrit Kakanada), near to Bhilsa, are situated right in the heart of Central India, on the ancient commer- cial highway between Pataliputra (lla/aioepa, Patna), the capital of the Maurya emperors, and Bharukaccha (Bapjvavz, Bharotch or Broach) by way of Ujjayini ( 'OCVij Ujjain). Sanchi has now become a station of the Indian Midland Railway, and the expresses stop there by request to set down a few tourists. But it is doubtless to the abandonment of the ancient route and to the subsequent thinning of the population that the ancient Buddhist sanctuaries with which the rocky hill is crowned have owed their exceptional escape from the fanaticism of the Musalman invaders as well as the cupidity of the modern Hindus. Whilstat 300 kilometres to the North-East the contemporary and quite analogous stupa of Barhut, with which we shall so often have to compare it, had been three parts destroyed by the villagers of the neighbourhood, who made a business of exploiting it, the principal monument at Sanchi was still in an excellent state of preservation when it was visited for the first time, in 1818, by General Taylor and described in 181 9 by Captain Fell. In compensation, it had much to suffer three years later from the brutal excavations inflicted upon it, without mercy for art and without profit to science, by some English
64 EASTERN GATE OF SANCHl
amateurs Q). From 1881 to 1883 the Archaeological Department exerted itself to repair as well as possible this grievous devastation. They closed up the enormous, gaping breach, which had been made in one third of the central dome, under pretext of ascertaining whether it weresolidor hollow; they reerected (placing, it is true, several of the lintels so as to face backwards and overlooking in the debris some fragments of the jambs) the southern and western gates, the second of which had fallen only under the weight of the rubbish thoughtlessly thrown upon it; finally, with a zeal almost excessive, they cleared the whole site, without sparing a single tree. Fig. i in pi. VII, a kind of horseback view taken from the east in the rising sun , will explain to you better than long descriptions the state and general aspect of the building Q.
Like every old stupa, it is composed essentially of a massive hemispherical dome, raised upon a pediment likewise circular, which was reached by a flight of steps. The whole was made of bricks covered with a stone facing, which in its turn was overlaid with a thick layer of mortar, still existing in places. The terrace, in this case 4^,25 high and 1^,70 wide, served evidently as a promen- ade for the perambulations of the faithful. The dome — a kind of giant reliquary, though in the particular case the deposit of rehcs has never been discovered — measures 1 2™, 80 in height, with a diameter of 3 2"^, 30. The only element to-day lacking to this developed tumulus is the architectural motif which served as a crown : but in thought
(i) On all these points, see the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, III, 1834, p. 489, and IV, 1835, p. 712.
(2) I owe the communication of this photograph and the following ones to the kindness of Mr. J. H. Marshall, the distinguished Director General of Arch£eology in India.
EASTERN GATE OF SANCHl 65
it is easy to complete the whole by the aid of the bas-reliefs (see pi. VII. 2). They frequently reproduce the character- istic silhouette of this pinnacle, with the honorific parasol surmounting it, which must have raised the total height to about 25 metres.
According to the invariable custom in India this sanctuary is surrounded by a stone railing, which protec- ted It from profanation, and which, in spite of its massive weight, is evidently an imitation of a wooden fence. In form slightly oblong, it measures across from east to west 43'", 60, and from north to south i" 10 more, in order to leave room for the flight of steps. In the uprights, 3™, 10 high, were fixed with mortises and tenons three cross-bars and one coping, the latter o™, 68 high. Atthefour cardinal points an opening was arranged in such a way that the breach was not apparent to the eye, masked as it was in each case by a double elbow in the enclosure. When it was thought to add fronting doors to these slanting entrances, it was necessary to attach the right jamb of each of these latter to the raifing by a joint at right angles : in this way were formed four rectangular vestibules, shut in at the sides, and with the front and back faces corres- ponding alternately as regards rail and opening.
These four gates, or toranas, of almost unvarying dimen- sions and arrangements, are likewise the work of carpenters rather than of masons; and it is even surprising that they should have had the boldness to execute them in stone. They rest on two square pillars, o™,68 broad, 4 metres in height, with an interval of 2'^",i5. These two jambs are surmounted by two great capitals, i"S2 5 in height and decorated in one case with dwarfs, in another with lions, and in two with elephants. These latter in their turn support no less than three lintels slightly curved, projecting
66 EASTERN GATE OF SANCHl
on the two sides, these lateral projections becoming smaller and smaller, doubtless in order to accentuate the impres- sion of height in the whole (cf. pi. VIII, i). The entire construction attains a height of about lo metres, without reckoning the mystic symbols at the summit. Caryatides of a fairly successful outline connect the outer side of the capitals with the first architrave; other figures of men, women, horses with their riders, elephants with their drivers formerly adorned the spaces of the blocks which separate the lintels. It should be remarked at once that these statues are almost the only pieces of sculpture finished in full relief that ancient India has bequeathed to us; most frequently the images even of divinities, such as those which here decorate the bases of the uprights, were not entirely detached from the stone whence the artists' chisel had elicited them. Then again, lintels, coins and jambs have all their visible faces covered with bas-reliefs. The question is to discover what these sculptures repre- sent.
II
Means of Identification. — At first sight the problem seems to be susceptible of the most simple solution. In fact one sees almost everywhere graffiti, deeply incised in the ancient Indian alphabet, which, like ours, reads from left to right; it seems then that we have only to come close and decipher them . But, in proportion as we advance in this task, our hope of finding the kind of information which we are seeking diminishes. All that we can learn from each of the circa 375 inscriptions cut in the railing and in the gates (') is
(i) These inscriptions have last been studied by G. Buhler in Epi'- graphia Indica, vol II, pp. 87 sqq. ; 366 sqq.
EASTERN GATE OF SANCHl 67
that a certain individual or a certain guild made a gift of such and such an upright or cross-bar, in short, of the piece on which, precisely in order that no one might be ignorant of the fact, they have taken care to have their names inscrib- ed. As a type we may take the one displayed right in the middle of the facade of the left jamb of the eastern gate ; it tells us simply :
Korarasa Ndgapiyasa Jcchdvadesethisa ddnam thabo : « (This) « pillar (is the) gift of the banker of Acchavada, Nagapiya, (c a native of Kurara ».
Certainly these indications are far from being entirely devoid of interest. First of all, they tell us that, if not the monument itself, at least its enclosure was built by public subscription, whh special approprintion of the contribu- tions, as in certain modern religious foundations. Moreo- ver these votive and somewhat ostentatious epigraphs enlighten us indirectly on many points — for example, as regards the social condition of the individual subscribers, who nearly all belong to the middle class, merchants and bankers, the class from which the Buddhist laity were most freely recruited; or again, concerning the details of the artistic execution, as when one of the jambs of the southern gate is given us as an offering in kind, the chef-d'oeuvre, and at the same time the ex-voto, of the carvers in ivory of the neighbouring town of Vidi^a; or lastly, concerning the date of the sculptures, which the incidental mention on this same gate of the reigning king Satakani allows us to connect with the second, or first, century before the Christian era. But, as regards the subject of the scenes represented, the inscriptions and their engravers are aggra- vatingly silent. Evidently the sculptors of Sanchi, as a means ofensuring at all periods the comprehension of their work, counted on their artistic talent as illustrators; wherein
68 EASTERN GATE OF SANCHl
they showed themselves much less far-seeing and less mo- dest than their confreres who had just decorated the balus- trade of Barhut, and who had| not considered it futile to engrave on the stone the titles of their bas-reliefs.
It is as well to state at once that an analogy with a later and well-known motif, a characteristic detail awakening the remembrance of a text, a determinate number of objects forming a traditional group, all these helps and others besides would, no doubt, in the end have opened a way to the interpretation of some of the Sanchi panels ; but it is doubtful if these isolated discoveries would ever have gone beyond the stage of ingenious hypotheses, or have deserved to be looked upon as anything but jeux d'esprit. If in this matter we are able to arrive at certainties of a scien- tific character, we owe it to the worthy image-makers of Barhut. It is they who, thanks to the perfectly explicit indications which they themselves have transmitted to us on the subject of their compositions, have furnished us with a key to ancient Buddhist art ('). In the case of Sanchi, where we have to explain a monument closely connected in spirit, as in space and time, with Barhut, it may easily be conceived that these precious and trustwor- thy data will necessarily be our first and constant resource. While forming a fund of interpretation acquired in advance, they will at the same time furnish a firm starting point for fresh research; for we may expect that one identification will lead to another, and that the panels will mutually explain each other, were it only by reason of their proximity. On the whole, we must not despair of seeing the majority of these pictures in stone come to life by degrees under an attentive gaze; and, thanks to their
(i) See above, Essay II, p. 29.
EASTERN GATE OF SANCHl 69
expressive mimicry, they will end by making, us under- stand the message which it was their mission to transmit to posterity .
Ill
^ Decorations, images and symbols. — If we approach in a prac- tical manner the task thus defined, it will immediately appear to us that we could not have entirely dispensed with the information, or the confirmations, furnished by the written evidence of Barhut, except so far as concerns the purely decorative bas-reliefs. It is a matter of course that the natural intelligence is always and every- where sufficient to understand the sense and appreciate the aesthetic value of motifs designed solely for the pleasure of the eyes. Nothing is more simple than to classify these ornaments into different categories, according as they are borrowed from the fauna, flora, or the architec- ture, either local or foreign. Our archaeological knowledge will not need to be very extensive in order to enable us to recognize the Iranian origin of a certain number of them, lions or winged griffins, bell-shaped capitals surmounted by two animals set back to back, honey-suckle palmettes, merlons, serrated ornamentation, etc. We shall find, on the contrary, a smack of the Indian soil in the balustrade ornaments, in the horse-shoe arches, in the garlands of lotuses, or even in the elephants so ingeniously sketched according to nature. But neither these identifications, which are within the reach of children, nor those more learned distinctions tell us anything whatever concerning the scenes any more than concerning the idols to which after all these decorations only serve as a framework.
From the first moment that we find ourselves in the presence of our fellow-creatures the problem of iden-
70 EASTERN GATE OF SANCHl
tification becomes infinitely more complicated. Even as re- gards isolated persons we cannot content ourselves, as in the case of animals, with a simple designation of species. We must at least discern their real nature, whether human or divine; next, try to determine their social rank on earth or in heaven ; then finally, if possible, assign a proper name to each. It is a great deal to ask. Certainly we have very little difficulty in recognizing in a frequent feminine figure, seated on a lotus and copiously doused by two elephants, the prototype of the modern representations of Qn, the Hindu Goddess of Fortune ('). On the other hand, we should scarce] v have known what to say concerning the beautiful ladies who connect the jamb with the first lintel, if it were not that we find them again on the Barhut pillars. They have retained, here as there, in addition to their opulent charms and somewhat scanty costume, their eminently plastic pose, and they continue, as is written, « to bend their willow-forms Hke a bow » and « to lean, holding a mango- bough in full flower, displaying their bosoms like golden jars » QBuddhacarita, II, 52 and IV, 35, trans. Cowell). But there, in addition to what we have here, they bear also a little label which teaches us to see in them, instead of simple bayaderes, divinities, of an inferior order, it is true, belonging to those whom we should call « fairies ». At the same time, in the lay persons
(i) See below, Catalogue, § 4 (?. This resemblance does not at all prove that ■we have already to do with the goddess ^ri. The frequency of this figure at Sanchi, where it recurs as many as 9 times (see above, p. 18, n. i), the manner of its juxtaposition to the Bodhi-tree, the Wheel of the Law, and the Stupa of the Parinirvdna suggest, on the contrary, that we are dealing ■with a symbolical representation of the Nativity, when the two Ndgas (here elephants; see below, p. 109), simultaneously bathed the mother and the unseen child. Accordingly, this scene should have been cited and dis- cussed above, p. 20, had we not preferred to neglect for the moment s hypothesis still awaiting verification.
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who, upright at the foot of the jambs, reveal to us fortheir part the mascuhne fashions of Central India in the centu- ries immediately preceding our era (pi. VIII, 2), we learn to recognize demi-godsand genii, guardians of the four entran- ces to the sanctuary, as also of the four cardinal points (*). Elsewhere, as we have said, numerical considerations may sometimes point out the way of interpretation. Let us take the right (or north) jamb of the eastern gate. Its facade is divided into panels, in each of which a god, if we may judge by his attributes, is seen seated, like an Indian king, in the midst of his court. Each of these compositions taken by itself tells us absolutely nothing : but, if we set aside for a while the last terrace, we ascertain that there are six of these compartments... This number alone is a flash of hght; and Prof. A. Griinwedel needed nothing further to lead him to conjecture with infinite probability that here we see, arranged one above another on this pillar, the first six stories of the 27-storied paradise of Bud- dhism, — the only ones, moreover, which belong to the domain of sensual pleasures and consequently to that of our senses. It is with difficulty that we are able to discern also, on the balcony of the highest terrace, half-length figures of the Gods in the heaven of Brahma, who belong to already another sphere ; one step higher, the superior divinities, like Dante's souls in paradise who have become pure lights, escape by definition the scope of the plastic arts. The identification justifies itself, then, admirably, and it is confirmed even by the uniformity and banahty of the scenes : for we know very well that, if the torments of hell are usually very varied, there is, according to the
(i) See below, Catalogue, § i fc and 9 fl, and ct. Cdnn(Ngham, Barhut. pi. XXI-XXIII.
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representations which have been attempted, nothing more monotonous than the happiness of the heavens. However, the hypothesis becomes quite convincing only after a com- parison with inscribed pictures of the paradise of the Thirty- three Gods at Barhut (').
One other example is from this point ot view still more characteristic. On the posterior frontal of this same gate (pi. VII, 2) is figured a row of vacant thrones under trees, between human and divine worshippers. They were coun- ted. There are seven of them : and thereupon an expert student of Buddhism, the Rev. S. Beal, had not been long in rediscovering in the legend of the Master seven miraculous trees : unfortunately it would be easy to enumerate still more of them. The analogy of certain series in Gan- dhara or at Ajanta would to-day furnish a much more satisfactory explanation by suggesting that it was a symbolical manner of representing the seven traditional Buddhas of our aeon, the last being ^akya-Muni. But you perceive that this conjecture would remain sus- pended literally in the air... Well, the inscribed bas-reliefs of Barhut have made it a certainty. In fact, they show us in succession all these same trees, of easily recognizable species, above these same seats of stone, between these same worshippers ; but in this case each of them bears as on a label the name of the Buddha whose memory it evokes ; and thus we can no longer doubt that the intention of the old image-makers was indeed to represent the seven Enhghtened Ones of the past by the seven trees under which they sat in order to attain to enlightenment (^).
(i) See below, Catalogue, § 6, and cf. Cunningham, Barhut, pi. XVI, i, and XVII, i, and Fergusson, Tree and Serpent Worship, pi. XXX, i.
(2) See below, Catalogue, § 10 b, and cf. Cunningham, ibid., pi. XXIX- XXXand Fergusson, ibid., pi. IX and Xa (medial lintel of the north gate).
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You perceive already, and we may resume in a single sentence, the immediate consequences of this important observation. Following always the same trail, we shall learn to recognize after the symbolism of the tree, which betokens Buddha's attainment of Sambodhi, that of the wheel, which signifies his preaching, and finally that of the stnpa or tumulus, which is the emblem of his Parinirvdm. A comparison with the stelae on which the old school of Amaravati in Southern India was pleased to group the representations of the « four great miracles » will finally settle our ideas on all these points ('). At the same time we shall not only have identified roughly a good half of the Sanchi bas-reliefs ; we shall moreover be sufficiently fami- liarized with the secrets of the studio to be able to approach with some chance of success the interpretation of the remainder of the works.
IV
The Legendary Scenes. — Kindly bethink yourselves that in fact the Acquisition of Omniscience, the First Sermon and the Final Decease are, with the Nativity or the Voca- tion, the four chief episodes of the Buddhist legend. Now it is scarcely necessary to say that all the scenes at Sanchi are dedicated solely to the illustration of this legend. In their chronological order they will be divided naturally into three categories, according as their sub- ject is borrowed from the previous lives, from the last life, or from times subsequent to the definitive death of the Blessed One.
(i) See above, pi. II.
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To begin with the past rebirths, it is sufficiently well known that these jdtakas, as the Indians call them, are the favourite subjects of the ancient sculptors of Barhut (') : and this time also we could not put ourselves to a better school to learn to read these riddles in stone. For we must constantly bear in mind that all these bas-reliefs are what our illustrators call a stories without words » : only, insteadof depicting the successive episodes in a series of dis- tinct pictures, the oldlndian masters, like those of our Middle Ages, did not shrink from placing the incidents in juxta- position or repeating the characters within one and the same panel. Once we are aware of this procedure, it is a mere pastime to explain their works and to follow the edifiying thread of the story through the appar- ent disorder of the actors and under the accumulation of genre details wherewith they like to crowd the subject. Let us add that the pastime is all the more attractive as, in spite of certain failings in technical skill, we cannot but admire the natural gifts of our sculptors (").
In the scenes of the last hfe of the Master we shall, of course, find employed the same method of composition. But there will be added to it another convention, a most unex- pected one, and one capable of completely baffling our researches, were it not that we have already been made aware of it; or rather, to employ a better expression, it is
(i) See above, Essay II.
(2) We have not noticed on the eastern gate any specimen oijdtaka ; but, in order that it may not be thought that they were excluded from the reper- tory of Sinchi, let us point out those of the elephant Saddanta on the pos- terior face of the middle lintel of the southern gate (Fergdsson, pi. VIII), of the rishi Eka?:ringa, recognizable at once by his one frontal horn, and of prince Vi^vantara on the lower lintel of the northern gate (Fergusson, pi. Xl-Xa and XXIV, 5), of the Mahakapi and vyama on the southern jamb of the western gate (Fergusson, pi. XVIII-XIX and XXXIV).
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not that some element comes into increase the pictorial com- plication of the scene; it is, on the contrary, something which is wanting in it, and that something is nothing less than the j&gure of the principal hero. In all these illustra- tions of the biography of Buddha we shall find everything that the author desires, except Buddha himself. It is already a good number of years since the inscribed bas- reliefs of Barhut, by informing us that a certain worshipper, on his knees before a vacant throne merely surmounted by a parasol or marked by a symbol, is in the act of « ador- ing the Blessed One », have placed beyond doubt this invariable and surprising abstenance. The Sanchi sculptures, which on the whole are better preserved, tell us more on this point than do the ruins of Barhut, From these latter we already knew that the ancient school of Central India had not at its disposal a type of the perfect Buddha : the facade of the middle hntel of our eastern gate, which represents the « Great Departure of the Bodhisattva » (pi. X, i), proves to us, in its turn, that it refrained no less rigorously from figuring the Predestined even before the Sambudhi, when it would have been so simple and so easy to lend him the usual features of Vigvantara or some other « crown prince ». We have here a new fact and one of prime im- portance in the limitedsphere of Buddhist archaeology. To the list of conventional representations of the Buddha by a throne of stone, the imprint of two feet, awheel or some other emblem, we must now add the no less strange representation of the Bodhisattva by a horse without a rider under an honorific parasol (').
(i) See below, Catalogue, § n a; cf. likewise, Cunningham, Barhut, pi. XX, I, and Fergusson, Tree and Serpent Worship, Amaravati, pi. XCVI, 3, etc. These are precisely the facts of which we have sought in our first essay to explain the origin and significance.
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It is, however, episodes borrowed from the second part of the last existence of the Master that form|the bulk of the legendary scenes of Sanchi. The native artists did not, in fact, resign themselves to reproducing solely and always the same great miracles, symbolized by the tree, the wheel or the stupa : they have fulfilled their undertaking to illus- trate in detail the career of Buddha without figuring him- As if this prime difficulty were not enough, they imposed upon themselves a further one, which has not up to now been sufficiently emphasized ; we mean the law to which they submitted of not bringing on to the scene any among the disciples but laymen or any among the monks but here- tics prior to their conversion. Thus they deliberately pro- posed to make us spectators of the Master's work, which consists essentially in the foundation of a monastic order, not only without our seeing the founder, but even without our catching a glimpse of a single Buddhist monk. When we observe the ingenuity which they have displayed in the accomplishment of this unpromising programme, we can- not too much regret the narrow limits within which they have restricted themselves. The eastern gate, to speak only of this one, does not Umit itself to showing us typical speci- mens of this art, at once so natural and so distorted. The pan- els of the southern jamb supply us in addition with a charac- teristic example of the manner in which, as we have indica- ted, they explain by their propinquity each another. On the interior face (pi. IX, i) Beal had already recognized, and verified more or less satisfactorily in detail, three distinct phases of the conversion of the thousand Brahmanic ancho- rites, disciples of the three brothers Ka^yapa. Prof. Griinwe- del has included in the same series of wonders the picture of the inundation, which occupies the centre of the front face. Henceforth we believe it impossible not to conclude this
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series, in accordance with a fixed tradition, by recognizing in the king just below, who is leaving his capital to pay a visit to the Blessed One, Bimbisara. the famous sovereign of the neighbouring town ofRaiagriha(Rajgir) and thefahhful friend of the Master. There remains now at the top of this same face a representation of the Sambodhi : if we reflect that the site of this miracle, namely Bodh-Gaya, is likewise very near to Uruvilva (Urel), where all the episodes of the conversion of the Kacyapas take place, we shall be at last successful in penetrating the really very simple plan of the artist : whether on his own initiative, or in conse- quence of the express command of the banker Nagapiya, his intention was evidently to group on the same jamb legen- dary events localized in the same district of the country of Magadha (').
However well the Indian school proper may have been served in its ungrateful entreprise by the monotonous character of this perpetual course of visits and preaching, of conversions and offerings, which forms the career of Buddha, it is self-evident that its system of composition accommodated itself infinitely better to subjects subsequent to the Parinirvdna, the only ones in which the absence of the Master's figure became quite plausible. If its regular development had not been very soon interrupted by the adoption of the Indo-Greek type of Buddha, which came from the north-west of India, it would probably have been led by the natural course of things to assign a growing importance to this sort of historical pictures, side by side with the pictures of piety. Therefore, we do not hesi-
(i) See below, Catalogue, § 8 et 9; also the interior face of the nor- thern pillar of the same gate is consecrated to Kapilavastu (Cat. § 7), the front face of the eastern pillar of the northern gate to the Jetavana of Qrivasti (Fergusson, pi. Xand XI), etc.
6
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tate to recognize at once a few attempts of this kind at Sanchi, notably among the bas-reliefs which are freely dis- played over the whole width of the lintels. It is scarcely necessary to state that these scenes are not less legendary in fact, or less edifying in intention, than the others. We shall recall, first of all, on the southern gate that vivid represen- tation of the famous war of the relics, which by an ironical return of the things of this world came near to being preci- pitated by the death of the Apostle of Benevolence. We know that fortunately it was averted ('): the « Seven before Ku^inagara » at last obtained from the inhabitants of the town a portion of the ashes of the Blessed One; and each of these eight co-sharers, keeping his portion or carrying it in triumph to his native land, built a stupa in its honour. It was these eight original deposits — or rather seven of them — that towards the middle of the third century B. C. the famous Acoka, piously sacrilegious, violated, with the sole aim of distributing their contents among the innum- erable Buddhist sanctuaries which were then beginning to be scattered all over India. As to the eighth, that of Rama- grama, it seems to have been already lost in the jungle ; and a well-known tradition (although not known to be so ancient) will have it that in regard thereto the royal pilgrim was confronted by the courteous, but definite refusal of the Nagas, who were its guardians. Now such, surely, is the spectacle offered to us, a century after the event, by the
(i) See Fergusson, pi. VII et XXXVIII (and comp. western gate, iMd.. pi. XVIII et XXXVIII, 2) : this scene was originally carved on the face of the lower lintel, and such is indeed the position assigned to it by the drawino- of Cole, reproduced by Frrgusson ; but in the restoration this lintel a nd the higher one were replaced back to front. — It was the same with the three lintels of the western gate : on the other hand Cole had in his drawing inverted the order of the first and the third.
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central lintel of this very southern gate ('). A hundred years are amply sufficient, especially in India, to create a complete cycle of legends. Reflect, on the other hand, that at a few paces from the future site of the gate A?oka had already caused his famous « edicts » to be engraved upon a column. According to all probability the erection of this column was contemporary with the building of the stupa, which may very well be one of the « 84.000 » reli- gious foundations ascribed to the devout emperor. Finally, we have reasons for thinking that the latter had remain- ed a kind of local hero in the district : at least it is in the immediate neighbourhood of Sanchi that the Mahd- vamsa places the romance of his youth with the beautiful daughter of a rich citizen of Besnagar. All this may help us to understand that two other pseudo-historic scenes on our eastern gate may in the same way be borrowed from his cycle. The one on the reverse side of the lower lintel (pi. VII, 2) must have some connection with the Ramagrama stupa, if it is not simply another version of the legend which we have just cited. As for the other on the front of the same block, we cannot help believing that the solemn procession to the Bodhi tree (pi. X, 2) is the figured echo, if it is not the direct illustration, of a passage in the Agokavaddna Q^.
If at the point at which we have now arrived we cast a general glance over the gate which is the particular object of
(i) F:6rgusson, pi. VII; for the tradition compare Divyavadana, p. 380; Fa-hian, ch. xxin, and Hiuan-tsang, xi, 3'' Kingdom.
(2) See below, Catalogue, % 12 a and h, and cf. Divyavadana, p. 397 and sqq.
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our studies, we shall be as surprised as any one to observe that we are beginning to understand its mute language. There is now scarcely apart of it whose meaning or inten- tion escapes us, from the genii which mount guard at the foot to the Buddhist symbols which decorate the summit. We may, therefore, consider that we have accomplished the bulk of our task, and I shall confine myself in conclu- sion to endeavouring to unite your impressions : this will be the best way of summing up the various kinds of interest which these sculptures may present.
The keenest is to be found, perhaps — at least for those among us who have a taste for antiquity — in the very expressive and complete picture that they give us of the ancient civilization of India. Architecture both urban and rural, furniture, tools, weapons, instruments of music, standards, chariots, harness for horses and for elephants, costumes and ornaments for men and women etc., all these concrete and precise details merely await to be detached by a draughtsman, in order to serve as authentic illustrations to a future Dictionary of Indian antiquities. And side by side with this information, which is purely material, but in itself so precious, how much more may we gather concer- ning even the life of the courts, towns and hermitages, if we glance successively at these anchorites, so busy around their sacrificial fires (cf. further on, page 98) ; these women who attend to their domestic occupations (page 95) ; these kings seated in their palaces or proceeding with great pomp through the streets of their capitals, before the curious eyes of their subjects (pp. 91 and 93), etc. What is to be said then of the no less important information which these sculptures furnish concerning the external forms of worship and even of the beliefs, the features worn in popular imagi- nation by genii and fairies, as also concerning the manner
EASTERN GATE OF S^.NCHi 8 1
in which the reHgious conscience of the time conceived the written tradition of Buddhism!
But these are questions reserved for speciahsts, and, doubtless, many of you are more concerned for the aesthe- tic value, than for the documentary interest, of these old monuments. From this point of view you cannot have failed to appreciate the perfect naturalness of the artists who worked at them, and I do not hesitate to praise above all the justness of their observation — so remarkable espec- ially in their animals and trees — and the freedom of their execution, in spite of a certain clumsiness and a very par- donable ignorance oiour perspective. You divine also what a delicate problem is raised as to the determination of the exact place of their works in the general history of art. I do not think that anyone can reasonably contest the statement that this school ofBarhut and of Sanchi is a direct expres- sion of Indian genius, with all the spontaneousness and conventionality to be found in either. And in making this statement I am not thinking only of fundamentals, of the thoroughly indigenous character of the subjects which the art proposed to treat : even as regards its specially technical proceedings, that extremely deeply incised rehef, that cons- tant search tor swarming effects, that systematic over- crowding of the whole available space in the panel by acces- sory details, it is in the hereditary habits of the wood and ivory carvers of ancient India, not forgetting its gold- smiths, that I should seek their origin. But, if ancient Buddhist art is thus attached by all its roots to its native soil, we should have to be wilfully blind not to see the foreign shoots which have already ingrafted themselves on this wild stock. A quantity of decorative motives have appeared to us so directly borrowed from Persia that their importation can scarcely be explained otherwise than by
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an immigration of Iranian artisans. But this is not all : here and there, in bold foreshortenings, in the skilful plac- ing of three-quarter length figures, in the harmonious balancing of groups — in a word, in the detail of the work- ing process, as also in the general arrangement of the com- position — we detect growing traces of an influence more subtle and more difficult to disentangle, but incomparably- more artistic, which in fact had by the vicissitudes of poli- tical history been brought much nearer, the influence of Hellenistic models. Moreover, we now know from a reliable source that this influence had already penetrated as far as there ; and the native artists of Vidiga could see quite close to their town the column which had been raised on behalf of a local rajah in the reign of the Indo-Greek king Antialkidas (about 175 B. C.) by the envoy Helio- doros, son of Dion, a native of Taxila (').
But, if these bas-rehefs have deserved to hold your atten- tion for an instant, it is not solely for what they teach us or inspire us with a desire to know of the civilization and art of India : it is also and especially for the curious com- parisons with our own religious art to which they lend themselves. You have surely observed among them an employment of symbols, in every way analogous to that exhibited by the first Christian artists of the Catacombs at a time when they also had not at their disposal an universally accepted image of the Saviour. The parallelism of the two developments might be pursued still further : and later on, when in both cases the type of the Master had been defini- tely fixed, it would be no less easy to find in Buddhist tra- dition written evidence of the tendency, so well known to
(i) The quite recent discovery ot this inscribed pillar is due to Mr. J. H. Marshall, J. R. A. S. 1909, p. 1053.
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US, to authenticcite the resemblance, as if it were a question of a portrait made from a living model. Another feature which you must also have noticed in passing is the narra- tive character of the bas-reliefs, forthwith employed to relate edifying stories; and it will not have escaped you either that we find again on the altar screens of the Middle Ages, and even on certain panels of the first Renaissance — for example on those with which Ghiberti decorated the doors of the Baptistery at Florence — the same procedures of juxtaposition ot episodes and repetition of persons which were already in use at Bjirhut and at Sanchi. Thus these old monuments, in exchange for the trouble which we have taken to become familiar with them, offer us ample mate- rial for comparisons of an interest more general and more closely connected with us than we could have expected. It is of this that I wished in conclusion to remind you as a com- pensation for the perhaps rather too technical subject which circumstances, as told in our preamble, have im- posed upon us.
SECOND PART
SUMMARY CATALOGUE OF THE SCULPTURES
[We have not deemed it necessary to encumber this short notice with a detailed account of the more or less suc- cessful attempts which have already been made whh a view to the interpretation of the sculptures of Sanchi. The princi- pal publication treating of them, after the first essay of Cunningham, The Bhilsa Topes (London, 1854), is that of Fergusson, Tree and Serpent- Worship (2^ ed., London, 1873 , reproducing the identifications proposed by Beal, Journ. of the Roy. As. Soc.new series. V, 1871, pp. 164 and sqq.) :
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but the photographs, ahhough annotated by numerous drawings, are almost unusable, because their scale has been too much reduced, and the text, ruined by strange theories, has lost nearly all value. The same remarks apply to the photographs of Sir Lepel Griffin, Famous Monuments of Central India, and of H. Cole, Preservation of National Monuments, India : Great Buddhist Tope atSdnchi (1885), and to the text of F- C Maisey, Sdnchi and its remains (Lon- don, 1892). Fortunately the moulding of the eastern gate, given to the « Museum fiir Volkerkunde » in Berlin, attracted in a very special manner the attention of Profes- sor Griinwedel in Chapter V of his celebrated Handhuch {Euddhistische Kunst inlndien, 2^ ed., Berlin, 1900; revised and enlarged by Dr. J. Burgess, Buddhist Art in India, Lon- don, 1902, particularly pp. 72-74). We are in perfect agreement with the eminent archaeologists of Edinburgh and Berlin as regards the method to be followed : at the same time, we must warn the reader once for all that on several points we have arrived at conclusions somewhat different from theirs. If this treatise marks any progress whatever in the interpretation of the Sanchi bas-reliefs, it is entirely due to the excellent direct photographs which Mr. J. H. Marshall has put at our disposal.]
The sculptures which cover from top to bottom the eas- tern gate of the stiipa of Sanchi may be divided into two great categories, the decorative elements and the Buddhist scenes. In reality the line of demarcation between these two orders of subjects is at times very difficult to trace. Many of the so-called ornaments have a traditional symbo- lical value, and, on the other hand, a great number of the edifying representations tend to pure decoration. The distinction is justified, however, in practice. We shall avoid many useless repetitions, if we decide to classify
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in the first category all those motifs whose character, being before all ornamental, is sufficiently emphasized by the fact that they are symmetrically repeated on the beams or the uprights of the stone scaffolding which constitutes the torana (cf. above, pp. 65-6).
THE DECORATIVE ELEMENTS
§ I. Decoration of the jambs. — Thus itisthatthe two jambs of the gate, that of the north and that of the south, — or more simply, of the right and left as you enter, — bear on two of their faces motifs which are evidently complemen- tary.
a) Their o«/er face is simply decorated with those pink lotus flowers {padma or nelumbum speciosuni), which, as we know, play a considerable part in Indian ornamentation and symbolism. To the right a series of full-blown roses is enclosed within two waved garlands of these same flow- ers, graced with buds and leaves. To the left the principal subject consists of a similar garland, whose decoration changes likewise between each undulation of the chief branch : in addition Indian swans (hanisa') and a tortoise are intermingled whh the flowers.
b) In the two male figures placed opposite each other at the foot of the inner face oi the two jambs we must, from analogy with Barhut, recognize the protecting spirits of the eastern region, that is, the Gandharvas or celestial musicians, the chief of whom is Dhritarashtra (cf. above, p. 71). Nevertheless, they are presented simply under the appearance of great Indian lords, wearing turbans and adorned with heavy jewels, earrings, necklaces and bracelets of precious stones. The ends of their long loin-cloths hang in close little pleats in front; as for the second part of their costume, the scarf, whose usual function is to drape the
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body, they wear it negligently tied round their loins. The one holds up the ends of it with his left hand, whilst the other has placed his awkwardly on his hip (see pi. VIII, 2). The latter holds in his right hand a Bignonia flower, while the former has a lotus. Both are looking in the direction of the sanctuary, and are leaning against a background formed of a Bignonia in blossom and a mango- tree bearing fruit.
§ 2. Capitals. — The great capitals which surmount the two jambs of the eastern gate are decorated with tame ele- phants (pi. VIII, i). Four of these animals are placed very ingeniously about each pillar in such a way that their heads form a round embossement to the four edges of the corners. Their harness consists of a rich head-stall (from which hang in front of the ears two pendants of pearls, and behind two bells) and a tasselled saddle-cloth, kept in its place by cords which pass under their bodies and form knots on their backs. The person of distinction was seated astride in the most comfortable place on their necks : holding in his hand the special crook (ahku^a^, he was his own driver : and, in fact, we know that in ancient India the art of driving elephants formed an integral part of a complete education. Right on the elephant's hind quarters crouches a standard-bearer, who doubtless, in the case of a rapid motion, held on to the knot of the belly-band. As for the elephants themselves with their trunks and one of their fore-feet slightly bent back, they are, as usual, admirably rendered. Formal leaves and flowers decorate the upper part of the capitals. An inscrip- tion on the inner face of that to the left invokes imprecations on whosoever shall remove a single stone of the gate or the railing. As regards the two caryatids, see below, § 5 fl.
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§ 3 . Decoration of the lintels. — The three lintels likewise repeat on both their faces several symmetrical forms of decoration.
rt) On the fagade (pi. VIII, i) we shall note first three kmds of false capitals, of a character quite Iranian, which, contmuing the two uprights, break through each lintel. On the two lower ones the decorative designs consist of winged lions, two of which are seated back to back, while a third protrudes its head and two front-paws through the space between them. On the topmost one they consist of two great fully harnessed draught oxen, likewise seated back to back, but furthermore ridden by two men.
a) On the reverse side (pi. VII, 2) the corresponding sub- jects are in the same order : two pairs of goats, with or without horns; two pairs of two-humped camels, likewise seated; two pairs of horned lions, standing and passant. All these animals serve as steeds for riders of both sexes and of different types, nativeand foreign. One of those at the sum- mit has short hair, tied with a fillet, and carries in his left hand a piece of a vine-stock.
^) The extremities of the lintels are uniformly decora- ted both on the observe and on the reverse by a kind of long tendril, rolled seven times round itself and attached to the whole by an ornament of honeysuckle : this makes a total of twelve snails, and produces a somewhat unfortunate effect. If it were claimed that this is an attempt to imitate the Ionic volute, it would have to be acknowledged that it is inverted and executed in a most rudimentary fashion. c) The whole surface of the lintels unoccupied by these decorations is, as a general rule, consecrated to legendary scenes. There is, it seems, no exception to be made, except upon the facade and only on the projecting portions of the
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lower and middle lintels. The former are garnished with two pairs of peacocks — a triumph of graceful design, which is to be found also on the northern gate — and the latter by wild elephants.
§ 4. The supports. — We agree to designate by this term the four cubical blocks placed in the prolongations of the uprights and the six uprights set in between the three lin- tels to separate them from one another.
a) On the fagade (pJ. VIII, i) the lower support to the right and the upper one to the left both represent a feminine figure seated, with one leg hanging down, upon a lotus issuing from a lottery vase (bhadra-ghatd) : she holds in her hand this same flower, and on two other lotuses at either side of her two standing elephants douse her, or are in the attitude of dousing her, with two pitchers held at the ends of their trunks. We know that this motif is preserved even to our days in the representations of the Indian For- tune : but we have reasons for believing that this was not the original denotation ('). The subjects of the two other corresponding panels belong, in any case, to the category of Buddhist miracles. The one on the left represents the (c preaching of Buddha » by means of the Wheel of the Law placed on a throne under a parasol among the usual wor- shippers, human and divine. The one on the right shows us — as is proved by the characteristically twisted floweret of his tree, — the Messiah of Buddhism, Maitreya, symbo- lised by this campaka or ndga-pushpa {Michelia champaka or Mesua Roxhurghii).
a') On the reverse side of the gate (pi. VII, 2) the lower sup- ports are decorated only with lotuses issuing from a bha-
(i) See above, p. 70, n. i.
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dra-gbata; but the upper ones return to the legendary scenes with two stupas emblematic of the Parinirvdm of the Master, and quite similar to those on the front, of which, as we shall see below (§ lo a), they complete the number. h) One may connect with these the symbols on the front of the six uprights, symbols usually enclosed between a raihng and merlons : namely, formal Bodhi-trees and columns surmounted by the Wheel of the Law or by a lion simply.
b'} Behind they are all covered with the same ornamenta- tion, in which the lotus is united with the honeysuckle.
SS-The detached figures. — To exhaust the list of symmet- rical subjects, nothmg further remains for us than to enumerate the detached figures in full relief (cf. above, page 66, and pi. VIII, i).
a) The most interesting are the fees (^yakshini, cf. above, p. 70), who, with the curve of the mango-tree from which they hang by the two arms, form so ingeniously deco- rative a bracket. Only the figure on the right is preserved. Like the men, she wears a long dhoti; only it is made of a more transparent material. Her hair, curiously erected in the form of a brush on the top of the head, is spread over the back (instead of being gathered in a plait, as is the case, for instance, with the female dancers of § 6 a). In addition to earrings, necklace and bracelets for the wrists, she wears ankle-rings, which come nearly up to her knees, and the characteristic feature of an Indian woman's toilet, the rich belt of jewelry which covers the loins. In confor- mity with the custom of the ancient school, the sex is indicated.
b) The few smaller figures to be found on this gate — which we may complete in our thoughts by analogy
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with the northern gate — comprise also another fairy in a different pose, three elephants, in each case mounted by two persons, and a miserable vestige of a lion.
c) As for the symbols at the summit, they were three in number. At the top of each upright two, of which one is still in its place, represented the top of a flag-staff. In the middle — on a pedestal probably formed of four lions, flanked by two worshippers bearing fly-flappers — stood finally the ancient solar symbol of the wheel, placed at the service of the Good Law.
The Legendary Scenes.
After this rapid sketch of the decorative elements we enter upon a necessarily much more detailed examination of the religious scenes. For it is self-evident that it is emin- ently these that need explanation.
We will begin with those which are figured on the two faces, namely the front and the interior ones, which hold the place of honour in the jambs. We have already seen that their exterior faces bear only one decorative motif (§ I a). As regards their rear faces, they left no space above the balustrade, except for two little bas-reliefs, analogous to those which we have already noticed on the supports (cf. ^ 4 a and fl') : taken all together, they represent in the same stereotyped manner, by the pretended adoration of the tree, the wheel and the stupa, the three great traditional miracles of the Illumination, the Preaching, and the Death of Buddha.
§ 6. Front face of the right jamb. — This facade is decorated with four superposed buildings : the lower one has only one story; the middle ones have two, both covered with a rounded roof, in which are open bays in the shape of a
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horse-shoe; the top one has one story, surmounted by an uncovered terrace, which is surrounded on three sides by a group of buildings. It is difficult in the present state of the stone to judge of the distribution of the persons on the lower panel; but the five following ones, divided likewise into three compartments by columns with or without Persepohtan capitals, are all composed in the same manner. The centre is occupied by a divine personage, as is proved by the thunderbolt which he holds in his right hand and the vase of ambrosia in his left. God though he be, he is for the rest conceived in the image of an Indian king. Behind him stand the bearers of his parasol and fly-flapper, insignia of his royalty; on his right, in the same surroundings, but on a slightly lower seat, is his viceroy (upardjd). At his left are seen the musicians and dancers of his court. It is well known that this concert-ballet is according to Indian ideas the indispensable accompaniment of a happy mun- dane life. Indications of trees form the background. On the upper terrace, as on a balcony, lean two other gods, hkewise fanned by women.
We have enumerated above (p. /[) the reasons which miHtate in favour of the identification of this series of sto- ries with those of the Buddhist paradise. They would there- fore serve respectively as dwelHng-places,(i)for athe Four Great Kings », guardians of the four cardinal points (the necessity of housing all four of them would explain the absence of bayaderes in the compartment to the right of the lower panel, at the same time that their subordinate cha- racter would justify the line of demarcation traced by the roof of the palace between them and the following ones); — (2) for the Thirty-three Gods over whom Indra reigns, and (3) for those ruled by Yama; — (4) for the Satisfied Gods (Tushitd), among whom the Bodhisattva resided before
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his last re-descent upon earth; (5) for the Gods who dispose of their own creations; — (6) and finally, for those who even dispose of the creations of others, and whose king Mara, God of Desire and Death, extends his empire over the five lower heavens. As for the two persons on the terrace, they would represent the last divinities still visible to our human eyes, those of Brahma's world.
§ 7. Inner face of the right jamb. — This face, according to Fergusson, presents an exceptional interest, « being the only subject at Sanchi that we can, with certainty, attri- bute to Buddhism, as it is known to us ». To-day it is better known; but the representation, on the upper extremity of the middle bas-relief, of the « dream ot Maya », — other- wise, the « conception of the Bodhisattva », who descends into his mother's bosom in the form of a little elephant — remains certainly in this case the pivot of all identification. We know that this scene, so strange to our eyes, in which it is a pachyderm which plays the part of the dove in our « Annunciations », is itself certainly identified by the Bar- hut inscription : « The Descent of the Blessed One ». Consequently, we might be tempted to see in the upper bas-rehef a picture of the Bodhisattva in the heaven of the Tushita gods at the moment when he prepares to be born again in the royal family of Kapilavastu. But the sculptor prevents us from going astray in that direction by the care which he has taken to represent before and behind the empty throne obviously the same king and the same tree which we find again at the bottom of the lower panel. He could not more clearly indicate that he is referring us to the latter to find the solution of the enigma.
a) If we turn then to that (pi. IX, 2), we shall find, first of all, in the centre of the composition this same king, about
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to set out with great pomp from one of the gates of his good town of Kapilavastu. He is in his chariot, accompanied by the three usual servants, the driver, holding the reins and the whip, the parasol and fly-flapper bearers. As is cus- tomary, the horses, whose head-adornment is very high, have their long tails carefully tied up to the harness, doubtless in order that they may not inconvenience the occupants of the chariot. At their left the archers of the guard stand out along the ramparts of the city, and in front march the herald and the seven musicians of the royal orchestra, blowing oblique flutes and shells or beating drums. Behind we perceive, emerging from the streets of the town, a brilliant suite mounted on horses and ele- phants. Through the balconies of the verandas spectators, mostly women, protrude their heads, curious to see the procession of the feudal cortege of king ^uddhodana and his peers, the noble lords of the race of ^akya.
Where are they going? Not far, it seems, into a park near the town, where all have dismounted; and the first idea is that they are going to the famous park of Lumbini, theatre of the « Nativity » , which may be presaged by the scene (at the top of the panel) of the « Conception ». But there is nothing to corroborate this hypothesis. The king and the ^akyas appear indeed all occupied in contemplating with clasped hands some miraculous event: but their eyes are raised into the air, and the object towards which they are turned is a small rectangular slab, stretched exactly above their heads. It cannot take us long to recognize in this slab the a promenade of precious stone » (Skt. ratna-cahkramd) which Buddha created by magic « in the air », on the occa- sion of his first return to his native town of Kapilavastu (').
(i) Mahdvastu, III, p. 113; Commentary on the Dhammapada, ed. Fausb0ll, p. 334; Mahdvama, XXX, st. 81, etc.
7
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The legend is well known : on the occasion of this meeting between the father, who had remained a king, and the son, who had become Buddha, a most dehcate question of etiquette had arisen : which of the two should salute the other first? The Blessed One escaped the difficulty by the miracle which the sculptor has endeavoured to represent as well as he could with his limited means and without representation of Buddha himself.
b) Apparently he was still somewhat distrustful of the intelligence of his spectators; for, in order to give more pre- cision, he has been careful to put in the first row at the left a nyagrodha tree surrounded by a balustrade. This Ficus indica (clearly distinguished from the agvattha or Ficus religiosa, as it is represented, for instance, on the face of the left jamb) is evidently intended to symbolise by itself the nyagrodha- ardma at the gates of Kapilavastu, which on the same occa- sion king Quddhodana assigned to his son for a resi- dence. Henceforth the meaning of the upper bas-relief becomes, reciprocally, clear enough. It represents in the same eUiptical manner the Buddha seated upon a throne, under this same nyagrodha, in the before-mentioned hermi- tage; and the said king, his father — always to be recogni- zed by the spindle-shaped object kept in its place by a buckle of gems on the top of his turban — « renders homage to him for the third time », whilst the ^akyas, whose pride has been broken by the miracle, imitate his example. As always, the tree is adorned with garlands