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TRANSLATED FROM THE ‘HANDBUCH OF

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REVISED AND ENLARGED

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INS SBURGESS. CH BB, stele I NS &c.,

Late Director-General of the Archeological Survey of India.

WITTE 154 ILLUSTRATIONS.

LONDON BERNARD QUARITCH 1901 Freer Gallery of Ari Washington, D. C,

IPREFACE,

THE first edition of Professor Albert Griinwedel’s handbook on Buddhistische Kunst in Indien appeared in 1893, and the hope was expressed in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society that the work might appear in English, as “ it ought to be in the hands of all antiquarians in India.’ Believing that so important a publication might, by a few additions, form a useful general guide to the Buddhist sculptures in the museums alike of India and Europe, I have prepared the present edition. Miss A.C. Gibson very kindly translated for me the first edition; but by the time it was ready for the press, Prof. Grünwedel had begun his second edition containing extensive additions and alterations. This involved delay and a revision of the whole MS. Considerable additions have also been made to this translation, which have, partly at least, been indicated, and about fifty illustrations are added.

The difficulties in interpreting the Gändhära Buddhist sculptures arise chiefly from their fragmentary and unconnected condition. This has been lamentably increased by the ignorance or disregard of scientific methods on the part of the excavators of these remains. Monasteries and stüpas were dug into and demolished without regard to what might be learnt in the process by modern methods ; the more complete fragments only were saved, without note of their relative positions or any attempt to recover smaller portions and chips by which they might have been pieced together; and the spoils were sent to various museums, often without mention of the sites from which they emanated. They were often further scattered at the will of excavators among different museums and private collections, and we cannot now place together the whole of the find from a single site, so as to compare the style,—and still less the order of the reliefs ;—while, of the more carefully surveyed, such plans and sections as were made are defective, and without

iv _ PREFACE.

explanatory descriptions. It is sincerely to be desired that, in future, the Government of India will prevent amateur excavations, and make sure that their excavators really know how such work ought to be executed.

To the “ General-Verwaltung ”

of the Royal Museum, Berlin, I am very deeply indebted for the use of the whole of the illustrations in the second edition, and to Professor Grünwedel himself for others from, Globus (3 Feb. 1900); he has also kindly looked over the proofs: and for these favours I would respectfully tender grateful acknowledgments.

To the Royal Institute of British Architects I am indebted for the use of illustrations 51, 55, 102, 103, and 104; and to Mr.W. Griggs for 35 blocks that had been prepared for papers on the Gändhära sculptures in the Journal of Indian Art and Industry (Nos. 62, 63, and 69).

With this manual in his hand, it is hoped, the visitor to any collection of Buddhist sculptures will find it no difficult task to understand their character and meaning. Much still remains to be added to our information ; but it is only when complete delineations of the sculptures in various museums and private collections, on the Barähat fragments, and in the Kazheri, Elura, and other Bauddha caves are made available, that we shall be able to .interpret more fully the iconography of Buddhism. Towards this object some ‘real progress has recently been made by the Government of India having ordered the photographing in detail of the Saficht reliefs and of the small collections of Gändhära sculptures in the Bombay and Madras museums.

JAS. BURGESS. Edinburgh,

1st May, 1901.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.—INTRODUCTION. pp. 1-27.

Conditions of early Indian art development; influence of religion; art—sporadic rather than in schools, 1f. Chronological arrangement; remaining monuments, 2 Buddhist monuments of the Asoka period ; iconographic literature, 3. J

Chronological table, 4-6. History of civilization and art history, 4f. The Aryas in the Panjab, 6. The Vedic gods; Sakra in the Veda and in the ‚Päli texts, 7. No image in the earliest period, 7. Technical knowledge of the early Aryans indicated in Vedic literature, 7f. ‘The spoked wheel; stone buildings; defensive works and sttıpas; gold work, 7-8. The Aryans in the Ganges valley, 8f. he 5th century B.c.; Indians, Persians, Greeks, 8. The Persian power “under the Achxmenians, 9. Buddha’s teach- ing—the first world-religion ; Hellenic culture, 9. Relations of the Achemenians with India: Hindhü and Gandhära as subject to the Persians, 9-10. Magadha and Kosala, 10,

Religious influence in Indian art, 11f. Philosophy ; metempsy chosis, 11. The universal soul; Brahma and Atma, 12. Deliverance, 13.

The -Buddha, 13f. His birth; youth; the four signs, 13. Leaving home, as an ascetic, 13-14. The “ enlightenment,” 14. His death; the first and second councils, 15.

The Maurya dynasty of Magadha (Prasioi), 15f. Chandragupta; Asoka—his build- ings and edicts, 15-16. Persian influence in India, 17. Asoka’s buildings, pillars, 17-18. Winged animals; conventionalized plants; native flora; lotus plant, 18-19.

The Classes of Monuments defined: Stambhas, Stüpas, Chaityas, Vihäras, Railings and Gateways, 20-21.

Two groups: the Indian, and Greeco-buddhist or Gändhära class, 21f. Li¢s, rock- temples, &c., 22f. Barähat ; Gaya, 23. S&fichi, 24. Amarävati, 26. Influence of the Gändhära school: Ajantä, 26- 27. Early school of painting, 27.

CHAPTER IL—EARLY INDIAN STYLE. 28-74.

Early Indian carving, 28f. Wood-carving transferred to stone; doors and throne- backs, 29. Decorative character of Indian art, 30. Goldsmith’s work, 30-31. Jewellery and the human form, 31f. Nudity; physical development, 33. Mythical and foreign races; the Hindü type, 33-34. Dwarfs; drapery; women’s garments and pose, 35-37: Gods "and demigods; Jätakas, 37. Indra or Sakra, the thunder-god, 38. Brahma; Mara; Devaputras; Sri or Siri, 39. Lesser gods, Yakshas; Sürya, 40f. Hybrid forms: the Naga (snake-demon), two types: the Uraeus snake, and a man with snake hood over the head, and with a man’s body, or with a snake’s, 42f. Matsyanäris, 45. Yakshas, guardians, 45-46. Winged figures, Kinnaris, devatäs, 47f. Garudas, 48f. Garutmant, 49. Parrot forms; Gryps, griffins, 50f, Tibetan dog and Corean lion, Ten-gu, Thien-ku, 51f.

Tiryagyonis, 52. Indian animation of fantastic animal forms; throne and pillar decoration, 53. Sabbada¢hajitaka, 58f. Influence of art on Buddhist literature, 56f.

ee. influence in certain forms: Makara (dolphin), hippocampus, centaur, pigmies, 57f,

vi CONTENTS.

Composition, 58ff. Processions to holy places; formal repetition; formal repetitions in the sacred texts, 58. Genre scenes in reliefs, 59. ‘he Buddhist heavens, 60f.

The Käsyapa legend in the reliefs on the east gateway at Safichi, 61f. The fire and water wonder at Uruvilvä, 62f. Successive scenes on one relief, 65, Accessories crowded in; the same also in the literature, 66. Buddha only indicated by a symbol, 67. Statues, 68. Intelligibility of the compositions, 68f. The association of reliefs on a monument, a guide to the interpretation, 69f.

Architraves of the east gateway at Säfchi: the embassy to Ceylon of a Maurya king, 70f. Buddha’s footprint, 71. Description of the reliefs, 72-74.

1

CHAPTER IIL.—THE GANDHARA SCULPTURES. 75-157.

Political history, 75. The Greco-Baktrian kingdom; Eukratides, Menandros, 76f. . Intercourse between east and west, 78. Buddhist missions, 79. The Yueh-chi or

Indo-Skythians ; Kanishka and council at Jälandhara, 79. Northern school of Bud- dhism, 80. Gupta dynasty in India, 80f. Manicheism, the Paraclete, 81. Gandarioi and Indoi, 82.

Discovery of Gändhära remains; their discussion, 82f. Chronological data and in- ferences, 84f. Resemblances with Italian art, 84. The Gändhära school represents an offshoot of ancient art, but the materials are clearly Indian; in the northern class the forms are continued, 84f.

The types, 85ff. ‘The Buddha type; Gautama as Buddha, 85f. The nimbus, 86. Types of the gods; Brahma and Sakra, 87. The supposed Devadatta and Mara, 88. Various types of thunderbolt-bearers; bearded and unbearded heads of gods, 89. Sakra is re-named Vajrapani, and attends on Buddha, 90. Vajrapäni in the Nirvana scenes, 91. Mara rarely appears in Bauddha art, 92. Greeculi influenced the representations by their types, 93. Two figures with thunderbolts in one relief, 94, Sakra as a Yaksha, and Vajrapani a Bodhisattva; Mara with bow and arrow, 95. Local divinities, guardians, 95f. Mära’s army, 96-99. Earth-goddess; ancient Gé-type, 100f. Yakshas support the horse of the Bodhisattva, 102. Undetermined goddesses, 103. The type of the Japanese Ben-ten, Sarasvati, 105. Nagas, 106f, Nagi and Garuda; the Ganymede of Leochares, 108f. _ Devadäsi; nach girl standing under a tree, 111. Re- presentation of Buddha’s birth, 112.

The figure at the feet of the dying Buddha: perhaps Käsyapa, 118f. The Bräh- manas, 115. Kings, women, Yavanänis, 116.

Artistic value of the Gandhara school, 116. Mechanical reproduction of a series of complete types, 116. Karly pattern compositions: the same continue in the northern schools, 117-118.

The composition, 117f. Replicas, e.g. of the birth, the flight from home, preaching scenes, the death (Nirväza) ; represented in fuller and briefer form, 117- 118. Repre- sentation of the Nirvana in Gandhära, Tibet, China, and Japan, 118-123; derived from ancient sarcophagus reliefs, 123. Combination of more than one model in the same panel (the old Indian scheme of successive scenes reappears) with equal-sized ee (of earlier art) ; with unequal figures (later art), 125-126. The Käsyapa legend as combined composition, 127; as a “single composition; and in much abbreviated deian, 128; another combined relief ; the leaving home, 129.

Stale composition : Buddha or a Bodhisattva in the centre with two attendants, 130. Decorative elements ; pediments, 131f. Giganto-machia, 134; crouching Atlantes or Garudas, 135; pillar figures; tribute-bearers, 135-136. World-protectors (Lokapälas) and art portraits, 136-1387. Kubera and Virüdhaka, 138.

Miscellaneous representations: two scenes connected with Buddha’s birth, 138-139. Asita Rishi and the infant, 139; the bathing, 140; Buddha and an ascetic, 141. Sakra visiting Buddha, 142. The Dipankara Jätaka, 143. The sermon at Isipatana, 144. Feet-washing, 145. The pdtra presented, 145.

Ho-shang representative of the Mahayana system, 147. Large and small subordinate figures; Paignia; garland-bearers, 148. Pedestal sculptures, 149f. Wheel symbol and trident, 151.

Architectural elements: Persian pillars; Hellenic capitals, 151f. Figures of Buddha in the capitals, 153. Gilding; model sttipas, 154.

Infiuence of the Gändhära school on Indian art, 156f. Antiques in the Amarävati sculptures, 157.

CONTENTS. vi

CHAPTER IV.—REPRESENTATION OF BUDDHA AND BODHISATTVA. 158-214,

Chakravartti, 158f. The seven jewels, 159. Apotheosis of Buddha; the greater and lesser beauty-marks, 160f. Bases of the Buddha figure and philosophic explana- tion of the ideal Buddha, 162f. The Buddha image modelled on the Apollo pattern, 163f. A double tendency,—an idealistic and a realistic aim with Indian degeneration of type, 166f. Indo-Baktrian art in China, Korea, Japan, 168f. Buddha with moustache, 169. Treatment of drapery, 169; Greek treatment of it persistent, 170. The sandal-wood statue of King Udayana, 170f. Legendary explanation of the Buddha figure, 171f. Buddha with bare right shoulder or covered, 172f ; in Gandhära, 173- 174, Crowned Buddha figures in further India, 175. Various poses of the Buddha images, 176. Positions of the hands: the mudrds, 177f.

Previous Buddhas and their succession, 179f. The Tathägata, 180. Maitreya, 181. The Bodhisattvas represented in royal apparel, 182; they belong only to the Mahayana school; their probable genesis; relations to Hindü gods, 182f.; their numbers and images, 184. How far the mudräs in the Gändhära sculptures help to identify different Bodhisattvas, 185f. Modern representations of Maitreya, 186. Maitreya with a flask in Gandhära, 187f. Buddha with dharmachakra-mudrd, 189. Käsyapa Buddha, 189. The worship of Maitreya early developed ; dominant in the Mahäyäna school, 190.

Bodhisattva figures with lotus flowers, 191. Padmapäni; bears also the Amrita flask; danger of confounding Avalokitesvara with Maitreya, 192-194. The Dhyäni Buddhas, 195. Iranian elements; the Fravashis, 195. Repetition of Buddha and Bodhisattva images, 196f. Object of multiplied figures, 197. Adibuddha; colossal figures, 198.

The Lotus throne, 198. Two later Bodhisattvas: Mafijusri and Padmapäzi, 199. The Dhyänas, 200f. Padmapä»i and Kuan-yin, 201f. Litany of Avalokitesvara, 203. Groups of figures: triads, pentads; immense pantheon, 204f.

Reaction, 205f. Lama portraits in Tibet, China, Japan, 206. Caricature in Japan, 207.

Decay of Art; artists handed down traditionally as Yakshas and Nägas, 208. The national element manifested in repetitions of the same forms and in systematizing, 209.

Additional illustrations: the coffin of Buddha, and probable identification of Käsyapa, 209f. A model of a shrine, 210f. Head of Buddha, &c., 211f. Conclusion, 212-214.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.... ri A fi a is ny as re 215.

INDEX. an Hr A a os 2 Nee He AN ae 219.

Silt m N i rTM

EARLY WoRrsHIP OF BUDDHA’S FOOTPRINTS AND THE BODHI TREE. Pillar capital from Kanheri Caves,

BUDDHIST ART IN INDIA.

CHAPTER L NRO Carlen.

aes artistic efforts of ancient India, specially of the early

Buddhist period, are only slightly connected with the general history of art. From the very first two separate schools are met with: one of them, the older—(when the political history of the far East under the Persians had come to an end)—borrows Persian forms, and, indirectly, some Greek ones; and confined as it is to India, subsequently becomes the basis of all that may be called Indian art—Buddhist as well as Brahmanical. The other, which originated in the extreme north-west of India, depends on the antique art which expired when the Roman empire had accom- plished its development of the Mediterranean nations; later it formed a basis for the hierarchical art of Central and Eastern Asia. No other reaction to the art of the West has occurred: the types developed on Indian soil are permanently found in the civilized world of India and Eastern Asia.‘ The religious character, so deeply rooted in the national life of the Indian races, has also continued the guiding principle in their art. In a critical examination of the monuments of ancient India, therefore, it is the antiquarian interest, connected with the history of religion and civilization, that is the most prominent.

The art of ancient India has always been a purely religious one; its architecture as well as the sculpture, which has always been intimately connected therewith, was never and nowhere em- ployed for secular purposes. It owed its origin to the growth of a religion which has been called in Europe Buddhism from the honorary title of its founder—“the Buddha”—‘the Enlightened One.

The sculpture of ancient India, originating as it did in religious tendencies and destined to serve religious purposes, could only

* Conf. especially Kuki Ryüichi, The source of Japanese art, Hansei Zasshi. xii. 1, 1897, 10-13. he figurative part of Brahman art, so far as we are now acquainted with it, is based essentially upon Buddhist elements,—so much so indeed that the Saiva figures originated at the same time as the Northern Buddhist, appear to have fixed types, whilst the iconography of the Vishnu cult embraces chiefly Buddhist elements to which a different interpretation has been given. But still more dependent on Buddhism are the representations of Jaina art. How far this theory may be modi-

fied by the new excavations promised by Oldenburg (Vostocnyja Zametki, p. 359, and | nute 3) is for the future to decide,

2 CHRONOLOGICAL ARRANGEMENT.

follow its own immediate purpose in sacred representations: other- wise it was, and remained, simply decorative and always connected with architecture. In accordance with the Indian character, the sacred representations themselves were not so much the outset of the development as its end. According to the view of life prevailing among the Hindus, purely artistic execution never found scope in the existence of schools, but only in sporadic instances. The sacred figures themselves even came to be employed again decoratively.

Since the history of Indian civilization became better known in Europe, our previous ideas respecting the antiquity of Hindu art have been found to be very exaggerated. In fact, Indian art is the most modern of all Oriental artistic efforts. No important monument goes further back than the third century B.c. The period of its development comprises about a thousand years—from the third century B.C. to the sixth or seventh century A.D In Asiatic countries, outside India, which subsequently embraced the doc- trines of Buddha, ecclesiastical art is developed on the basis of Indian types until the middle ages (13th to 14th century). Till then the sculptures are executed in stone and frequently on a large scale, but gradually the Buddhist sculpture becomes a miniature manufacture in different materials—wood and clay in place of stone, and later, in metal casts—carried on as a trade.

Indian art, as already mentioned, borrowed from two artistic schools, complete in themselves, but of very different characters— the ancient Oriental, introduced through the Achamenides, and the Greco-Roman: and the elements thus acquired it utilized for national themes. In its relation on one hand to the vague hybrid style of-the Achamenides whose influence, in the more ancient monumental groups of India, led to the introduction of certain Greek elements, the native Indian style, with its animated and powerful conceptions of nature, succeeded in preserving its inde- pendence and in developing itself up to a certain point. The introduction of early ideal types and the antique style of com- position, on the other hand, resulted in a rigid adherence to consecrated forms, that is, toa canon.

Above all, stress must be laid on the fact that in comparison with the vast extent of the country, the monuments are far from numerous, that great numbers of them have been destroyed through the indolence or by the sheer Vandalism of men of other faiths, so that considerable monumental groups, in good preservation, remain only where the districts subsequently became deserted and the monuments were consequently forgotten and so saved from direct | destruction at the hand of man; or where, as happened in Ceylon, the old religion remained and protected the monuments of olden times. It is therefore exceedingly difficult to represent a continuous development; the individual monuments appear as independent groups, the connexion of which can be sketched only in a general way. Add to this the difficulty of dating the separate monuments,

THE MONUMENTS. 3

dependent on chance discoveries of inscriptions dated in eras that are not always sufficiently defined, inferences from the form of alphabet used, etc. It is true that in this domain new and import- ant materials may any day be discovered. As concerns further the development of the artistic canon of the modern schools of Buddhism—which, on account of their valuable tradition, afford (as we shali see) a valuable source of information for the analysis of the subjects represented—as yet critical works thereon hardly exist. In India itself, Buddhism has been extinct for centuries. The remains of the first golden age, under king Asoka, have for the most part perished: single monumental groups—gigantic heaps of rubbish, still testify to the time when Central India was quite covered with Buddhist buildings. But in the traditional forms of the temples still in existence outside India, we find highly important - materials for an explanation of the old representations. Buddhist archeology must therefore begin with the investigation of the modern pantheon, especially of the northern schools, z.e. of the religious forms of Tibet, China, and Japan, so as to recognise the different artistic types, and trying to identify them with the ancient Indian. Combined with researches into the history of the sects and, above all, of the hierarchy, there must be a separation of the different phases from one another, and the earliest forms must be looked for to a certain extent by eliminating later developments. The solution of many difficulties will be reached when the history of the different types of Buddhas- and Bodhisattvas, gods and demons, &c., is traced. Unfortunately, however, the raw material required for this task has not yet, to any extent, been made access- ible But besides pictures and sculptures there is a class of literature, belonging especially to the northern school, that is of great importance to Bauddha archeology. “The modern precepts for the manufacture of representations of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas —containing the dimensions and arrangement of the figure with the ceremonial rites to be performed, even to the animating of the figure by means of a relic, the opening of the eyes, and so on,— these, as well as the voluminous descriptions of the gods, found in the Tibetan Kanjur and especially in the Tan-jur,' with data as to * Kanjur—written in Tibetan: /Ka-gyur, the “translated word of Buddha ”—is the title of the canonical literature of Tibet. In the Royal Library at Berlin is a hand- somely executed MS. copy in 108 folios. Its richly decorated covers exhibit repre- sentations of the gods executed in gold and gay colours; all are named. It would be a meritorious and, for the history of the sects, an important task to compare these pictures with the contents of the volumes. The comparison of the illustrations of the Tibetan gods (Pantheon des Tschanangtscha Hutuku, the five hundred gods of Nar- thang, &e.) with the Buddha Pantheon of Nippon published by Hoffmann, as well as with the Nepalese miniatures described by A. Foucher, would be another useful task. Se2 Burgess, Gandhdra Sculptures, sep. repr., p. 18, or Jour. Ind. Art, vol. VIII, p. 40. The Tanjur, Tib. dsTan-gyur, literally “ The translated doctrine,” forms to some extent the commentary to the Kanjur: the edition at Berlin is in 225 volumes (Nar-thang printing) and contains much material for the history of art. The Indian

miniatures are of course more valuable than the Tibetan sources—and the Japanese tradition, which has in many cases retained the oldest forms, should not be overlooked.

4 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.

the proportions of the figures, aureoles, attributes, &c., are author- ities on Buddhist iconography. To these, as yet, little attention has been paid, but their importance must not be underestimated. Just as little known are the manuals on sorcery—the Sädhanamdla : they are important inasmuch as they prescribe for the exorcist the dress and attributes by which, according to the conceptions of the degenerate northern school, the Bodhisattva to be conjured may be propitiated: but these attributes are always the same as those of the deity himself.

In the following investigation an attempt will be made to retrace this retrograde path and to determine some of the principal types, on the basis of the materials now accessible, and to analyse the component forms. For this reason—although the investigation - only concerns ancient Indian art—we shall frequently have to go beyond India, especially with a view to determine the types; for Tibetan and Japanese forms present highly interesting develop- ments of Indian models. As an aid to understanding the summary of the history of the Buddhist religion, the following chronological table’ may be found useful.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.

B.C.558-529. Cyrus or Kurush of the Achemenian dynasty took Babylon and founded the Persian Empire.

557 Probable date of the birth of Siddhartha, or Gautama Säkya Muni, the Buddha. 528 Siddhartha became an ascetic; assumed Buddhahood.

500 BEFORE CHRIST. 521-485 Dareios Hystaspes (Daryavush Vishtaspa) king of Persia. 514-486. Bimbisära or Srenika, king of Magadha. 486-461. Ajätasatru or Künika, son of Bimbisära, king of Magadha. 485-465. Xerxes (Khshayärshä), king of Persia; 'Thermopyle, 480.

478 Virüdhaka of Kosala exterminated the Säkya clan.

477 Parinirväza or death of Säkya Muni; and first Buddhist Council at Räjagriha.

400 BEFORE CHRIST.

377 Second Buddhist Council (?), said to have been held at Vaisali in the 10th year of Kalasoka.

326 Alexander of Macedon invaded India after conquering Persia and Soydiana.

321-280. Seleukos Nikator, in the partition of Alexander’s empire, obtained Babylon, Syria, and Persia: Porus and Taxiles were allowed to hold the Panjäb.

315-291. Chandragupta (Sandrakottos) founded the Maurya dynasty in India.

312 Era of the Seleukides, Oct. 1st.

305 Seleukos invaded Baktria and India; Megasthenes his ambassador.

300 BEFORE CHRIST. 291-263. Bindusära successor of Chandragupta: Deimakhos ambassador from

Seleukos. 263-221. Asoka, installed 259, third king of the Maurya dynasty. 256 Baktria revolted from Antiokhos Theos under Diodotos or Theodotos

who founded the Greeco- Baktrian kingdom.

250 cir. Arsakes founded the Parthian kingdom.

242 Third Buddhist Council held at PäZuliputra; and missionaries sent to Ceylon, Gandhära, Kashmir, &e.

! This table is an extension of that given by Prof. Grünwedel in the Handbiich, pp. 165, 166.—J. B,

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 5

300 BEFORE CHRIST, continued.

220 Kuthydémos usurped Baktria and extended the Greek power in India and Tartary. 205 Antiokhos III, Magnus, formed a treaty with Sophagasenos, an Indian prince. 200 BEFORE CHRIST. 180 Eukratides extended his power in the Panjib and Baktria. 178 The sunga dynasty in India, founded by Pushyamitra.

178 cir. ‘The Andhrabhritya dynasty founded in the Dekhan. 145 cir. Menander (or Milinda) of Sanyala in the Panjab. 140 cir. Probable date of Sänchi gateways 139 Mithridates of Parthia overthrew the Greco-Baktrian kingdom. 126 Baktria overrun by Skythians. 110-86 cir. Duétha, Gämani ruling in Ceylon. 100 BEFORE CHRIST. 65 Syria became a Roman province. 57 Samvat era of Malwa and Western India, Sept. 18th. 45 cir. The Bauddha doctrines first reduced to writing in Ceylon: the Dhar- maruchika schism. 30 The Kushana tribe of the Yueh-ti under Kozulo Kadphises subjugates Kabul. BIRTH OF CHRIST. A.D. 30 cir. Gondophures or Gudaphara ruled west of the Indus or in Gandhära and the Käbul valley. Gandhära school of sculpture began. 67 Ming-ti, emperor of China, received Buddhist missionaries, 78 Kanishka the Kushan, king of North-Western India. 100 AFTER CHRIST. 100 cir. Buddhist Council at Jälandhara, presided over by Vasumitra.

107 Indian embassy to Trajan. 130 cir. Nasik Buddhist caves excavated. 138 ' Indian embassy to Antoninus Pius.

150-200 cir. Nagarjuna, founder of the Madhyamika system, flourished, 170 cir. Amarävati stüpa rail; earlier caves at Kanheri excavated. 200 AFTER CHRIST.

226 Ardeshir-Bäbegän of Parthia founded the Säsänian dynasty of Persia. 260 Valerian defeated by Shapur the Säsänian. 264 Odenathus of Palmyra repulsed Shapur; period of Palmyrene greatest prosperity. 270 Manes flourished; Manicheean heresy: he died 274. 273 Defeat of Zenobia and fall of Palmyra. 800 AFTER CHRIST. 319 Chandragupta I. of the Gupta dynasty crowned: Gupta epoch. 360 Repulse of the Romans by Shapur LI. at Singara and Bezabda. 371 Shapur LI. renewed the war against Rome and was defeated: died 379. 372 Buddhism introduced into Korea. /

400 AFTER CHRIST. 399-414. Fah-hian, a Chinese Buddhist, travelled in India and Ceylon. 401-414. Chandragupta II, Gupta king; inscriptions at Saüchi and Udayagiri.

420 Buddhaghosa of Ceylon, translator of the Atthakathd and author of the Vasuddhi Magga.

4:22 War between Baharäm or Varahräm of Persia and the emperor Theodosius.

430 Kidära Shahi established the kingdom of the little Kushans in Gan- dhära, but they were expelled by the Ephthalites or White Huns, A.D. 470.

4.63 Dutasena, king of Ceylon, erected an image of Maitreya,

472 Simha, the Buddhist patriarch, put to death by Mihirakula of Sägala,

who persecuted the Buddhists in Gandhira, 500 AFTER CHRIST. 518 Sung-yun, Chinese pilgrim, resided in Gar.dhära. i The Buddhist Z’ripitaka, first collected in Chinese by Wu-ti.

6 CHRONOLOGY, “HISTORICAL SKETCH.

500 AFTER CHRIST, continued. ; 520 cir. Vasubandha and Arya Asanya, Buddhist teachers in Gandhära,

552 Buddhism introduced into Japan from Korea.

578 Bädämi Brahmanical caves excavated.

591 Khusrü Parviz restored to the throne of Persia by the emperor Maurice.

600 AFTER CHRIST.

606 Harshavardhana of Thänesvar: epoch of his era.

609 Khusrü overran Syria and took Damascus and Jerusalem, 614.

625 cir. Pulikesin II., the Chalukya king, received an embassy from Khusrü of Persia.

629-645. . Hiuen Thsang, from China, travelled and studied in India.

632 Buddhism propagated in Tibet under king Srong-btsan-sgam-po.

634 Council held at Kanyakubja under Harshavardhana.

632-651. Yazdijard, the last Säsänian king, overthrown by the Musalmans, 651.

639 Buddhism introduced into Siam.

671-695. I-tsing from China travelled in India and-the Malay archipelago.

We may now attempt a very brief sketch of ancient Indian history. The civilization of the country is ascribed to the Arya race, a branch of the so-called Indo-Germanic family, which immi- grated into the peninsula from the north-west and, in part, at once overcame the peoples settled there, and, after two thousand years’ labour, compelled them, partly, to adopt their system of civilization. The Indian peninsula forms a world by itself, whose inhabitants, - originally totally different, thus amalgamated into one whole, whilst in detail they represent all grades of social life from bar- barism of the rudest kind to the most refined hyperculture. Entirely cut off from the outer world, this mighty land seems intended by nature to provide for its inhabitants a peculiar develop- ment with a sufficiently independent movement. From north-west to north-east the peninsula is sharply separated from North Asia by a mountainous range of prodigious height in the snow peaks of the Himalayas: only the Kabul passes on the Kabul river afford free communication with the north-west. This is the old high road by which the Aryans penetrated and which the conquerors of antiquity and of the Middle Ages also followed.

On the north-west frontier several large rivers come down from the western regions of the Himalayas towards the south-west, and flow through a broad, hot, and storm-beaten plain. This is the land of the Five Rivers, the Panjäb,—the first land that the Aryans possessed themselves of, when they conquered and pene- trated into India (cir. 2000 B.C.?), while the Iranians, a people closely akin to them, directed their course to the nearer East. Other mighty rivers of far greater volume than those of the Panjab also flow from the Himalayas, but towards the east. ‘hey traverse a vast, sandy, low-lying plain which owes to them ‘its tropical vegetation. This plain is Hindustan proper—the cradle of ancient Indian civilization which, following thence the course of. the rivers, advanced to their mouths. In the period which followed, the Aryans by degrees became acquainted with the coasts of the peninsula of the Dek han (Sanskrit: Dakshinapatha—the path on the right), which lies to the south of Hindustan, and they also made

THE ARYANS. VEDIC GODS. SAKRA. 5

their way gradually into its interior—a high plateau rising towards the south. Notwithstanding the enclosed position ofthe Peninsula, extraneous influences have not been wanting; indeed, they operated only the more decidedly and perceptibly, the rarer they were.

To these foreign elements, which penetrated from the north- west, Indian art belongs in a very marked degree. ‘The most important basis for the development of an independent art among any people lies in its religion. “The gods of the Indian Aryans, when the race was still in the Panjab, were personified nature forces of an unusually vague form. The old “ ritual-poems” of this people, the Rigveda, gives us sufficient information as to this. The ever-recurring myth of the theft of the fertilizing Rain by malicious demons, which are then killed by the gods (devas), whereon the Rain is again set at liberty, and brings food, riches, and happiness, is, for example, ascribed to almost all the principal deities. The stolen Rain appears as “treasures,” as “cows,” as “Wet: Milk or Water. The place whence the demons get these treasures is sometimes a bank of clouds, sometimes a mountain: in the language of these old poems, the words for clouds and moun- tains are confounded. In short, the world of gods merges into nature, so that the Vedic mythology, in common with other nature religions (e.g. the German), has an elementary and quite unplastic character. The Vedic idea indeed goes further: each individual god, unrestricted by the control of another deity, appears when the sacrificer calls upon him; for the sacrificer each is the chief god, in full possession of all the divine attributes. Thus it is difficult to define the peculiarities of the separate divinities ; a development into fixed characters does not belong to this early period. But it is important.in the history of art that in the thunder-storm all the principal figures fight against the demons. One is specially promi- nent in the Veda; itis Sakra (Pali, Sakka), the god of thunder, and in the oldest Buddhist S¢ras also, he is almost the only deity of clearly pronounced type. Artistic representations of the very hazy figures of Vedic mythology were clearly impossible. The precise reduction to rule of the qualities, spheres of influence, and attributes of the Hindu gods, belongs only to the post-Buddhist period when, by the sanction of numerous popular cults, till then disdained, more defined figures appeared.

In Vedic times sacred representations were not required. As the offering of sacrifice strengthened the god,—made him capable of granting the desires of the suppliant,—it was the principal thing. On the strength of this idea a laboriously developed sacrificial ritual arose, which, when properly performed, could compel the god to the service of men. Of course, we meet with specimens of primitively artistic character: altars in the form of a Garuda, &c., without being able to form a clear idea of the architecture and plastic art of that early period. For the rest, from the Vedic poems we learn little of pictorial art. Some passages certainly, in

8 SAKRA IN THE VEDA. STONE BUILDINGS.

quite late poems may be regarded as speaking of idols, possibly belonging to domestic worship.

In the primitive period, the spoked-wheel is referred to as the grandest kind of work of the Vedic Aryans. And for primitive man, the construction of a spoked wheel does, indeed, betoken a vast stride forwards. In the Rigveda the wheel (with its spokes, of which “none is the last’) and its form are favourite similes, and often executed representations. ‘lhe much-lauded Indra,” (thus it says in the Rigveda, vii. 32, 20) ‘‘ I incline by means of the song, as a cartwright bends the rim of a wheel made of good wood; or (Sakra) “the lightning in his hand, rules over all men, as the rim of a wheel embraces the spokes” (Rigv. i. 32, 35). It would carry us too far to follow out all the similes; the wheel remains in the Indian civilised world of antiquity, and even down to modern times, as the symbol of occult power, the theme for grand poetical sumiles. The Buddhists took the wheel, as we ‘shall see below, as one of the distinctive emblems of their religion.

As for stone buildings at that early age, we may at least suppose strong walls for defence and rough conical stone con- structions over the graves of kings, which latter custom has been inferred from a study of the stüpa architecture to be discussed below. All buildings for secular ends were in wood, as they are in Indo-China and the eastern archipelago to the present day.

It should be mentioned that, in the early period of Indian civiliz- ation, rich and really quite artistic gold ornamentation was every- where known.

Over-population, and perhaps also the crowding-in of other Aryan races, forced a portion of the Aryans to leave the Panjab and follow the course of the rivers flowing eastwards. The close of the Vedic period shows us confederations of peoples opposing each other and bands of Aryans pouring into the valley of the Ganges, in the tropical climate of which a civilization is developed altogether different from that of the Vedic age in the Panjab. The races left behind in the Panjab have no share in this new period of civilization; from this time forward they go their own way, are considered by the inhabitants of Hindustan as kingless and ex- cluded (AräsAZra, the Adraistoi of the Greeks), but retain their full fighting powers.

The fifth century before Christ plays a decisive röle in the history of the early peoples of the so-called Indo-Germanic race. The three nations that first left their impress on the history of mankind as civilizing powers of the noblest kind, were the Indian Aryans, the Iranians who hardly differed from them in dialect, and the Hellenes with their kindred races. We cannot here discuss the fundamentally different practical proofs of the national dispositions of these peoples; but it is important to mention that the essentially religiously and philosophically disposed character of the Indian Aryans is met with again in the course of history among the

THE PERSIAN POWER. GREEK CULTURE. 9

western peoples allied to them, and they derived from them faculties which the Indian soil could not have brought to maturity. At the end of the sixth century the Persians and Medes had laid the foundations of the first veritable empire of the ancient Orient— the: Smpire of the Achse menides.ı Dariusp the’ son of Hystaspes, succeeded in recovering the conquests of the great Cyrus, and organizing them into a powerful state under Medo-

-Persian supremacy. With this the ancient history of the East

closes its first period; the Persians become the heirs of all the previous currents of civilization which, under their rule, merge into one. In the course of the fifth century Greek freedom is developed in the struggles with the kingdom of the Achzmenides, and at the same time Greek culture attains its apogee. Now about the time that Pythagoras taught in Italy and before Socrates and Plato, Gautama Siddhartha the“ Buddha “the sage of the Sakya race (Sakyamuni) was preaching deliverance from transmigration. The ethical precepts based on his teachings were the first among the religions of the world to spread beyond the bounds of the nation where they had birth. When the strict preservation of the national element among the peoples of antiquity is considered, this fact is of distinctive importance.

A glance at the map shows India as the heart of the old world; in fact, the ideas that emanated from India, the elements of culture matured there, had been derived from outside, had been recast and transformed over and over again by an indescribably fertile imagina- tion, sometimes indeed worked up even to extravagance, and in all these stages given out again broadcast to the world. In the rise of Indian studies, India was looked on as “the cradle of mankind,” the “seat of primzval wisdom :” this was a mistake. Still in one’s zeal to reduce everything to proper proportions we must not .go so far as either to ignore or to minimise the immense importance of Indian life in the history of human culture.

Afterwards, the civilization of Athens became the foundation of all western culture; the religion of Buddha is the first universal religion, at least, for all countries lying east and north of India,— from the steppes of the Mongols and the mountainous wildernesses of Tibet, through Japan and far into the Indian archipelago A century and a haif after the Buddha’s death the Macedonian empire combined the states of Greece into a universal monarchy, which became the heir of the Achemenides. The Hellenes formed

! It may be worth referring to Lucian Schermann’s critique of Oldenberg’s Buddha, 3rd ed. 1897, in the Deutschen Literatur-Zeitung, Nr. 5, 1899, Ss. 177ff. It is note- worthy that, in contrast with the zeal shown in representing Buddha’s system as a mere parrot-like imitation of the Brahmanical, it should not have occurred to anyone that all Brahman philosophy works pro domo—for the Brahman caste; and further that, amid the constant squabbles on purely religious questions, we forget the meaning of Buddhism in its bearing on the history of civilization. (Conf. Ehrenreich in Zeitschr. f. Ethnologie, 1897, V,171). If Buddha were only an echo of the Brahmans, whence his success? He seems, however, to have been an uncommon personality !

IO RELATIONS OF THE ACHAMENIDES WITH INDIA.

the western frontier of this powerful kingdom ; while on the east it was defined by the countries of north-western India first opened by Alexander the Great.

It is important in the history of ancient Buddhist sculptures to remember the political relations which prevailed between the king- dom of the Achemenides and N.W. India. Darius (old Persian Daryavaush),! son of Hystaspes, was the first king of the dynasty regarding whose territorial acquisitions and explorations in India we have trustworthy information. After this king,in great measure through struggles with cognate peoples, had restored the empire of his famous ancestors and had prepared the way at least for its powerful organization, he attempted, as Herodotus says, “to explore large parts of Asia.’’ One of these undertakings was the search for the mouth of the Indus,? whither an, expedition, under Skylax of Karyanda, was sent. In the later inscriptions’ of this monarch, the Hindus (Hidhu) and the Gandhäras (Gadära) are mentioned among the subject peoples. They are the tributary dwellers by the Indus (Sansk. Sindhu; Old Pers. Hindhu), and the Aryan inhabitants of Käbül and that district, known in India as Gandhära, in Herodotus the Gandarioi.‘ Under Xerxes, the son and successor of Darius, the Hindhu and Gandhara peoples belonging to the Arakhosian satrapy, still owed allegiance to the Persian king; Indian troops went to Greece with the great army, wintered with Persians and Medes under Mardonios in Thessaly, and sustained with them the defeat of Platza.’ Later they seem to have regained some of their independence; still we know far too little about events in the east of the kingdom of the Achzmen- ides to be able to pronounce any judgment.

To return to India: in the fifth century B.C. we find the Indian Aryans, who had made their way from the Panjab into the plain of the Ganges, divided into a number of kingdoms under Brahman civilization. ‘The most powerful of these states is the kingdom of Magadha; a rival state is that of Kosala, with its capital Sravastt (Pali: Sävatthi) on the Rapti, in what is now the Nepal Taräi. Fierce feuds raged between these States and the neigh- bouring principalities tributary to them ; the struggles against the original inhabitants had ceased long before. The system of caste is fully established. Side by side with the richly developed court life of the numerous great and small principalities—large fortified places are described—a luxurious city-life appears ; trade flourishes; in the towns a vigorous industrial activity prevails. Along with

1 Rawlinson’s Herodotus, vol. ILI., p. 544, and Jour, R. As. Soc., vol. XI., p. 185.

2 Herodotus, Bk. iv. c. 44.

3 Behistun Inscrip. in Rawlinson’s Herodotus, vol. II., p. 593, and J. R. As. Soc., vol. X., p. 280; Nakhsh-i-Rustam inser., J. R, A. Soc., vol. X., p. 294; see also Lassen, Indische Alterthums, Bd. I., Ss. 503f.

* Herodotus, Bk. ili, c. 91; vii, c. 66.

5 Herodotus, Bk. vii, c. 65; vill, 113; ix, 31.

RITUAL, CASTE: PHILOSOPHY. .METEMPSYCHOSIS. MEAL

this is a frugal peasant-class much left to itself—the real basis of Indian national life at all periods of Indian civilization. Religion is entirely in the hands of the Brahmans; a laboriously constructed sacrificial ritual has sprung from the ancient Indian Nature- worship. The Brahmans alone are in possession of this ritual, and through the sacred power of their sacrifices they can put a curb on the warrior nobles who are always at strife. The forms of worship of the other castes, especially of the common people, were quite left to themselves. In this way a popular worship, which becomes gradually more refined in proportion asthe caste is higher, is every- where found side by side with the official religion of the “ gods in human form,” z.e. the Brahmans. In the great sacrificial festivals of the princes the people participated at most aS spectators; the domestic rites, the Püjä, were a repetition on a smaller scale of the official ceremonies. Every village had its sacred fig-tree which was supposed to be the abode of a god, to whom gifts (food, flowers, etc.) were brought (balıkammam kar). The whole structure of Indian life is permeated by a deep religious character, which, with- out being called forth by exterior pressure, is the result of their condition. Whilst in the luxury of the cities a tendency towards pessimism makes itself felt, the people do not feel so much the need of an organised Nature-religion. The want of national feeling, the enervating influence of the climate, the contrasts between rich and poor, the exclusiveness of the State-worship, may have been the basis of this religious impulse. The caste system, which had been built up to keep the Aryan blood pure and to pre- vent intermarriages, was inimical to all true national feeling ; for the Indian, indeed, the caste system embraced the whole world. One who had no caste was of no account, and thus was no worthy adversary. The contrasts between poor and rich had a different effect in India from that produced elsewhere. In a land where Nature provides everything, and a handful of rice suffices to sustain life, the tendency is to shake off the worries of civilization and to return to Nature itself. But the degree of civilization to which the nation had attained even in the Panjab had penetrated so deeply, at least among the upper castes, that a relapse into barbarism was in consequence impossible. This return to the simple life which the tropical wilderness afforded was prescribed’ for the Brahmans. We see them in their retreats occupied in solving the enigma of life and, if the answers they found rightly seem pessimistic to the European, it cannot be denied that the intense moral earnestness of the whole movement, which proceeded from the wisest heads in the nation, effected a magnificent development of the theorems themselves. The interrogations astound by their boldness; the answers by their inexorable logic.

The doctrine of the transmigration of-souls—really only a further development of the caste system—held out the possibility of winning a better reincarnation. But the chief aim was how to

12 THE UNIVERSAL SOUL. BRAHMA AND ÄTMAN.

escape being reincarnated at all. Stated as briefly as possible, the concatenation of ideas was much as follows: The Nature-gods of ancient times could be forced by means of rightly performed sacrifice to grant what was asked. In this way the attempt to conceive of the origin of the world as independent of the gods (ve. without a real creation) may be explained. The World-Soul, that is, the Brahma, is recognised as the fundamental substance from which all individual souls (ä/man) emanate in order ulti- mately to return to it, after freeing themselves from any corporeal vestment. Now the union into which the individual soul, emanating from the Brahma, enters in its embodiment (the one being eternal like the other), brings it into bondage; for, through the embodiment, it becomes conscious of its own personal individuality and begins to act: but every action tends to good or evil, reward or punish- ment, joy or sorrow. According to what these actions are, the soul, after its separation from the body, passes through heaven and hell, and when reward and punishment are there exhausted, it returns once more to a bodily existence, and, according to the sum of its previous actions, is born again as Brähman, god, human being of high or low caste, animal, plant, or mineral, to re-enter the cycle (sänsara) of transmigration. Now in the choice of the means of escaping from this cycle to freedom and re-union with the All-Soul the schools differ. But the fundamental idea remains in all the ancient Indian forms of religion, and down to modern times. Not only, however, do the Brähmans give themselves up to these speculations in their schools; at kings’ courts these matters are discussed; rich citizens take part in the movement, and, side by side with professional monks of the first rank, schools of monks and ascetics are developed, composed of members of the other castes. The Brahmans themselves, quite in the middle of the movement, were far from being, on principle, opponents of new schools of philosophy. The opposition of these new sects to the official doctrines gradually became very marked and showed itself clearly in the fact that the heterodox disdained to quote examples and proofs for their theorems from the Vedic literature. In India, diametrically opposed religions have always treated each other with a tolerance which would be quite inconceivable in other lands.

It need scarcely be mentioned that the condition of things thus indicated was not calculated to promote the growth of a powerful national art. ‘The efforts of ancient Indian civilization were con- fined to the domain of the intellectual ; their fundamental character was speculative, although their expression might point to aims of a religious and mystical, or philosophical and scientific character. Though a religio-mystical element may serve as a scanty foil for fully perfected’ or decadent artistic efforts, the philosophical- scientific tendency, especially with the practical side which it had in ancient India, is an altogether barren soil for art.

DELIVERANCE. sAUTAMA THE BUDDHA. 13

Deliverance from reincarnation was sought for in different ways ; different sects arose which did not, however, take up an attitude of conscious opposition to the Brahman religion. The pressure from without, the heavy taxation, the bloody wars between the different states may have combined to attract proselytes to the religious sects. But the fact that the founder of Buddhism was himself a prince, refutes the idea that exterior pressure played the leading réle. For even if the legends exaggerate, it cannot be doubted that Buddha came of a powerful and opulent family.!

At the foot of the Himalayas to the north of Gorakhpur, on the river Rohit (z.e. Kohan) a tributary of the Rapti, was the town and domain of Kapilavastu (Pali, Kapilavatthu)” which be- longed to the Säkya family or clan. In the sixth century B.C. this principality belonged to Suddhodana, and was at constant feud with its next neighbours the Kodya (Pali, Koliya) clan, dwelling on the east of the Rohizi. To the chief of Kapilavastu, who had wedded two sisters—Maya and Prajäpati,—there was born a son who received the name of Gautama Siddhartha (Pali, Gotama Siddhattho).” The legends further relate how the child was recognised by the old Brahman ascetic Asita as the coming Deliverer, and how the young prince surpassed all his companions of his own age in bodily strength and mental capacity. To terminate peacefully the old feuds with the Ko/iya, the young prince was betrothed to the Koliya princess Yasodharä, and maintained a brilliant court.

Once, as he drives out, a god appears to him four times—as an infirm old man, as a sick man, as a corpse in a state of decom- position, and as an ascetic (freed from human wants). This sight and the explanations which Gautama receives from his coachman, Chhardaka, raise in him the first thoughts of determination to renounce the world. After a son, Rähula, has been born to him he carries out his resolve. He parts from his sleeping wife, and flees from the well-guarded palace.

A canonical text (Avidürenidäna) describes’ the flight from the palace thus: “Gautama lays himself down upon a magnificent couch. Immediately his women-servants, beautiful as goddesses, skilled in the dance, in song and in music, and decked with rich

! The earliest traditions represent Suddhodana as only one of the great and wealthy landowners of the Säkya race,—not asa king. Oldenberg’s Life, Hoey’s transl., pp. 99, 416; Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lect., p. 126; Copleston, Buddhism, p. 20. Apart from this, little that is certain is known about Buddha’s family circumstances; even the name of his wife Yasodharä, “ Rähula’s mother,’’ is reconstructed; conf. Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 50.

® Buddha’s birthplace has now been found ; see Oldenberg, Life of Buddha, Hoey’s transl., pp. 92, 105, 415; Jour. R. As. Soc., 1898, p. 580; and the critique mentioned above note 1, p. 9; G. Bühler, Anzeige Kk. Acad. Wiss. Wien, 1897, Ss. 319ff; Epig. Ind., vol. V, p.1; and conf. Or. Bibliog., Bd. XI, 1, 1898, S. 64, Nrs. 1257-8; 2, Ss. 218f., Nrs. 4129, 4149-52, &c.

> Siddhartha of the Gautama gotra or priestly family. By caste he is described as a pure Kshattriya.

* Rhys Davids’ Buddhist Birth Stories, pp. 80-82.

IA THE BUDDHIST LEGEND. GAUTAMA THE ASCETIC.

ornaments, ranged themselves in order and began to dance, sing, and play on their instruments to please him. But Gautama, whose mind was already turned away from the delights of the world, paid no heed to the dance and fell into a slumber. Then the women said: ‘What shall we play, when he for whose pleasure we perform is gone to sleep?’ Then they laid aside their instru- ments where they had taken them up, and lay down. Only the lamps, fed with fragrant oil, continued to burn. Then Gautama awoke, and leaning on his arm on the couch, he saw the women lying sleeping after they had flung aside their instruments. Spittle ran out of the mouths of some, others were grinding their teeth, others snoring, others again muttering in their sleep, or lying un- covered and with open mouths. This repulsive sight rendered him still more indifferent to the charms of sense. ‘Oh, horrible! dis- gusting!’ he cried, and thought seriously about adopting a life of solitude. Thereupon, with the words, ‘This is the day of separation from the world, he rose from his couch and went to the door, calling his charioteer. Before fleeing with Chhanna, he thought, ‘I will just look at my son,’ and rising, he went towards the apartments occupied by Rahula’s mother and entered her chamber. Rähula’s mother lay sleeping on a couch decked with flowers; her right hand resting on the head of the child. Gautama remained standing on the threshold and looked at them; he thought if he removed his wife’s hand he would wake her, and that thus his movements would be impeded; if he became Buddha he would come again and see his son; then he left the palace.”

With Chhanna he fled in the night to the river Anoma or Anavamä; there he gave to the faithful coachman his weapons, his ornaments and his horse, exchanged clothes with a beggar, and, living on alms, hastened to Räjagrzha, the capital of the kingdom of Magadha. In Räjagriha he studies Brahman philosophy, but dissatisfied with this, he retires to the Uruvilvä (Pah, Uruvelä) forest, where the temple of Bud dha-Gay 4 now stands. There he submits to the severest privations, till he sees the folly of attempting to obtain enlightenment by ‘enfeebling the body. The legend proceeds to describe the mental struggles through which Gautama passed under the fig-tree at Gaya as a victory over creatures of a diabolical nature, which M Ara, “the Evil One,” the demon of passion, had sent against him. In a following chapter this struggle against Mära’s seductions will be more fully noticed.

From the place where he obtained enlightenment, on the diamond throne (vajräsana), under the “tree of knowledge” (bodhr- druma), he hastened back to the world to proclaim the way of salvation—victory over self and love towards all creatures. First of all, he converts some merchants; then Brahmans and people of all ranks. From among those who were willing to follow him as disciples there arose by and by a body of monks (dhikshus), clad in yellow and shaven, who became the foundation for the later

BUDDHA'S DEATH. THE THREE COUNGKHES: 15

monasticism. A Christian traveller of the 13th century, the Venetian Marco Polo, says of Buddha)! after narrating pretty correctly the story of his life: “If Buddha had been a Christian, he would have been a great saint of our Lord Jesus Christ, so good and pure was the life he led.” This is a significant judgment at a time when religious tolerance was certainly not great.

During the forty-five years which Buddha journeyed about in Behar, we see him vigorously supported by the royal courts ; and his followers increasing; still Buddha’s doctrines do not yet seem to have been received as a separate religion. In the year 477 B.C. (probably), in the grove of the Malla princes at Kusinärä, he fell asleep, or as the ritual of his followers puts it, he entered Nirvana.

His funeral was solemnized with great pomp, and the relics were distributed among the princes and cities of the district. Over these eight Stüpas were erected,—at Räjagriha, Vaisäli, Kapilavastu, Allakappa, Rämagräma, Veihadipa, Pävä, and Kusinärä, besides the shrines erected by Drona and the Mauryas.” But though the princes of Magadha and Kosala (Audh) may have taken a personal interest in the Buddha, they did not adopt his doctrines as their private religion in supercession of the Brahman state-religion. It was only in later times that a closer organization appeared among the numerous followers of Buddha. After the death of the Master, a council was held in the Sataparmza (Pali, Sattapanni) cave of the Vaibhära hill at Rajagrzha, which was prepared for the meeting by king Ajäta- satru of Magadha. The task devolving upon this council was to fix authoritatively the words of the Master gone into Nirväna. About a century later there is said to have been a second council, held at Vaisali to suppress the heresies that had appeared in ‘the community ; but the fact of such a council is doubtful.

In the hundred and thirty years between the second and third councils, there had been great political changes. Alexander the Great had invaded the Panjab; the Magadha state (the Prachya, “Easterns,” Greek, Prasioi) had attained a dominating position ; the old dynasty had been overturned by an upstart, and Chandragupta (Gr. Sandrakottos or Sandrakyptos) had taken possession of the throne of Magadha.

Neither Chandragupta nor his successor Bindusära adopted the Buddhist doctrines, the force and authority of which had already created for them an independent position. Asoka (B.C. 264-222) —in his inscriptions called Piyadasi,—the third king of the new dynasty known as the Maurya (Pali, Mora), was the first patron of the religion, which he publicly acknowledged. He was the founder of numerous monasteries (vzhdras) and other ecclesiastical

1Yule’s Marco Polo, vol. II, p. 300.

> Kern, Manual of Buddhism, p. 46; Rockhill, Life of the Buddha, pp. 145-147 ; Rhys Davids, Buddhist Suttas, S.B.E., vol. XI, pp. 131-132.

16 ASOKA’S EDICTS.

buildings ; the sacred texts testify in extravagant terms to the king’s zeal for the faith. He is said to have had 84,000 stüpas erected in different parts of his wide realm ; and to have gifted his whole kingdom to Buddha’s followers several times, receiving it from them again.

But the most striking witnesses to his zeal for Buddha’s doctrines are his edicts. These documents, which are unique among the inscriptions of antiquity, relate that Piyadasi, the king “beloved of the gods,” interested himself in the faith and its professors, that he endeavoured to establish the sacred tradition, that he had roads, wells, and hospitals made for the use of all living creatures. The only historical inscriptions of Western Asia which are akin to the Indian, both as regards the sense and the form, are those left by the Achamenides, especially by Darius. The largest, and for our purpose the most valuable, is the inscription of Bagistän (Behistun). The simple language which expresses unreserved sincerity, the truly regal tone of the style, which avoids floridness, simply relates the facts, and does not pass over the names of the leaders who fought the battles,—are significant of the noble charac- ter of him who founded anew the Persian empire. The punishment to which he condemns the rebels “because they have lied,’ may be called humane compared with the barbarities of the Assyrians and other so-called civilized peoples. Now the inscriptions of Asoka may have some connexion with those of the Achzemenides. This appears most strikingly in the form of the language itself. The idioms of the Persians and Indian Aryans were, even until the days of the Achzmenides, nearly allied dialectically: it cannot have been very difficult for these peoples, to some extent, to understand each other directly. The royal inscriptions of the Persians show us language still struggling for expression; everything is still fresh and new. But Asoka’s inscriptions, though differing somewhat dialectically from one another, show everywhere the same courtly style (closely allied to the Persian) which is to be remarked especially in the formulating of the introductory sentences, the arrangement of the titles, and so on. It was necessary to mention this fact, for it has a decided connection with other things which intimately concern us.?

No important monument among those preserved in India is anterior to the time of king Asoka. All that have been preserved show undoubted Persian influence in their style. It has been declared, with reason, that stone-building on a large scale was first executed in India in Asoka’s time: the criticisms of Indian

1 Conf. Senart, Jour. Asiat., 8me ser. t. V. (1885) pp. 269ff ; or Inser. de Piyadasi, t. IL, pp. 219ff.

2 The Asoka edicts are found on rocks at Girnär in Gujarat, Shähbäzgarhi in Yüsufzai, at Mänsahri, at Kälsi, at Dhauli in Orissa, Jaugada in Gänjäm, and in Maisur, — also on pillars at Dehli, Allahäbäd, Rädhia, Mäthia, and Rämpürva. See Epigraphia Indica, vol. II, pp. 245ff; Arch. Sur, S. Ind.: Amardvati, vol. 1, pp. 114ff, &c.

PERSIAN STYEE: PERSIAN PILLAR: 17

patriotism can alter nothing as to this fact.1 The Persian style, which the Achemenides employed in their buildings at Susa and Persepolis, has inherited West Asian forms in its constructive as well as in its decorative features. This Persian style, which

NAAN Te

1. HALL WITH PERSO-INDIAN COLUMNS, REPRESENTING A FLOOR IN A GREAT PALACE: FROM THE RIGHT JAMB OF THE “East GATEWAY AT SANCHi.

shows many peculiarities, is unfortunately represented only by a few monuments upon which it is almost impossible to pronounce judgment. But undoubtedly its elements may again be recognised in the buildings of Asoka’s day and of the older Indian style, dependent on that of Asoka, as grafted upon the native wooden style.

& chief elements, so far as the Buddhist sculptures are con- cerned, the following forms may be indicated :—The Persian pillar with bell-shaped capital was adopted directly ; it was set up by itself as an inscription-pillar; the famous iron pillar of Dehli is alater example. In sculptures it is seen not only in represent- ations of palace-halls, but also decoratively,—often to divide spaces, and with many interesting variants. The bell-capital frequently serves as a basis for one or more lions or elephants, or for a religious symbol (e.g. the wheel) when the pillar is considered as standing alone. If the pillar is used as a support in a building, the bell-capital serves as base for an abacus on which, turned towards

1 Fergusson, Archeology in India, pp.9, 18, 16ff.; Ind. and East. Archit., pp.47-49.

18 WINGED ANIMALS. KINNARAS.

the sides, winged figures of animals (winged horses, gazelles, goats, lions, or sitting elephants) are placed. This last form re- sembles the Persian “unicorn-pillar.” The appearance of the whole pillar in India, however, is rough and clumsy compared with Persian forms.’

Orientalised animals play an important part in Buddhist art. All these hybrid creatures and winged figures—besides their purely decorative röle—have been employed in representing the inferior mythical beings of the native mythology. Still it is uncommonly difficult, as will be explained more fully below, to find Indian names for these hybrid forms, in the formation and employment of which great inconstancy and some misconceptions are noticeable. It may be supposed that if the West Asian forms had not been preserved, this inconstancy in the shapes, this careful fashioning of extraordinary creatures of the imagination, to which names cannot be given, must point likewise to foreign influences. It is interesting that, even in Asoka’s time, alongside these purely hither Asian forms, some also ap- peared sporadically which can only be of Greek origin.” The representation of divine beings under purely human forms is a feature of native art that is opposed to these foreign influences on ancient Buddhist art; and a marked contrast to the chimeras (Kinnaras) of West Asia is presented by the native animal world, which is not so fre- quently met with decoratively, but leaves this röle to the foreign forms.

With exceptions we shall meet with in a later chapter, the wings of the Oriental animals are mostly at rest and devoid of signifi-

2. WINGED LIONS FROM THE SECOND CROSS- BEAM OF THE HAST GATEWAY AT SANCHi.

_ " Conf. Cunningham, Arch. Sur. Ind. Rep., vol. V. pll. xlv, xlvi, pp. 187, 188; and interesting capitals with such creatures in Burgess, Arch@ol. Sur. W. Ind., vol. 1V, pp. 5, 12; and Cave Temples, pll. xvi, xxili, xevi.

2 The reader is reminded of the centaurs at Gayi; Räjendraläl Mitra’s Buddha- Gayd, pl. xlv, fig. 12. Centaurs are also found at a later date when the Gandhara influence appears more distinctly, and it is then impossible to prove whence they arose; Epig. Ind., vol. II, p. 314, pl. ii, fig. 6. The aprons that strike one are doubt- less to be regarded as leaves, and have a noteworthy parallel in the relief in the British Museum, Jour. Ind. Art and Industry, vol. VIII (1898), pl. xvii, 1, or sep. ed., pl. xv, 1, and p. 16. The Jaina relief is also a companion piece to ill. 23. East Asian tradition, which represents the Tiryagyonis as centaurs, proves that the human-faced

oxen on the Jaina relief indicate the centaurs as representations of the animal kingdom in the Saüsära.

CONVENTIONAL: PLANTS: -LOTUS PATTERN. 19

cance ;ı the most remarkable are those in the lion group of the applied plaques of the first and second architraves of the east gate- way of the large stüpa at Sadfichi, as will be shewn at the end of the second chapter.

Along with representations of mythical plants, which may be traced to the Assyrian tree of life, and to which is attached a series of symbols difficult to explain, appears the native plant-world. A detailed description of the dharma symbols,? &c., which belong to the first type, would con- . tribute little to the history of art; the second class is of more value. ‘The Indian - plant-world, notwithstand- ing simple and sometimes even rough modelling, is reproduced with. astonish- ing fidelity to nature. A favourite subject is the lotus-flower (Padma, Nelumbium — speciosum), which is employed decor- atively and with great taste in the arrangement. Here and there West Asian (Egyptianised) lotus flow- ers and palms have crept into designs of this cate- gory, which are remarkable for the richness of their device (fig. 3). The broad disc of the full-blown flower : 5 I N is employed in all positions N A asa decoration and, owing Sy og RI UN to its resemblance to the N, ey Ge ji wheel,is a favourite subject. DE OW IE, Asi i er! a 3. Lorus FLOWER DECORATION FROM art, which cuts the pe THE OUTER SIDE OF THE PILLARS OF THE ment through, like wall- EAST GATEWAY OF THE GREAT STÜPA paper, where the wall to be AT SANCHi. decorated ends, the flower lying under the capital in fig. 3 is turned upwards. In spite of the predominantly picturesque character of the pattern, this preference

1 Originally the wings were only externally attached symbols of speed. Conf. on this point the notes in the Festschrift für Prof.Veth, Leiden, pp. 222 and 224, note 3. A group of these winged creatures (horned lions, the so-called ki-lin, &e.) have been faith- fully preserved in the art of eastern Asia. ‘The wings are, however, represented as flames.

2 W.Simpson, The Buddhist Praying-Wheel, Lond. 1896, p. 15, note 2; Goblet d’Alviella, Migration des Symboles, 1891, pp. 294ff; conf, also G, Bühler, Epig. Ind., vol. II, p. 312,

20 THE DIFFERENT CLASSES OF MONUMENTS.

for accommodation to the ornamental design is noteworthy. The Hindu sculptor does not care for purely geometrical designs, and so we frequently find creepers with aquatic birds, &c., which, on a smaller scale, fill in the spaces, and are rich and animatcd with fine observation of nature. The two outer sides of the east gateway at Sänchi are a good example of this. While on the left side the design is carried out as geometrically as is permitted in Indian art, the creeper on the right side is full of life. Birds flit about among the flowers; and the plant itself grows from the jaws of a sea-monster. The part which flowers play in later Buddhist art is an important one, yet the finest motifs belong to this older period ; flowering creepers hung up in holy places may have provided the models. In the main it may be said that these plants, represented in simple lines, with the native animals that animate them—both of which have received purely native modelling—mostly surpass what the celebrated Greek art was able to command: they rest upon a faith- ful observation of nature.

The ancient Buddhist monuments may be divided into five groups, according to their object :—!

1. Stambhas (Pali, Thambhas; Hindüstäni, Lats), pillars on whose capital a religious symbol, as the Wheel or dharma-symbol, is represented, usually on a group of lions or elephants. They were probably always erected in connexion with Viharas or Chaityas, and served for inscriptions. Some of the finest Buddhist La¢s were erected by Asoka and bear his edicts. When the capital was sur- mounted by a lion, the pillar was called a Simhastambha (Pali, Sihatthambo). Compare the copy on the small middle pillars (be- tween the architraves) of the east gateway at Sänchi (fig. 36).

2. Stipa (Pali, Thupo; Anglo-Indian “tope”) applies to any mound, as a funeral pile or tumulus; and hence to domical struc- tures over sacred relics of Buddha or other Sthavira or saint, or as memorials on spots consecrated by some remarkable event in Buddha’s life. When they preserved relics, the shrine in which these were kept was the Dhätugarbha (Pali, Dhdtugabbho; Singhalese, Dägaba; Japanese, 76); and as most Stüpas were erected over relics (dhätu), the whole structure came to be called a Dägaba. A stüpa consists of a circular or square base.support- ing a dome (garbha), on which stands a square block or neck (gala) representing a box to hold a relic, crowned by a capital consisting of a number of flat tiles. Above this is the umbrella or spire (chidamani—Burmese, ht/)—single or with several roofs. usually three, over one another.

3. Chaityas (Pali, Chetiya). Like Stipa, the word Chaitya? is applied to a monument or cenotaph, and in a secondary sense to a temple or shrine containing a Chaitya or Dhätugarbha. Chaityas

1 Conf. Fergusson, Ind. and East. Architecture, p. 50. 2 In Nepal and Tibet (chaitya—Tib. mChod.rten, pronounced Chhor.ten) the word

is used in the sense of stüpa (dhätugarbha=Tib,. mDun.rten). Conf. Burgess, Cave Temples, p. 174,

CLASSES OF MONUMENTS. LOCALITIES. al

or Dägabas are an essential feature of temples or chapels con- structed for purposes of worship, there being a passage round the Chaitya for circumambulation (pradakshinaya), and from these such temples have received their appellation. The name of Chaitya, however, applies not only to sanctuaries, but to sacred trees, holy spots, or other religious monuments.'

4. Vihäras were monasteries for the accommodation of monks living together in communities, and were mostly, if not always, connected with Chaityas.

5. Ornamental Rails (suchaka) were mostly employed as the enclosures of stüpas, or to surround a terrace on which stood a sacred tree, &c. The stone railings are among the most important monuments in the representation of Indian sculpture, as most of them are ornamented with reliefs on the upright shafts and transoms (suchz) or cross-bars. In some places great stone gates (torazas) are connected with the railings. These gates—the best preserved are those at Saficht—are mostly richly adorned with sculptured scenes. They show the stereotyped wooden style not only in the decoration but also in the form of the building. They seem to have been introduced into farther Asia very early ; at any rate the well-known Chinese faz-/us and the Japanese Zori-is are to be connected with these ancient torazas. Originally they were, no doubt, somewhat like our triumphal arches.’

4. REPRESENTATION OF A STUPA: GODS AND MEN BEFORE IT. From the east gateway of the great stüpa at Säächt.

Now the monuments, the sculptures of which show the principal

phases of ancient Indian art, are divided into two large groups. The older, and properly Indian group, in which Persian influence

1 Conf. Jour. As. Soc. Beng. vol. VII, p. 1001.

2 Fergusson and Burgess, Cave Temples, pp. 171-177; Goblet d’Alviella, Ce que U Inde doit a la Grece, pp. 44-48.

22 REMAINING MONUMENTS.

appears, begins in Asoka’s time; to it belong the monuments in India proper; läfs at Dehli, Tirhut, Sankisa, Sanchi, etc.; chaitya-caves and vihäras in Bihär, at Nasik, Ajan/ä, Elura, Karle, KAazhéri, Bhaja, Béadsa, Dhamnar, at Udayagiri near Kafak, Bagh, etc.; stüpas of Mänikyäla, Sarnath, SAficht, and Amarävat!: stone railings with gates at Barähat

LL IB BE Peshanard- each

5. Sketch Map oF INDIA WITH THE NAMES OF THE PRINCIPAL SITES OF THE BUDDHIST PERIOD.

(Bharhut or Bharaut), Mathura, Gaya, Sähchi, and Amar A- vati. The second group, the so-called Greeco-Buddhist, or rather, as Fergusson first called it, that of the Gandhara monasteries,

GANDHARA, UDAYAGIRI, BARAHAT, GAYA. 28

embraces the numerous remains of the monasteries of Jamäl-- garhi, Takht-i-Bähi, Shahdéhri, Sanghäo, Natthu in Yüsufzäi, and at Loriyän Tangai and other localities in the Swat territory. An older branch perhaps precedes it,—the Indo-Hellenic school, Smith styles it,—which is represented chiefly by sculptures from Mathura.

While in the older Indian group the native element forms the groundwork, and so is developed farther on the soil of India, the Gandhära school presents strange antique forms. Later it influences Indian art, but, from geographical and other reasons which con- tributed also to the splitting of Buddhism into two schools, it remains isolated and is thenceforward most permanent in the ecclesiastical art of the northern or Mahayana school.

Among the oldest sculptures of India are perhaps those of the caves of Udayagiri in the Puri district of Orissa. The most interesting are in the two-storeyed Räj-Räni or Räni-ka Nar caves. These remarkable reliefs show an uncommonly animated style, little influenced by foreign elements." They form, so to speak, the primitive basis from which issued the purified and refined forms of later times.

In general, the ruins of the richly ornamented stone-railing and of the gates of the stüpa at Barähat (Bharhut), which has now all but completely vanished from the spot, show on their reliefs the same style as the sculptures of the Safchi gates de- scribed below, though they are somewhat harsh in form; this is most apparent where women are represented. The distorted exaggerations of the female figures, and the fondness for the nude are seen on the Säncht reliefs; in Barähat scarcely anything of this is to be remarked. The sculptures of Barähat are of special value, inasmuch as all the representations are accompanied by inscriptions, and so can easily be explained. Most of the pillars from the south and east gateways and the connecting rail were removed to the India Museum in Calcutta, and only a few frag- ments left 7» stu. The ruins which, when found, had been terribly destroyed, date from about the first half of the second century B.C.

The sculpture of the earlier stone-railing at Gaya (Buddha- gaya) are somewhat later than those at Barähat, and are no doubt to be traced back to Asoka. In ancient times it enclosed a terrace, on which the bod. hi-tree—the fig-tree under which Gautama obtained enlightenment—stood, apparently in a sort of chapel. The temple at Gaya is of much later date: it was built by Amaradeva in the fifth century A.D., restored by the Burmese

1 Fergusson, Archaeology in India, p. 42; Cave Temples, pp. 77-86, 94.

2 Fergusson, Ind. and East. Architecture, pp. 85-91; Cunningham, Bharhut Stüpa (1879) ; Le Bon, Monum. de l’ Inde, pp. 52-55. Bharhut lies to the 8.S.W. of Alla- häbäd, about 200 miles E.N.E. from Sänchi, and 160 W.S,W. from Banaras, near to

the railway. The remains of the stüpa there were reported to Gen. Cunningham by a native in 1873, and excavated by him in Feb. 1874.

24 SANCHI.

in 1306-9, and again, it lately underwent a renovation at the hands of the Bengal Government, that must be regretted. Some fine panels from the old Asoka railing seem to have found their way to the Berlin Museum.

L 7

HEE!

6. PLAN AND RESTORED ELEVATION OF THE GREAT STÜPA AT SÄNCH!. At Sänchi, or SAficht-Kanakeda, about twenty miles N.E. of the capital of Bhopal, and S.W. from Bhilsä, the ancient Vidisa, there was a group of ancient stüpas and other religious

sANCHI. 25

buildings. Till about 1820 the largest and second stüpas, with a third, were stili entire. The place was first seen by Colonel Taylor and then by Captain E. Fell and Dr. Yeld in 1818. Soon after, Mr. H. Maddock got permission from the native government to dig into the stüpas, and by December 1822, Captain Johnson, the Agent’s assistant, had opened the largest to its foundations. This carelessly conducted search for supposed treasure did immense damage to the structure of three stüpas and hastened the dilapi- dation of their enclosures, while no discovery compensated in any way for the destruction. They were again further opened up by Major A. Cunningham and Capt. F. C. Maisey in 1851, when several relic caskets were found.’

The largest stüpa is surrounded by a massive stone railing ; access to the space inside the railing is afforded by four lofty gate- ways of fine grained sandstone facing the four points of the compass. ‘This stüpa is a massive, solid brick and stone building of 121 feet in diameter and about 533 feet high ; the dome rises from a plinth 14 feet high, standing out 54 feet from its circumference. On the top of the building was a terrace 34 feet in diameter, en- closed by a stone-railing (cf. plan and sketch, fig. 6). The ascent to the ramp which surrounds the building was reached by a double stair on the south side. The whole structure is surrounded by a massive colonnade measuring 144 feet from west to east and 151 feet from north to south. In this way the space on the south side of the terrace, where the steps are, is broader. The encircling rail shows numerous inscriptions, but no sculpture on the frieze or coping. On the other hand, the figured work of the four great gateways is particularly rich.

At the instigation of Mr. Fergusson,? a cast of the eastern gateway was made in 1869 and copies of it are in the Museums of Science and Art at S. Kensington, Edinburgh and Dublin, in the Royal Museum at Berlin, at Paris, &c.

The inscriptions on the railings of both the two existing stüpas are short but very numerous. Unfortunately, they contain scarcely any indication by help of which a date might be inferred. But the great majority of them are in the form of alphabet which goes back to the time of Asoka (B.C. 250) and which had altered for some time before the Christian era.” It seems most probable then

1 Jour. A. S. Ben., vol. III, pp. 488-494; vol. IV, p. 712; also vol. VI, pp. 451ff ; vol. XVI, pp. 744ff; Cunningham, Bhilsa Topes, pp. x, 183, 269f. 275, 285f.; Fer- gusson, Tree and Serp. Wor. p. 96; Picturesque Illust. of Anc. Archit. pp. 21, 22; Ind. and East. Arch. pp. 60-75, 92-99; and Maisey, Sdnchi and its Remains.

2 The first half of Fergusson’s Tree and Serpent Worship (1868, 2d ed. 1873) was devoted to the illustration of the Sifichi Topes or Stüpas, from the drawings of Colonel Maisey, and a few photographs. A complete photographic representation of all the sculptures is required adequately to illustrate the monument.

3 Epigraphia Indica, vol. II, pp. 88, 89. An inscription on the representation of a stüpa on the south gateway, mentions that the block “ was the gift of Ananda, the son of Vasishtha, in the reign of Sri Sätakarni.” Among the Andhra kings there were

several bearing this name, one of whom seems to have ruled over the Dakhan about 150 B.c.

26 SANCHi. AMARAVATH.

that the gateways were erected in the second century before the Christian era. Stress may also be laid on the fact that the south gate, to judge from the style, is apparently the oldest. For different reasons it is probable that it was Asoka who erected the stüpa. The Singhalese chronicle, the Mahävansa, relates that Asoka, when he was sent by his father as regent to Ujjayini (Ujjain), made a stay of some time at Chetiyagiri or Vessanagara (Bes- nagar near Bhilsä) There he married the daughter of a prince, and had by her two sons, Ujjeniya and Mahinda, and after- wards a daughter, Sanghamitta. The two last took orders, and at the behest of their royal father went to Ceylon at the invitation of King Tissa, to take thither a shoot of the sacred bodhi-tree and to spread Buddhism in the island. Before their departure for Ceylon they were received by the princess their mother, who visited them at Chetiyagiri, in a hall built by herself. Now before the south gate there stood a La/ (with lion capital), of which a fragment still remains, bearing part of an inscription—apparently of an edict of Asoka,’—from which it follows that the erection of the great stüpa belongs to Asoka’s time, about 250 B.C.: the commencement of the rail followed very soon after; and the erection of the south gateway, about or before 150 B.C. According to their probable age, the gateways stand in the following order—the southern, the northern, the eastern, the western. As the reliefs of the gateways exhibit the most extensive monu- ment of older Buddhist sculpture, and in general represent the Asoka style, the character of this style will be described in more detail in the following chapter. For the reliefs of the east gate see the end of Chapter II.

The great Stipa of Amarävati, on the right or south bank of the lower Krishaa river, about twenty miles above Bejwada, was first heard of by Colonel Colin Mackenzie in 1797. It was then being removed by the local chief to be used for building purposes. Mackenzie paid a prolonged visit to it in 1816 and again in the end of 1819, and made many careful drawings from the slabs of the railing and of those that had been round the base of the stüpa. Many sculptures had then been destroyed, but a few were secured by Mackenzie and sent to Madras and Calcutta. Further excavations were made in 1845 by Sir W. Elliott, and the sculptures recovered are now in the British Museum. The Madras Government excavated the whole area in 1881, and a large number of the sculptures then recovered were sent to the Madras Museum.

The Amarävati stüpa appears to have been deserted in the seventh century, when Hiwen Tsiang visited the district. The short inscriptions found range over a considerable period, and there were evidently enlargements and reconstructions; but the discovery of an epigraph of Pu/umäyi—an Andhra king of the second century A.D., and the reported association of Nägärjuna's name

1 Epig, Ind., vol. II, p. 367.

AMARAVATi. EARLY SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 5%

with the creation of the rail, combined with other indications, point to the second century A.D. as the period when most of the sculptures were executed and the work completed. It is due to Fergusson’s ingenuity that the railing, adorned with richly com- posed reliefs, of which the pieces were completely dissevered, has been so far reconstructed that we have a picture of the whole.'

The Amarävati railing thus belongs apparently to the second century A.D.; the stüpa itself was older. The style of the sculpture on the railings had its origin in that ofthe Asoka period, but it has an entirely new kind of formation. The types are all closely pre- served; but in the representation of the single figures, as in the composition, other laws prevailed. It will suffice, however, to indicate below some striking points in which the style of this older period—as Fergusson was the first to show—exerted an influence upon the reliefs of Amarävati. Asto the further development of the elements which Amarävati has in common with Sänchi, and so on, it will suffice to notice that a certain coquettish elegance, an over-luxuriance of the compositions, is the characteristic feature. ech 11US7,8,, 20, Cec.)

The paintings of the cave-temples of Ajazta, N.N.W. of the town of the same name in the Indhyädri Hills which form the boundary between the Dekhan and Khandesh, do not fall quite within the scope of this book, and the reader is referred therefore to the literary works indicated in the bibliography for what concerns the history of the discovery as well as the artistic character of these specimens of ancient Indian paintings, so im- portant’ to Indian archeology. Fergusson conjectured that, besides the Gandhära school of sculpture, an early school of painting existed in Gandhära: how far what is established in the third chapter as to the survival of Gandhära types in the ecclesiastical paintings of Tibet, China and Japan, is calculated to support this undoubtedly correct conjecture of Fergusson, will no doubt be seen when our knowledge of the latter has been assured. Now the frescoes of Ajantä and Bagh are also connected with these ancient ecclesiastical paintings animated by antique elements. It is only necessary to refer occasionally to an Ajanta representation where it seems of value for the history of a type. The uncommon beauty and grace of these pictures,—the sad fate of which I need not dwell on here,—was made evident by the outline drawings which Dr. J. Burgess incorporated in his account of the pictures (Bombay, 1879). ‘The recent splendid publication of the Aja»fä pictures by Mr. Griffiths has made them access- ible in a worthy form.

1 The materials acquired have been utilized in the second half of Fergusson’s Tree and Serpent Worship and in the volume of the Archeological Survey of 8. India on the Amardvati and Jaggayyapeta Stüpas.

7. A CHIEF SEATED ON A THRONE, TALKING WITH ASCETICS: FROM SWAT.

CHAPTER I. VEIRTERRLYETINDERN SEYLE.

The form of art which was, and remained, national in India, and which constantly influenced the stone-architecture was wood- carving. The stone gates at Sachi, for example, are copied from wooden ones, which perhaps originally stood there; the general construction as well as the detail show this most clearly. The same stylistic features of the gates are met with, on a smaller scale;..also. in the throne-seats-in.reliefs of a still earlier period. Thus, among other things, some examples of thrones with backs are preserved on the reliefs of the stone railings of Amaravati, which represent the old Aryan native style in a quite distinctive manner. It is astonishing how intimately related these forms are to those of the Middle Ages, especially those of the north (conf. figs. 7,8). The transoms of the broad low support are worked at the ends so as to project, and the ends themselves are ornamented with fantastic animals’ heads (heads of dragons). On the relief from Amarävati (shown in fig. 31) the Toraza appears to be treated similarly—so far as the architrave is concerned—but the representations are not quite distinct enough. ‘The interstices are adorned with reliefs and little round figures. The West Asian animal forms that are here introduced will be treated more in detail below (conf. figs. 28 and 29).

1 As the examples of this style are all within the limits of India proper, I prefer this term to “ Perso-Indian” employed by Prof. Grünwedel.—J.B.

WOOD-CARVING. THRONE-SEATS. 29

At the present day wood-carving is still preserved in rustic forms—the characteristic feature of the national life of ancient India, as of the life of modern times, being the peasant class— although these purely archaic forms, reminding one of German compositions of the Middle Ages, have been lost. As in ancient Buddhist sculpture, the carved-wood style reappeared in India at a

3 if m. gi y ET WHE

x NE g\. Fe BR ;

N

: / = ai Ne

vies

8. THRONE SUPPORTING A SMALL STUPA, WORSHIPPED BY NAGAS. On a slab from Amarävati. Fergusson, Tree and Serp. Wor., pl. 1xil.

later period in the sacred buildings of the Jains under the Chalukya rulers of the Middle Ages. These buildings were executed in stone (white marble), and the fine lace-like interwoven work that forms the decoration of the buildings on Mount Abu and in other Jaina temples in Western India had then its origin. How these Jaina buildings, in turn,—with the omission of the figure elements— became the models for the trellis and stone filigree work of the Muhammadans in their buildings at Ahmadabad and elsewhere belongs to a different chapter of Indian art. We see then, that early Indian sculpture had an auxiliary in an ancient, indigenous, and deeply rooted branch of art: though. it is true it was only in the hands of an artizan class. When working in stone began it was

30 INFLUENCE OF WOOD-CARVING.

an aid in modelling, but an obstacle in the way of development. It is the wood-carving style, above all, which is to blame for the fact that Indian sculpture never became more than a rc/zevo serving for the decoration of large buildings,—so much so, indeed, that the buildings executed in stone appear overlaid with carved mouldings. The ornamental relief only seldom, and as if by chance, attains organic completeness; even in ancient Buddhist art a certain irregularity is indulged. in—a constant varying of the panels employed decoratively, for the normal architectural development of which there is no hard and fast rule. It is therefore, as we shall see, very difficult to insist upon the points which, according to the design of the sculptor, should be emphasized. (Cf. illus. 36). And, further, “there are "no. ‚separate figures in Buddhist art: for even when figures are executed alone they are never represented without an aureole, never without attend- ant accessory figures, and never ‚without a wall behind to form a solid background to the figure. This fact bears a certain relation to the Indian conception of the universe—the constant merging of historical persons in a system, the limited freedom of the indi- vidual with regard to the world surrounding him, and which is considered essentially from a re- ligious standpoint, even the very idea of the identity of individual souls with the Universal Soul: it is to this that their incapacity is owing to attain a really artistic conception which could have de- veloped the independent figure.

A second branch of Indian art, — more delicate in form, and, by reason of the allusions to models in nature, apparently more produc- tive,—was intimately connected, and that from very early times, with the popular ideas: this was the art of the goldsmith.

1So Cunningham, Bharhut, pl. xliii. The inscriptions designate the two repre- sentations as Isimiga Jdtaka and Miga samadaka chetaya,—“the rebirth as Rishi

Antelope,” and “the antelope enjoying chaitya.” Conf. Hultzsch, ‘ Bharhut Inschriften’ in Zeit. d. Morg. Ges., Bd. XL., Ss. 58-76, Nrs. 10, 11.

re =

2

RELIEF WITH REPRESENTATION OF THE ISIMIGA JATAKA, LIONS AND ANTELOPES BEFORE

EURE Kr, an A

a, C 00 ok O oO EN:

RL > 27

ail

(gies =p

ll

IN

va

THE SACRED TREE, &e.!

ror)

GOLDSMITH’S ART. INDIAN JEWELLERY. Sl

Its influence is confirmed in two directions. The sculptures show how the decorative element in goldsmiths’ work—often nearly resembling basket-work—everywhere aids in the devising of those chains and other ornaments, with flowers, leaves, rosettes, and finely linked bands, found along with panels which are adorned with figure compositions. The lower decorative lines on fig. 9 present patterns borrowed from ornaments: little bells and chains such as are worn by women for the feet.

For the separation ofthe different representations inthe central belt the tendrils of plants are employed, from which ornaments grow out: the representation of the “Wishing tree” (Aalpavriksha), which at a later date becomes common, springs from this ornamental form.

But the goldsmith’s art has had a fatal effect on the modelling of the human figure. The heroic form of Indian sculptured figures has been, and at all times remained the same,—they are decked as for gala occasions. This form has been preserved with unalterable tenacity through the whole history of Indian art, and even in neighbouring countries. The old, partly ancient Aryan, forms of festal ornaments passed, along with the Aryan colonists, beyond the limits of India, in manifold varieties in accordance with the peculiar style of the particular country; in Burma and Siam, Tibet and Mongolia, Java and Bali, the modified forms of ancient Indian gala ornaments are still to be found in the gala costume of the kings, or of brides and bridegrooms, or, finally, in the costumes of the theatres which everywhere represent subjects . taken from the ancient Indian legends. It is a surprising fact that the non-Aryan districts of India, or the lower castes in the old civilised parts, like the above-named countries outside India, fre- quently now show more antique forms of articles of jewellery than the ancient civilised kingdoms of India itself, since in the course of time the latter adopted other fashions in costume and ornament. The whole question deserves special and detailed examination in which the monuments of antiquity should play a prominent part. At present I must content myself with suggestions.

The ornaments are uncommonly rich and tastefully arranged, whilst they also in themselves form an artistic motif. The ancient Buddhist plastic art never deteriorated into the rough, monotonous and mechanical sort of style in which the so-called Assyrian art covers its figures with ornaments and garments in rich patterns. But on the other hand the ornament, in the pain- fully careful execution it received, hindered very considerably the development of the human figure, since it always retained the conventional type for the forms. Here, too, it is to be observed, that tropical Nature has exercised its influence in India; for the very names of articles of jewellery in all Indian tongues clearly prove the most part of them to be imitations of the splendid blossoms and creepers which the flora of this lovely land holds out to man for his adornment on festive occasions. From ancient

32 ORNAMENT A HINDRANCE TO PLASTIC ART.

literature we clearly learn, for example, that the same flowers served directly for adorning the hair which, at the present day, have given their names to the corresponding metal ornaments. Thus we read in the Rıfusamhära (‘Description of the seasons’), ii. 21: “Now (in the rainy season) the women wear on their heads garlands of Kadamba, Kesara, and Ketaki, and ear orna- ments of Kakubha-umbels, which, being thrust into the earlap hang down over its edge.” These floral adornments varied accord- ing to the seasons. With regard to the names mentioned it may here be noted that even at the present day a broad ornamental plate in the shape of a pandanus-blossom is quite commonly worn as a head-ornament. It bears the same name: Hindi, Aetaki; Marathi, Keord; Malayälam, Kerdappi; &c. Even along with metal ornaments, flowers assert their rights: the Tamil women when in gala costume, along with metal ear-ornaments and orna- “mental plates on their heads, wear a cluster of single yellow or white flowers strung together by means of threads, and hung from ‘their ears, &c., &c. Among the lower castes similar articles— perhaps imitations—woven of grass and straw, with festoons and chains made of nuts and bright coloured seeds, are still to be seen side by side with metal ornaments.

However pleasing and charming this joy in Nature may appear, the reproduction of these articles of adornment had an unfortunate artistic influence with.respect to modelling. The shoulders loaded with broad chains, the arms and legs covered with metal rings, the bodies encircled with richly linked girdles, could never have at- tained an anatomically correct form. Everywhere the carrying out of a clear outline was interfered with by broad ornamental lines, rich and tasteful in themselves, disturbing the natural position of: the muscles of the leg and arm, and, in consequence, the limbs have received at the best, an effeminate seemingly correct finish; but at the worst, they have been subjected to a complete distortion of the skeleton, whilst the muscles stand unduly out.

Connected with this overloading with ornament, certain physical peculiarities which accompany the wearing of heavy ornament are regarded as beauties and are still further exaggerated in the copies. This is especially due to the wearing of large and heavy ornaments. This, again, is in keeping with the fact that the types on the monuments, e.g. illust. 8, 14, 22, bear a greater resemblance to certain ornaments of the Aryan races than. those worn by the women of the early civilized territory at the present day. The great metal, wood, or horn discs (Mal., takka; Tamil, takker) of the Nayarchchi of Malabar, the extended ear-lobes of the Mara- vatti, &c., are well known.”

1 These in order are :—Nauclea kadamba, Mimusops elengi, Pandanus odoratissimus,

Pentaptera arjuna.

2 No indicate to the reader what stress is laid on this perception of beauty in the Indian mind, it may be noted that, among the beneficent acts (Tam. aram) enumerated by Tamil moralists, besides digging wells, building hospitals, feeding Brahmans,

REPRESENTATION OF THE HUMAN FIGURE. 33

Out of this emphasizing of ornament came the treatment of the nude. The naked body, as such, was never an object of represent- ation in Buddhist art.

Apart from the fact that nudity is repugnant to Buddha’s doctrine, the peculiar ideas of the Hindus as to the purpose of the human body is to be taken into account; the human form is at best a part of Nature itself, the ephemeral garment of the soul, in which the latter lingers against its will. It is important to remember here what ideas were not accepted by the Hindus. Man never appears as the lord of Nature, which was there just to serve him: never is he regarded as the crown of creation. Re- incarnation into the world of human beings is only desirable inas- much as that alone makes redemption—final escape—possible. With this may be connected the fact that no general interest is taken in the symmetrical training of the body. Physical exercise is not unknown in India, but its ends are professional, not esthetic. Physical beauty. appears as the result of good works in former births: not as that of individual energy and pleasure in life; it is a gift of Nature and transient as the tropical flowers. It is quite true that, in India, people wore, and still wear, as light clothing as was worn in ancient Greece, and bare limbs are common. Physic- ally, too, the Hindu differs from the ancient Greek. With his delicate and supple-jointed limbs, miserable calves and feeble muscles, the Hindu was in early times, as the ancient Buddhist sculptures show, the very same lightly-built, slippery, eel-like creature that he is to-day. On the whole, it may be said that ancient Buddhist art has represented the Hindu excellently, with an agreeable childlike naturalism which, notwithstanding the graceful moulding, is far from idealising. As strict training was ‚unknown, a refinement soon appears which is seen chiefly in the representations of women, and becomes by and by baroque or rococo in style. With this conception of the human form agrees the circumstance that even at an early date an interest in por- traiture, at least in national portraits—if one may be allowed the expression—is evinced. The different peoples that lived side by side in India were distinguished from one another above all physically : contact with peoples of hither Asia, in the time of Asoka, revealed’ new types, and thus we undoubtedly see an attempt for instance to represent foreign nations in the equestrian groups that adorn the Safchi gateways.

On the eastern gateway, for example, besides mythical foreign peoples, two figures are represented riding on horned lions. One of the heads is clearly not of the Aryan type: the woolly negro- like hair and the thick coarse shape of the whole head surprises “giving palmyra palm bands (4édélei) to women,” is specified, that with these rolled spirally in discs they may enlarge the holes in their ears and so wear large and im- posing ornaments (¢édw, Mal. töda). Conf. Rottler, Tamil-Eng. Dict. s.v. aram. Jn

this connexion see also E. Thurston, Madras Gort. Mus. Bullet. vol. II (1898), pll. xxil, xxv, pp. 128ff.

34 MYTHICAL AND REAL FOREIGNERS. THE HINDU TYPE.

one; this same figure holds a bunch of grapes in his hand. In India wine is unknown. There appears to be no word in the early language for the vine or its cluster.! Even at the present day,

CI

KARA

Mm

10. COMPARTMENT FROM THE THIRD ARCHWAY OF THE EAST GATEWAY AT SANCHTf.

grapes are mostly brought from Kabul, though they are now culti- vated about Daulatäbäd. Thus the rider represents one who is not Indian, and has perhaps a remote connexion with the repre- sentations of Silenus that have been found at Mathura.” Although the framework of the figure is in the Perso-Indian style, at any rate this and the corresponding equestrian figures represent foreign nations, regarded as living far away in the North-west. The whole series of these figures—those mounted on goats, on dromedaries, on lions—present a distinct contrast to the Hindus riding on elephants. The mythical-geographical conceptions on which they are based remind one of those fabulous creatures of which Herodotus tells the Greeks,’ from Persian traditions related by Aristeas of Prokonnésos, and which, on the strength of Indian tales, Megasthenes described at a later date.

The great majority of the other reliefs at Säfchi present the Hindu ty pe—a long head with full round face, large eyes, and thick lips. At Barähat (Bharhut) the same type appears, but it is somewhat harsher. The greatly extending ear-lobes are never wanting; the way in which the head-dress is emphasized often

1 Sanskrit dräkshä is ‘pdt; mridvikd, mridvi, is a new form. On the probable borrowing of ßdrpvs in Chinese, conf. Hirth, Mremde Einflüsse in d. Chin. Kunst, S. 15, 28, note 1.

2 Jour. A. S. Beng. vol. V, pp. 517, 567; Arch. Sur. Ind, Rep., vol. 1, pp. 242-44 ;

and Growse, Mathura, 2d. ed. p. 156. 3 Herodotus, lib. iii, c. 116; lib. iv, ce. 13,

THE DWARF FORMS. DEMON-TYPE. DRAPERY. 35

causes the heads to appear disproportionately large, so that, in the case of accessory personages especially, the whole figure has some- thing childish and dwarfish about it (conf. fig. 17, &c.). In this way real dwarfs appear, which are presumably connected with antique pigmy types (conf. fig. 11). This question, which demands much preliminary in- vestigation, cannot here be discussed in detail. Still it may be said that they represent the basis of the thick-set, dwarfish type of demon that appears later and extends into Lamaist art. It seems not to be without purpose that the dwarf capital appears on the west gateway at Sänchi, since the architrave represents the attack of the demons on the Bodhi-tree.!

In the treatment of drapery, the earlier Buddhist art is very successful,—though

. : ae ue SBIETARZCAPITAT:

unusual articles of clothing, such as the monk’s rm DWARF-LIKER cowl, present difficulties. The dress of the men prmons. From the consists, in the main, of the same articles as west gateway at Sajichi. are generally worn at the present day,—a loin-cloth worn so as to resemble trowsers (Hind. dhéti, Tam. mundu) forms the garment proper. The upper part of the body is always bare; the modern jacket, for example (Hind. angiyd, Tam. sokkag), or other forms of this article of attire, nowhere appear. As covering for the upper part of the body a long shawl-like cloth is used, which is thrown about the shoulders in various ways—the modern angavastram, and so on. In descrip- tions contained in the sacred texts of gala costumes and the like, the chelukkhepa, t.e. the waving with the dress, that is the upper garment, is always mentioned (fig. 37). This upper garment has ever remained the heroic costume, if one may be allowed the expression, and in the earlier and later representations of Buddhist gods, forms the folds that wave about the figure like an aureole. This arrange- ment is often completely misunderstood in badly executed pictures, though East Asian art knows how to employ tastefully this Indian dress. (Conf. illus. in Chapters Ill and IV). Japanese articles of export, nevertheless, when they represent Buddhist deities often manifest the rudest misconceptions.

The women on the sculptures of the older period are seen clothed in the loin-cloth only, but their ornaments and head-dresses are allthe more rich. The long loin-cloth, reaching to the ankles, is sometimes treated as transparent, and is then— since the sculptor lacked the means of expressing his idea—indicated by representing the figure without covering, yet so that the edge of a garment is visible over the ankles and between the legs. The upper part of the body is always uncovered: this light kind of dress is still to be

I Tree and Serp. Worsh., pl. xviii; Pres. Nat. Monts. in India (Lond. 1896), pl. xxvi, or Cole, Sdichi (1885), pl. ix,

36 CLOTHING.

12. RELIEF ON THE INNER SIDE OF THE LEFT PILLAR OF THE EAST GATEWAY AT SANcCHi; A YAksHa.}

found in the south of modern India among the Nayar- chchhis of Mala- bar, whose large ear - ornaments have been already mentioned. On several reliefs the women appear without any gar- ment but a narrow loin-cloth, the orna- mented girdle; head, arm and leg ornamentsbeingall the richer. Further details relating to these matters be- long to the history of costume. It was important to notice here, that, from the nature of the gar- ments, the hip, and not the breast and upper part of the body, becomes the fixed point starting from which the fi- gure wascomposed. One has the feeling that tine: artist wished to provide against the loin- cloth slipping from the» figure... «hase condition, imposed by the character of the vestments, ex- plains much in the modern Hindu; but it also explains the strained attitude of the figures both in

1 This is possibly Dhritaräshta, the white Yaksha ruler of the East: conf. Rockhill, Life of Buddha, p. 48, note; Minayeff, Recherches sur la Buddh. (in Ann. Mus. Guimet), pp.138f.; Arch. Sur. W. Ind., vol. IV, p. 99. inser. 3; and Cave Temples,

pl. xxv.—J.B,

ACCENTUATION OF THE HIP. SUBJECTS REPRESENTED. 37

the older and Jater art of India. Modern proverbs are conversant with this.

An artistic feature which naturally originated from the sort of clothing described above,—the rich hip chains and girdle—is the prominence of one hip, the figure being represented with one foot firmly planted while the other, bent or in the act of stepping forward, is almost entirely relieved of the burden. This beauty device is of very ancient standing in Indian art ; it is usually, if not exclusively, seen in female figures. Modern miniatures have faithfully pre- served it and developed it to a certain coquettish elegance ; conf. figs. 8 and 13.

The subjects that were represented were taken from the traditions of the life of the founder of the religion, and referred to local incidents. His life, until he attained Buddhat- tam—to use their own expression—seems to have been the chief subject for the earlier period. But besides these, there exist at least as many scenes representing solely the adoration and worship of religious symbols, processions to holy places, and so on. Besides there appear even on the monuments of the Asoka period a few representations which refer to the so-called Fatakas or stories of Buddha’s previous incar- RUE nations. The Fatakas form a part of the Mankla form of SRt canonical literature (of the Sä/ra class); they (Tirumagal). Modern are an inexhaustible storehouse of fables and S. Indian bronze. legends, but are also of exceptional import- ance in the history of civilization in ancient India. The plan of the work is briefly as follows :—According to the tradition, Gautama had passed through five hundred and fifty existences in all created forms,—as god, as man, as animal,—till, in his last incarnation, as the son of Suddhodana, he appeared as the deliverer of mankind. Five hundred and fifty verses, or groups of verses, which contain sayings of the Master, form the themes for as many tales told in support of them from Buddha’s last earthly hfe. Some event—an annoying incident with insubordinate monks, for example, or a contest with some adversary, a conversion, et cetera, is related in the attached commentary: Buddha adjusts matters, or delivers a discourse, which contains a parallel from one of his previous lives and concludes with the verse that forms the title as fabula docet.

Owing to the simplicity of the religious ideas of the people at the

' Or Bhümidevi, the goddess of the earth, Vishru’s second wife, who is represented with two arms, holding a lotus flower in one while the other hangs down empty; she wears a crown, and her black hair hangs down to near her feet; she stands on a lotus. Tirumagal, ‘the divine or illustrious daughter,’ is a name of Lakshmi.—J.B.

38 SAKRA AND THE GODS. THE THUNDERBOLT.

time, the figures required by Buddhist art for the representation of the subjects referred to, are few in number, and represent divinities of a low order—demons and beings half divine,—for Buddhism had taken root chiefly among the masses and everywhere employed the speech of the people. According to their teaching all the above- mentioned beings are mortal; even the gods owe their positions to their virtuous actions in previous existences, and appear through- out as believing promoters of the religion of the ‘ Vanquisher.’ —

Now in the S#tras, especially in the ¥aétakas, a god and a god- dess are particularly prominent. In the Vedic pantheon, the thunder-god Indra or Sakra (the mighty) had attained a predominant position, and had thrust the older class of gods into the background; even in the Pali Säfras he is familiar, under the name of Sakka, as the chief god. ‘The Buddhists adopted into their mythology certain of the- Brahmanical gods, but modified their characters .and importance.. To Sakka, Mahabrahma and Mära,—possibly influenced by the Persian conceptions of the Ameshaspends,—they assigned the rank of archangels, and repre- sented them as ruling in great magnificence in their respective Devalokas or heavens, but often descending to interfere in human affairs. Sakra, like Jupiter Fulgurator, is the Brahmaz god of the atmosphere and king of the minor gods; and with the Buddhists he even bears like names—as, Väsava, Vajrapdzi, Devinda, Ma- ghavä, Sahassanetta (Sansk. Sahasranetra), &c., but they change Purindara (‘destroyer of towns’) into the Buddhistic epithet of Purindada (‘bestower of towns’). He is inferior in majesty to the other two archangels, but rules over the five lowest of the six Kämadevalokas and has his abode in the Tävatimsa (S. Trayas- trimsa) heavens. As in Brähma» mythology, his consort is Sujata or Sachi, his palace or car is called Vejayanta, his elephant Eravana (S. Airävata), and his charioteer Mätali.! In Hindu iconography also he holds the Vajräyudha, which he is represented as giving to those practising austerities to render them invincible. He appears in sculptures in the ornaments and costume of:a king: indeed, he is not distinguishable from royal figures.

On the east gateway at Säncht (on the front of the right pillar) a large palace of the gods is represented, on the different terraces of which persons in regal costume are represented sitting and waited on by women who dance and play. They are certainly gods: in their left hands they hold a small bottle, in the right an object— not readily recognisable, but which resembles the later thunder- bolts (conf. fig. 1), the well-known ritual sceptres (vajra: Tibetan, rdo-rje) of the priests of the northern school). It must be the thunderbolt, the attribute of divine power—an attribute cor- responding well with the storm-myths of the Rigveda.

1 In Persian myth, Indra is the demon opposed to the Ameshaspend Asha-Vahista.

Darmsteter, Zandavesta (Sac. Bks. of the East, vol. IV), vol. II, p. lxxii, or in Ann. Mus. Guim., tom. ILI, pp. xliv, xlv.—J.B.

BRAHMA, MARA. DEVAPUTTRAS. SRi. 39

Mahäbrahmä, Brahma Sahampati or Pitämahä, is the greatest of all Devas. Though vastly inferior to Buddha, he rules the second of the Trailokya regions—the Brahma heaven, called Rüpävachara, which is beyond the Kämadevalokas. He has, as a symbol of sovereignty, a silver chhattra (Pali, chhatta).!

Märaräja, the third of these Devas, is variously named Vasavat- timära, Namuchi, Päpiyän, Kämadhäturäja, Krishwa, Pisuna, &c. He is ruler of the highest of the six Kämadevaloka heavens—the Paranimmita-vasavatti Devaloka (Sans. Paranirmita-vasavar/in) or Vasavatti,— where life lasts 32,000 years. He has a position analogous to that of Ahriman among the Zoroastrians; is the lord of pleasure, sin and death,—the tempter, the evil principle, the representative of inherent sin. He is represented as riding on an elephant, and attended by the Marakayikas. He has a hundred arms and assumes monstrous forms. He owes his exalted rank to his having in a previous birth exercised a high degree of charity. His realm (Märadheyya) is that of re-birth as opposed to Nirvana.’

‘The pantheon, however, is otherwise vague and accessory: in the legends a confused crowd of Devaputtas—‘sons of the gods’— appear; names are mentioned even, such as Mäläbhäri or Mälädhari —‘garland bearer’; but these names are ephemeral for beings living a life of pleasure in their heavens—an idealized representation of Indian royal courts. Notwithstanding the magnificence of the representations set forth, the principal theme of the legends is the inculcation of the vanity of sensuous pleasure and the iii iesmmasiibesstinceeiittadicecaiilll brevity of human life. It is very evident that this tend- ency of the texts—which are undoubtedly very old—was by no means calculated to de- velope plastic figures of in- dividual gods.

One divinity only appears as a fully developed type and is always reproduced with a certain evident pleasure ; it is the ideal of the Indian woman, the goddess of beauty, of prosperity, of domestic blessing, of wealth: Pali, Siri; Sanskrit, Sri (Lakshmi). The 14. THE GODDESS SrRi (SRf). worship of this popular god- From the east gateway at Sifichi, conf. ill. 39. dess must have prevailed, in Buddhist times, throughout the whole of India. Stri and SEI,

1 Conf. Burnouf, Int. Bud: Ind., 2d.ed., pp. 116, 532f, 546f; Rhys Davids, Buddhist Suttas (Sac. Bks. of the East, vol. XI), pp. 162f.

2 Conf. Burnouf, Intr. Bud. Ind., 2d. ed. p. 68n.

40 THE GODDESS SIRi OR Sri.

“woman and goddess of fortune,” says a still current proverb,!'—which affords a valuable reminiscence from Indian antiquity, according to the conception of which woman was by birth the equal of man? Sri, as Tyche or Fortuna, is frequently represented on gates, stone- railings, &c. Of special interest is the type at Udayagiri, where it is fully developed ; it appears in the Barähat (Bharhut) sculptures

and is frequently re-

ae peated at. -<Samomice En

SZ Siri is represented as P

SEZ a woman in the cos-

wey tume and ornaments

NN of a Hindu, seated or

“ips standing on a lotus-

flower; two of her

\ Zh A rime

=

15. THE GODvEss TiRUMAGAL (Sri). hands (when | she is Wood carving from a side chapel of the temple of represented with four) Minäkshi at Madurä, S. India. are empty, the other

two are raised each holding a water-lily, while two white elephants, holding water-pots in their trunks, water the flowers in ber hands. Even to this day this oldest type is firmly established in the Brähman miniatures. The representation is of unusual interest because it forms the Indian analogy to the Greek Aphrodite Anadyomene. According to the legend in the Ramayana, she sprang from the froth of the ocean when it was churned by the gods. This is not the place to enter on the mythological accounts of the goddess: it is enough to in- dicate that the type of Sirf on the early Buddhist monuments is an ancient and undoubtedly indigenous one.

Among the pillar sculptures from Barähat,* there appears a series

of gods that are of uncommon interest as much mythologically as in relation to art history.

Among these is Sirf called “Sirima devata,” represented in the dress and ornaments of a Hindu woman with largely developed breasts. She holds in her right hand a flower, now broken. All these figures, in imitation of Western Asian deities,® stand upon

! Manu; striyah Sriyascha geheshu

> Tiruvalluvar, the Tamil poet of the weaver caste, in his Kural (v. 1082), styles the woman in full attire ‘the goddess Sri attacking with an army’s might” :—

“She of the beaming eyes, To my rash look her glance replies, As if the matchless goddess’ hand Led forth an arméd band.” (Dr. Pope’s tr.). For Srior Lakshmi, see Vishnu Puräna, Wilson’s tr., Hall’s ed., vol. I, pp. 118-120,144-5.

? Cave Temples, p.74, and pl. 1; Cunningham, Bharhut Stupa, pl. xxxvi, fig. 1; Fergusson, Tree and Serp. Wor., pp. 112, 113, 120.

* Cunningham, Bharhut, pll. xxi-xxiii. Minayeff, Recher. sur le Bouddhisme (Ann. Mus. Guimet), pp. 93-102, 138-152, examines the divinities represented as compared with the texts.

° Kubera treading on a Yaksha is a type preserved even in Lamaism and Japanese Buddhism. Kubera and Virudhwka are two of the so-called Lokapälas, again referred to. We have here the origin of the creatures called vdhana (vehicles) on which the Hindu gods stand or ride. Conf. the remarks below on Garuda.

MINOR DEITIES STAND ON VAHANAS. SURYA. AI

their attributes ; thus, Kubera, king of the demons called Yakshas, stands on a pointed-eared, thick-set demon, and the Naga king ona piece of rock in which are seen heads of snakes, in front a pond with lotuses. Two Yakshini, females, stand on Makaras (fig. 16). In others the attribute or cognizance under the feet is wanting, and they stand instead on elephants or on a stone fence, as it were, on detached parts of a Torana, in order to equalize them with those standing on their attributes as pedestals.! Two or three of these women stand under a tree, and raise their hands among the branches as if to pluck the blossoms. The same subject is met with decoratively treated under the sächis of the gateways at Sähchi.?

Another Hindu divinity also occurs, though rarely, among the early Buddhist sculptures. This is Sürya, the sun-god (Gr. Helios)— evidently an importation from the north or Central Asia. He is the only member of the pantheon who is represented as clad from the feet upwards to the bosom ; he wears a girdle, avyanga (Baktrian, arwydonha) about his waist; and is usually represented in a chariot drawn by four (or seven) horses, and attended by two females. Examples of this divinity occur on a pillar of the old rail at Gaya, in the early cave at Bhaja, and in the Ananta cave at Udayagiri.’

With ‘these we terminate the types of national gods represented as human beings so far as they come under our consideration. 16. PILLAR FIGURE FROM For the sculptors of that age it was more BARAHAT DESCRIBED IN dittienlt terepresent the other mychological 2 a ica beings. The lower divinities had to be ningham’s Bharhut, pl. xxii. moulded after fixed types; for they play a large part in the Sé#tras already mentioned.

1 The reliefs of Bhitesar (Mathura), Cunningham, Arch. Sur. Ind., vol. ILI, pll. vi and xi, are certainly not Buddhist (probably Jaina). These very erotically repre- sented groups, which Curtius has so pertinently described (Arch. Zeit. N.F., Bd. VIII, 1876, Ss. 95f.) have no trees in blossom behind them. A noteworthy parallel in mediseval art is supplied by statues standing on “the evil principle; and one that resembles the véhanas, the medieval personifications of the virtues and vices standing or riding on animals. E.P. Evans, Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Architecture, p. 163.

2 Fergusson, Z'ree and Serp. Worsh., pl. xiii.

3 See Räjendraläl Mitra’s Buddha Gaya, pl.1; Cunningham, Arch. Sur. Ind. Rep., vol. ILI, pl. xxvii; and Fergusson, Archeol. in India, p. 34. Sürya also appears on the Lahaul Lota; Arch. Sur. W. Ind., vol. LV, p. 6.

42 HYBRID FORMS. THE NAGA.

As explained above, the connexion with Iran introduced into India a series of artistic forms which became the standards in sculpture as well as in architecture. From the series of hybrid creations that had come from Western Asia and that were employed decoratively, attempts were made to adapt certain forms to native purposes and to develope them into fixed types, whilst closely related forms continued to be purely decorative. The character of the old Indian reliefs that were also decorative rendered this transition easy. Let us now enumerate the different beings for which early Buddhist art required types, and thus we shall have the opportunity of pointing out how extensive was the hold taken by the hybrid style of Western Asia, and how, on the other hand, the art imagination adapted the borrowed forms for its own needs, nationalized them, and in some cases succeeded admirably in re- animating and developing them,—evidently because indigenous types of a similar character already existed. Much inconstancy in the forms, to which names can hardly be given, is specially remark- able ; even those types that we can name do not preserve their similarity, and a series of imaginary shapes crops up, as in early’ Roman art, in which antique elements—sirens, centaurs, &c., still continued in a way to exist, though no longer intelligible. The similarity between ancient Buddhist art and the monuments of early Christian times, without direct contact being necessarily assumed in every case— becomes greater still when the Graco- Baktrian (Gandhära) types are introduced.

We shall commence with a type in which the human element still

17. GODS AND MEN (DEVAMANUSSA) WORSHIPPING A STÜPA. On the east gateway at Säüchi.

plays the principal röle,—the so-called Naga. Indian popular belief, whose conceptions were moulded later by the official Brah- man religion, besides demons of every sort, giants, &c., recognises

DEMIGODS. THE NAGAS. 43

a much venerated class of snake-gods (Nagas). We cannot under- take an examination of the origin of this belief, which is unknown to the Vedic age; suffice it to say that besides the world of gods and men there are eight classes of demigods which the Bauddha writings generally enumerate in the order—Devas, Nagas, Rak- shasas, Gandharvas, Asuras, Garudas, Kinnaras, and Mahoragas ;! but the Yakshas often take the third place instead of Rakshasas.

The second class form a separate snake world, the in- habitants of which have the power of assuming human forms. ‘They are fabled to re- side under the Trikü/a rocks supporting Mount Meru, and also in the waters of springs, lakes, rivers, &c., watching over great treasures, causing rain and certain maladies, and be- coming dangerous when in anger. They are the subjects of Virüpäksha, the red king of the western quarter and prob- ably the Buddhist form of Siva, who is well known in Hindu mythology as Virüpäksha as well as Näganätha and Naga- bhüshana. Chiefs or kings of the Nagas are named in the legends and their deep rever- ence for Buddha, which puts men to shame, is specially characteristic of them. The wonderful alms-bowl of Buddha is, according to the legend, a gift from the demigod kings of the four quarters. More than once, Naga chiefs ap- proached the Master,—thus en Muchilinda, the tutelary deity „ VS He ee,

f rom a fresco in Cave I at Ajanta;

of a lake near Gaya, protected — Griffithy Paintings in the Ajanta Caves. him from the rain; Apalala, the guardian Naga of the source of the Swat or Subhavastu river in Udyäna, was converted by Sakyamuni shortly before his Nirvaza ; Eläpatra (Erapato, Sans. Airävata), another Nagaraja, consulted Buddha about rebirth in a higher condition; and Chakravaka

1The Jainas also enumerate eight divisions of their Vyantara gods, viz.:—Pisächas, Bhütas, Yakshas, Räkshasas, Kinnaras, Kimpurushas, Mahorägas (boas), and Gand- harvas. See note 2, p.47. Hach of the Tirtharkaras has an attendant Yaksha and Yakshini.

44 THE NAGA TYPE.

Naga is figured on a pillar at Barähat.! Evenin the ritual for ad- mission to orders, the questionwas introduced whether the candidate was nota Naga.

Thus it was necessary to represent Nagas typically in the body of the compositions illustrative of the life of the founder of the religion ; and yet in the scenes in which they appear in the legends they could be properly represented only in human form. The problem was admirably solved; the Nagas were represented as human, and, in the manner of the Egyptian Uraeus-snake, a ser- pent—usually many-hooded in the case of a male, but single-hooded

19. NA@a AND NÄGINi IN WATER. On a wall-painting in Cave II at Ajanti; from Griffiths’ Paintings.

for a Nagi—was placed over the head (or rather springing from behind the neck) as ornament. (See figs. 8, 18, 20). We do not maintain that this type is to be regarded as a result of contact with western Asiatic art, but neither must we reject it uncondition- ally, for the Nagas were represented in other forms also as hybrid creatures. The Naga in human form with the snake-hood has been retained in Buddhist art in all its ramifications, and is found

1 Boal, Romantic Hist. of Buddha, pp. 276ff; Si-yu-ki, vol. I, p. 37; Rockhill, Life of the Buddha, pp. 34, 46f., 244f.; Cunningham, Bharhut Stupa, p. 27, &c.

NAGAS. MATSYANARIS. YAKSHAS. 45

also in the Chino-Japanese, where snake-kings are represented as men in Chinese costume, with a dragon on the back of the neck, whose head appears over that of the human form. Along with this human shape is also found a purely animal one. Sometimes even both appear in combination (conf. ill. 19): snakes the upper part of whose bodies are human, their heads crowned with serpents’ hoods, while the lower part of the body from the hips downwards is purely animal. This is, iconographically, the proper form of the Naga, and they are so represented whenever they appear in their proper element—water ; and so we find them pictured in the Ajanta wall paintings (fig. 19). These forms are employed by pre- ference decoratively, or as accessory figures in larger compositions of the purely human Nagas with snakes as head ornaments. But this type may certainly be regarded as derived from west Asian prototypes. It is allied to the creatures with fish tails iS % that are represented with human 90, Naga, from Ajanta, Cave IT. bodies: apparently mostly of the female sex—the so-called Matsyandris—‘fish girls.’ From this type, modern Brahman art has evolved the representation of Ganga and Yamuna, the goddesses of the Ganges and Jumna. ‘Together with ‘the creatures with fish tails and human busts, there are also decor- ative figures with animal bodies, on which a few words will be said. Yakshas (Pali, Yakkhas) appear frequently in Bauddha legend and iconography, being usually enumerated as in the third rank of the secondary gods. heir king Kubera, Vaisravana or Alakesvara, is guardian of the north, and his capital is Alaka or Alakamanda. But the other three guardians were also styled Yakshas; and we find various individual Yakshas named, as—Alawaka, Sätägera, Bemäwata, Pürzaka, Virlidaka, Gafigita, Suchiloma. Supavasa (Supravrisha), Nandaka, &c. They are always represented in human form. At Barähat they appear as guardians or dwära- palas at the gateways; at Nasik also, one at the entrance of the Chaitya-cave is indicated in an inscription as a Yakkha, and the two figures by the door of Cave III bear the same character. At Barähat, Yakshinis also are figured on the pillars at the entrances, — as Chadd (Chanda) and Sudasava Yakkhini.! !Sp. Hardy, Man. Budd.,pp.58, 269, 265f.,271, 272n.; Quest. of Milinda (in S. Bks.

East), vol. I,p. 152; Cunningham, Bharhut, pp.19f.; Burgess, Cave Temples, pp. 268, 274, and pll. xx and xxv,

46 YAKSHA GUARDIANS. WINGED FIGURES.

The Dulva (xi.fol. 344) gives us a sort of key to the frequent repre- sentation of Yakshas as dwdrapdlas: Anathapindada asks the Buddha how the vihära must be ornamented with paintings (or sculptures). The Buddha answers—“On the outside door you must have figured a Yaksha holding a club in his hand; in the vestibule, you must have represented a great miracle, the five divisions (of of beings) the circle of transmigration ; in the courtyard, the series of births (Jätakas) ; on the door of the Buddha’s special apartment (gandhaküti, ‘hall of perfumes’), a Yaksha holding a wreath in his hand; in the house of the attendarits (or, of honour: rim-gro), bhikshus and sthaviras arranging the dharma; on the kitchen must be represented a Yaksha holding food in his hand; on the door of the storehouse, a Yaksha with an iron hook in his hand ; on the water-house (well-house ?), Nagas with various ornamented vases in their hands; on the wash-house (or, steaming-house : bsro-khang), foul sprites or the different hells (zärakas); on the medicine-house, the Tathagata tend- ing the sick; on the privy, all that is dreadful in a ceme-: tery ; on the door of the lodging-house (itext eftaced). a skeleton, bones, and a skull.’’?

But if inntbetre presentations ofthe Näga, the human element predomin- ates and so affords the principal factor in distinguishing them, the identi- fication of the winged figures is more difficult.

Wingedanimalsoc- 21. A GANDHARVA OR KINNARi. curin suchnumbers From Ajantä wall-paintings. that it is impossible

to provide them all

with Indian names. A series of representations, however, stand out conspicuously from among those that are purely decorative.

Next to the human fieures are the hybrid creatures with human

busts, Indian head- dress and ornaments, represented so frequently

1 Burnouf, Introd., 2d. ed. p.234; Lotus, p. 305; Childers. Pali Diet., s.v.; Ind, . Ant. vol IX, pp. 142-3.

2 From Rockhill’s Life of Buddha, p. 48, note 2,

HYBRID CREATURES: KINNARAS, ETC. 47

at Safichi. The lower part of the body is that of a bird on which the hips of the human form are set; the bushy tail, intended for that of a peacock, is treated decoratively. On the reliefs they appear flying from both sides towards the holy places,—stipas, foot-prints, sacred trees, &c., and are hanging offerings upon these objects of worship—flowers, strings of beads, &c.—and thus fre- quently accompany the human worshippers (man and woman) of the under part of the relief: a well defined, oft-employed phrase, which occurs so frequently in the texts, corresponds to this—“ gods and men there offered wreaths, &c.” In this decorative form these winged creatures are still to be found in modern Brahman art. (Conf. ill. 15). They passed also into the Gandhära school, but with marked differences. The antique Eros type has supplanted the early forms,—so that figures resembling the angels of Christians are found (conf. illus. Le Bon, Les Crvilizations de l’/nde, p. 251 ; Four. Ind. Art and Indust. vol. VIII, p. 74)... The form occurring at Sänchi (conf. ill. 4 and 17) and Barähat is worthy of notice because its wings are really used, so that they are not simply attributes of speed.!

The positions assigned to these figures seem to agree best with the characters assigned to. the, fourth class of demigods—the Gandharvas (Pali, Gandhabba)—the musicians of Sakra, who join with their master to serve and worship Buddha.? Modern art, however, also represents the seventh class, known as Kinnaras and Kinnarts, by the type above pon ne Hees described, as the modern Siamese Cunningham, Bharhut, pl. xxvii, 5. painting in fig.23 shows. The two classes, in fact, have got mixed up or confounded.

Notwithstanding the west Asian form of the wings, the type is a purely Indian one, and the time of its origin can hardly be fixed. As to the Siren form of representation of the Kinnaris, there is a Barähat relief which, if it were more distinct, might afford a sug-

1 Cunningham, Bharhut, pl. xiii, 1, xxxi, 1.

2 See Feer, Aradäna Sataka (Ann. Mus. Guimet, t. XVIII), pp. 58, 77, 88; Lalita Vistara, passim. The Gandharvas or Gandharbas, in Brähman mythology, belong also to the class of secondary gods, or attendants; this class includes—(1) Kinnaras, having a human body with the head of a horse,—musicians in the retinue of Kuvera; (2) Kimpurushas, with a human face and the body of a bird, are often confounded in later times with the Kinnaras and Gandbarvas; (3) Gandharvas are similarly represented with a human bust on the body of a bird; their wives are the Apsarases, their chief Chitraratha or Supriya, and they are the attendants of Dhritarashtra (Dhatarattka), guardian of the East; (4) Pannagas or Nagas; (5) Siddhas, who fly in the air and can appear anywhere in a moment;. (6) Vidyädharas, the celestial students, skilled in all knowledge; and besides these, the Yakshas, Räkshasas, &e. For some of these monstrosities, see Räjendraläl Mitra, Buddha Gaya, pll. xxxili, xxxiv, xxxvi, xxxvili, xliv, xlv, and xlvii,

48 KINNARIS. GARUDAS.

gestion (ill. 22). In it are a pair of such creatures so represented as to be seen only to the knees and who appear to be wearing leaves of trees round the body (parna: leaf and feather). These secondary deities, then, may have been originally represented in the costume of the aborigines of India, which, by borrowing from the antique, pesuited= «in. the siren type.

The names deva, devatd, ‘divinity,’ but in>the’sense of ‘angel,’ will suffice generally to designate this whole class of gods, which is apparently un- [anal Gere he type is still re- tained in Japan- ese art, as fig. 24 shows.

Another type, the development of which may to Some: “extent, -be observed in the Sculip pure: = at Sänchti, is nearly allied in its form to these demi- . oe ee oods. These are 23. MODERN SIAMESE PAINTING: KINNARI. the sixth class or Ger wd as, the winged steeds of important divinities, which appear among those thus described, in some sort as princes. In India the representation of a Garuda bird is of extreme antiquity, but a systematic account of this mythical creature is extremely difficult ; only what is certain and of value for the explanation of Buddhist sculptures need be mentioned. ‘The Indian popular belief recognizes the Garuda or Suparza (Pali: Garu/a and Supanna) as the king of birds; he is the deadly enemy of the snakes, the Nagas described above, which he kills and injures when he can. A kind of vulture, called Garuda, and living on snakes, can hardly form the foundation of the ancient allegory: possibly it is of Iranian origin, related to the legends of the Simurg. From the myth, various birds have come

SS SSS

THE GARUDAS. 49

to be called Garudas in different districts.! How this representation is connected with the Vedic one, which recognizes a solar-being (!) Garutmant, has no bearing upon our purpose. Only this, perhaps— in the Buddhist sutras (fatakas) the antagonism of the Garuda, Nä- gäntaka, or Tärk- shya, to the snake plays a prominent part.?

In some places, according to the popular belief, the Garuda, Suparza, or Tärkshya, is represented, like the Näga, as also

24. THE GODDESSES KARIÖBINGA AND 'I'FN-NIN. From a Japanese woodcut.

possessing the faculty of assuming human form. 95, Dips RIDING Buddha, or one of his disciples, is shewn making on Garupas. From a peace between the two creatures, and we find relief at Saücht. both at the feet of the Sage imploring better incarnations.

On the relief from the east gateway at Sanchi, given in fig. 26, the

! In S. India the Falco pondischerianus or red Brähmani kite, which is a sort of dwarfish fishing eagle, but not probably a destroyer of snakes. Garuda seems to be chiefly applied in the S. Maratha country to Circaetus Gallicus, a widely distributed and conspicuous bird, and certainly a snake-eating eagle. In Kanara the name is also given to the Great Hornbill (Dichociros bicornis),of remarkable appearance, and which eats snakes occasionally. See Jerdon, vol. I, p. 77.

2 For the Vedic, Epic, and other legends and allusions,—-see De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol. II, pp. 180-195. The Buddhist drama, ascribed to king Sri-Harshadeva, on the deliverance from Garuda, of Sankhachüda of the Naga race, has been translated into English by Mr. Palmer Boyd (1872), and into French by M. Abel Bergaigne (1879).

50 GARUDA : GRIFFIN, CHERUB.

animal kingdom is represented adoring the holy fig tree. In the corner, beside a five-headed snake, evidently the king of the Nagas, stands a large bird with ear- ornaments and big bushy tuft, represented on the whole like a great parrot, and thus a purely Indian type, while his wings again show the artificial forms of west Asian art. This is assuredly the Garuda, with the Naga, whose mortal enemy he is. This parrot- like creature has scarcely had any successors in Indian art, but it is clearly the ancient national repre- sentation. Now, on the same relief, along with the splendidly drawn Indian animal realm— Indian buffaloes, extraordinarily true to nature, and, depicted al- most with a touch of humour— are very artificial lions, leonine creatures with dogs’ heads, lions with griffin-like heads. On other reliefs these last creations of west Asian fancy appear with wings, as represented above, as vehicles of the gods who, along with the so-called Kinnaras, ride upon them through the air to worship at holy places. It is interesting to notice that the artificial-like wings of west Asian art again appear here. Evidently it is the Indian feeling for Nature that reanimates these appendages that had been stiffened into a symbol. From these last-named forms the Garuda was afterwards developed, as the Gryps, Gryphus or griffin, was in Greece.

But the man who composed the sculpture shown in ill. 26 saw other things. In the middle of the relief we find oxen with human faces, long pointed beards and finely twisted manes, every lock of which is represented according to rule; these are derivatives of the Assyrian cherubs. They are still more like the ancient Greek river-gods. If this idea is the correct one, they serve

26. THE ANIMAL WORLD REVERENCING A SACRED TREE (Bodhi tree) A relief from the inner side of the second architrave of the east gate at Safichi.

i ? ar

GARUDA : GRIFFIN, TEN-GU. Se

to indicate locality and belong properly to the same category with the buffaloes always wallowing in the water. Another explanation seems more correct; a few words on this will follow in another connection.

The picture affords a new and interesting parallel with the Greek griffin in the dog- headed lions on the left side above the griffin itself. This representation reminds one of the treasure - guarding griffins of Ktesias, which | think have been correctly identified by Ball with the great shaggy Tibetan dogs: they are the prototype of the so-called Corean dog.

The relief in fig. 26 con- tains at any rate a series 27. JAPANFSE TEN-GUS (Garudas). of variations upon OS. From a woodcut by Hokusai. theme—the representation of the Garuda, for which—in a groping way—foreign types have been introduced, the names of which perhaps sounded like the Indian word. The native parrot type on the one hand, the west Asian

28. GARUDA FIGURES, from Ajantä paintings, Cave 17.

griffin on the other, are the bases upon which more modern icoro- graphy developed its Garuda.

The griffin type was retained in Buddhist art, but it soon received (when ?) human arms: indeed the human element was sometimes even more prominent. Modern Brähmana art makes of it a winged man with a beak, and the Chinese form resembles it. There the Garuda (Thien- kou, celestial dog) appears as a winged man, though the head generally, and the feet always, remain animal (ill. 29). The Japanese prefer to represent their Ten-gus (Garuda) as fabulous animals, and two types are employed—one more animal and the other almost human (conf. fig. 27). The way in which the Japanese

sa ANIMAL-HEADED DEMONS. TIRYAGYONI.

contrive to vary these hybrid creatures, for the purposes of ritual and caricature, manifests a masterly observation of the grotesque- comic, as well as of the weird elements of animal nature. Good examples of purely human Garudas with wings and de- moniac expression of counten- ance are to be seen in the British Museum sculptures from Jamälgarhi (conf. Four. Ind. Art and Indust., vol. VIII, pl. xxvi, or sep. ed. p. 18 and pl.. xxiv). In modern Nepalese temples, two figures of Garuda form the dis- tinguishing supporters of Amoghasiddha, the _ fifth

29, THIEN-KOU: 30. KHYUNG: iste ‘ : Garuda, modern Garuda, Lamaist Dhyani Buddha, Me ho, like the Chinese bronze. gilt bronze. Jaina Pärsvanätha, is depicted

with a seven-headed snake as a canopy or nimbus. And in the shrines Garuda is often repre- sented with a serpent in his beak and a Nägakanyä in each claw.

Such are the types to which names can be given among the sub- ordinate gods in the art of the Asoka period, with their offshoots in modern miniature art. The horse-headed female figure on the Asoka railing at Buddhagayä stands almost alone and is no doubt of purely Indian origin (conf. Räjendraläl Mitra, Buddhagayd,

pl. xxxiv, 2, and Griffiths, Ajantä, vol. Il, pl. 142). It agrees with the usual description of the Kinnaras; and we have goat and ram- headed beings in Naigameya, a sort of companion of the war-god Skanda; in Harinegamest, the deer-headed general of Indra; in Daksha, and in the sculpture in the Kailäsa temple at Elura',

The combining of the human body with animal elements seems to have been brought gropingly, so to speak, into connexion with the doctrine of reincarnation. It is not impossible that these types, introduced from Western Asia, were explained in Indian fashion— j.e., in each degree of animal existence was hidden a human one which would be attained by good works, and which might then lead to deliverance. It is curious that Chino-Japanese tradition assigns to the centaur-like art-forms the name of Tiryagyonis” as the repre- sentatives of quadrupeds within the transmigratory gradation. It is thus not impossible that the centaur represented on the Asoka rail-

1 Epig. Ind., vol. II, p. 314, and pl. ii.; Trans. R. As. Soc., vol. Il, p. 326, and pl. 1; Muir, Or. Sansk. Texts, vol. IV, pp. 381, 384; Wilson, Vishnu Purdna (Hall’s ed.), vol. I, p. 132n; Wilkins, Hindu Mythology, p. 309.

2 Centaur-like figures as representations of the Tiryagyonigatas (Jap. Chiku-sh6) are found in the section on ‘ Buddhist effigies’ in the Japanese work Gwa-zen, i.e. ‘ Picture creel,’ of Hayashi Moriatsu, A.D, 1721, containing instructions for drawings and paintings, with many roughly drawn but strongly characteristic examples. The

male and female Centaurs are, in Japanese fashion, distinguished by their coiffure.— Dr. F. W. K. Müller.

THRONE-SEATS AND PILLAR ORNAMENTATION. 3

ing at Gayä, and hybrid forms thereto related, simply represent such transmigratory phases. The other emblems depicted on the Gaya railing and the oxen with men’s heads in fig. 26, already mentioned, perhaps also belong to this category.

It has been stated that the Indian feeling for nature animated afresh even the fantastic forms of the western Asiatic hybrid style. A curious example of the way in which even animal forms when used decoratively were regarded as living animals may be here cited as it well illustrates the Indian character and shows off their childishly naive and invariably humorous disposition. When speak- ing of the wood-carving- style, we have already noticed the chairs and throne-backs in which such interesting early forms have been preserved; but along with these, as illus. 8 shows, west Asian (Persian) winged animals have been introduced among the accessory figures. The rampant lions in the corners of the back of the throne, with or without wings, continue from that time a favourite motif for the ornamentation of pillars and columns of every description. Elephants are worked from the projecting cross-pieces which are ornamented with dragons’ heads, and sfr,

under the rampant lion a new form, the M Ze / N (X

Sa, 4

kara—about which we must say a few words. BAHT On the specimen from Amarävati (fig. 8) little human figures appear on the side pieces also. We must doubtless imagine as similar the throne of king Vikramaditya, of which the legend tells. and whose little carved figures even relate stories." A fragment of a throne, fig. 31, from the ruins of Nalanda, shows the animals still more artificially: the old Indian dragons’ heads, which remind one of German forms, have entirely dis- appeared; and instead appears the elephant. In the mediaeval style of Dravida (S. India, Madura, &c.) these pillar forms have been adapted to i native conceptions, z.e. hunting scenes of the 31. FRAGMENT oF A Kurumbars and the like, and have been further ee ee aa ruins of Nalanda.

developed in a highly grotesque fashion. (Conf. Nrs. 8, 32).

The absurd story of the Sabsaddtha -jataka shows that the popular Indian mind regarded these animal figures as real animals standing one upon the other. Even though the fable only makes sport of such art creations, it is sufficiently clear from it how far the Hindu by himself was from invent- ing such compositions, and how, on the contrary, his own feeling led him to again reduce these overloaded foreign forms. The story, which is interesting in more ways than one, may be given here from Mr. Rouse’s translation in Prof. Cowell’s edition.’

1 Conf. on this B. Jülg, Mongolische Maerchensammlung Siddhikür und Ardschi Bordschi Chan, Innsbruck 1868, x1 ff.

2 Fausböll, The Jätaka together with its Commentary, vol. II, p. 243; Cowell’s English version, vol. II, translated by W. H. D. Rouse, pp. 168ff.

54 SABBADATHA-JATAKA.

“As the haughty Fackal, &c.’ This story the Master told while staying in the Ve/uvana, about Devadatta. Devadatta, having won favour in the eyes of Ajätasattu, yet could not make the repute and support which he received last any time. Ever since they saw the miracle done when Nälägiri! was sent against him, the reputation and allowances of Devadatta began to fall off. So one day, the brethren were all talking about it in the Hall of Truth: ‘ Venerable brother, Devadatta managed to get reputation and support, yet could not long keep it up. And the Master came to them with the question: ‘What story, O monks, do ye sit and discuss ?’ and when they had told him, he said: ‘Not only now has Devadatta thrown away all chance of benefits: this happened in olden days in just the same way.’ And then he told them an old-world tale:

“Once upon a time, when Brähmadatta was king of Bäränasi, the Bodhisattva? was his house-priest, and he had mastered the three Vedas and the eighteen branches of knowledge. He knew the spell entitled ‘Of subduing the World.’ (Now this spell is one which involves religious meditation). One day the Bodhisattva thought that he would recite this spell; so he sat down in a place apart upon a flat stone, and there went through his reciting of it. It is said that this spell could be taught to no one without use of a special rite; for which reason he recited it in the place just described. It so happened that a jackal lying in a hole heard the spell at the time he was reciting it, and got it by heart. We are told that this jackal in a previous existence had been some Brahmawa, who had learned the charm ‘Of subduing the World.’ The Bodhisattva ended his recitation and rose up, saying—‘ Surely I have that spell by heart now. Then the jackal arose out of his hole and cried—‘Ho Brahmaza! I have learnt the spell better than you know it yourself!’ and off he ran. The Bodhisattva set off in chase, and followed some way, crying—‘ Yon jackal will do a great mischief—catch him, catch him!’ But the jackal got clear off into the forest. The jackal found a she-jackal, and gave her a little nip upon the body. ‘What is it, master ?’ she asked. ‘Do you know me,’ he asked, ‘or do you not?’ ‘I do’ know you. He repeated the spell, and thus had under his orders several hundreds of jackals, and gathered round him all the elephants and horses, lions and tigers, boars and deer, and all other four-footed creatures ; and he became their king under the title of Sabbada¢ha,‘ and a she-jackal he made his consort. On the backs of two elephants stood a lion, and on the lion’s back sat Sabbadatha,

1 A great elephant, which, at Devadatta’s instigation, was let loose for the purpose of destroying the Buddha, but which only did him reverence; “non facit hoc jussus nulloque docente magistro: crede mihi, nostrum sensit et ille deum.” Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 331; Milindapanha, iv, 4 (Sac. Bks. of the East), vol. i, p. 288.

? Buddha in a previous existence.

3 Reading djändmi.

+The name signifies ‘ All-tusk,’ ‘ All-biting.’ Sansk. Sarvadamshtra: a play on the word Sabbarattha, Sansk. Savarishtra—‘ All-ruling.’

SABBADATHA-JATAKA. 55

the jackal king, along with his consort the she-jackal, and great honour was paid to them. Now the jackal was tempted by his great honour and became puffed up with pride, and he resolved to capture the kingdom of Bäränasi. So with all the four-footed creatures in his train, he came to a place near to Barazasi. His host covered twelve leagues of ground. From his position there he sent a message to the king. ‘Give up your kingdom or fight for it! The citizens of Bäränrast, smitten with terror, shut close their gates and stayed within. Then the Bodhisattva drew near the king and said to him, ‘Fear not, mighty king! leave me the task of fighting with the jackal king Sabbada¢ha. [xcept me, no one is able to fight with him at all’ Thus he gave heart to the king and the citizens. ‘I will ask him at once,’ he went on, ‘what he will do in order to take the city.’ So he mounted the tower over one of the gates, and cried out— ‘Sabbada¢ha, what will you do to get possession of this realm?’ ‘I will cause the lions to roar, and with the roaring | will frighten the multitude: thus will I take it!’ ‘Oh! that’s it,’ thought the Bodhi- sattva, and down he came from the tower. He made proclamation by beat of drum that all the dwellers in the great city of Bäränasi, over all its twelve leagues, must stop up their ears with flour (dough). The multitude heard the command, they stopped up their own ears with flour, so that they could not hear each other speak—nay, they even did the same to their cats and other animals.

“Then the Bodhisattva went up a second time into the tower, and cried out, ‘Sabbadä/4a!’ ‘What is it, Brahmaza,’ quoth he. ‘How will you take this realm?’ he asked. ‘I will cause the lions to roar, and I will frighten the people and destroy them, thus will I take it!’ he said. ‘You will not be able to make the lions roar; these noble lions, with their tawny paws and shaggy manes, will never do the bidding of an old jackal like you!’ The jackal, stubborn with pride, answered, ‘Not only will the other lions obey me, but I'll even make this one, upon whose back I sit, roar alone!’ ‘Very well,’ said the Bodhisattva, ‘do it, if you can.’ So he tapped with his foot on the lion, which he sat upon, to roar, and the lion resting his mouth upon the elephant’s temple, roared thrice, without any manner of doubt. The elephants were terrified and dropped the jackal down at their feet; they trampled upon his head and crushed it to atoms. Then and there Sabbadä/ha perished. And the elephants, hearing the roar of the lion, were frightened to death, and wounding one another, they all perished there. The rest of the creatures, deer and boars, down to the hares and cats, perished then and there, all except the lions; and these ran off and took to the woods. There was a heap of carcases covering the ground for twelve leagues. The Bodhi- sattva came down from the tower, and had the gates of the city thrown open. By beat of drum he caused proclamation to be made throughout the city: ‘Let all the people take the flour (dough) out of their ears, and they that desire meat, meat let them take!’ And the people all ate what meat they could, fresh; and the rest they dried

56 SABBADÄTHA-JÄTARA.

and preserved. It was at this time, according to tradition, that people first began to dry meat.” “The Master having finished this discourse, identified the Birth by the following verses, full of divine wisdom :— “Even as the jackal stiff with pride, Craved for a mighty host on every side, And all toothed creatures came Flocking around, until he won great fame: Even so the man who is supplied With a great host of men on every side, As great renown has he . As had the Jackal in his sovranty. “In those days Devadatta was the Jackal, Ananda was the king, and I was the chaplain.”

32. CHANGCHA-HUTUKTU LALITAVAJRA.

For the ornamentation of the throne compare ill. 8 and 31. From a miniature on silk, 18th century.

_ It is clear that a throne like the one shown in figs. 31 or 32 was in the mind of the narrator of the ¥dtaka. The ancient Oriental idea of imagining the subject, the vanquished, as lying under the feet of

CHANGCHA HUTUKTU. MAKARA. GREEK ELEMENTS. 57

his conqueror, is interesting here. But this motif also originated in western Asia, where, in Assyrian reliefs for example, upright figures of gods are clumsily placed on the backs of animals, like one hiero- glyph upon the other, without the slightest attempt at appropriate- ness. The Indian love for nature, which was only too strongly developed, gives a burlesque interpretation to the idea. The throne- seats with ornaments, just described, have been preserved even in the latest Lamaist ecclesiastical style of Tibet and China. Ill. 32 represents the throne of a Lamaic ecclesiastical prince ; the original is found in a splendid work painted on silk, dating from about the middle of last century, and containing the genealogy of the so-called Changcha Hutuktu of Pekin. The holy man sits on a throne, the back of which consists of two elephants, with two lions above them, and two goats with riders above these again; higher up still are seen two elephants apparently running downwards, and in the middle a Garuda and Nagas. All these are the decorative elements of ancient wooden doors and throne-backs loosely super- posed on one another.

The sea-elephant, Makara, a creature formed of the forepart of an elephant with the body and tail of a fish, appears even on the reliefs of the Asoka railing at Buddhagayä, along with winged elephants and hippocampi,! &c. It has been retained everywhere in Indian art, though later the fish-tail was made into an ornament. When, later still, it became the ensign of Kama, the Indian god of love, it was 33. Makara. From due, as has long been recognised, to Greek ua ee \ ) Z = i dress of the old Java- influence: the dolphin of Aphrodite supplied nese Maäjusri. the model.

All the Greek. elements dound within The Ascka period, even counting the Sähchi monuments, follow through- out, as it were,in the steps of the west Asiatic forms. Altogether there are not many: representations of centaurs, and water-gods (oxen with human faces). Of more importance is the question whether the thunderbolt as an attribute of gods, was introduced by Greek influence, or whether the streaming sheaf of lightning-flashes of the Babylonian-Assyrian gods should be con- sidered as the model; though the former seems to me the most probable, no certain proof is forthcoming. This must depend on the date of its introduction and the extent of the western influence at the time.

I cannot here enter upon the subject of the representation of the dwarfish creatures, which are regarded sometimes as real human dwarfs and sometimes as evidently demi-gods, nor upon so much that is connected therewith. “But [ would like to point out that the

! Räjendraläl Mitra, Buddha Gayd, pl. xlvi; Cunningham, Mahäbodhi, pl. ix, 15; another as a pillar ornament, Burgess, Cave Temples, pl. xvi, 6.

58 COMPOSITION. PROCESSIONS. FORMAL REPETITION.

type is the same as that of the antique pigmies. (Conf. above, p. 34). It is interesting to observe that the account of the pigmies, like that referred to on p. 49 of the griffins of the west, is given us by Ktesias,! who was physician to the Persian king Artaxerxes Mnemon (405-302 B.C.)

This concludes the series of the types found in older Buddhist art. lhe question now is, how the composition is to be executed. The form of composition, with which every art begins, is the pure narrative. In what follows we shall try to discover how far the art of the Asoka period (including Safchi) represented this narrative tendency, and how the national character made itself felt thereby.

On the reliefs of the great gateways of Safichi is a series of representations of different kinds. Many are purely decorative, others represent perfectly definite historical events. Very few have, as yet, been fully explained, and for those that have been correctly explained, the convincing proof is not yet forthcoming; but they may be divided into two distinct categories. The first category, by the help of numerous figures in a series of formally composed scenes, all resembling one another, depicts—processions to holy places, to sacred trees, to stüpas, «etc. On the panel itself there nowhere appears an indication which sufficiently characterizes the incident to enable us to determine it from itself | alone. Only inscriptions, like those found at Barähat, could—so to speak—make of those incidents historical events. The elements that determine the incidents are solely external,as we shall see below. Along with the representations of human beings (of which those seen in illus. 4 and 17 are, as it were, conventional abridgements), we meet with others in which forms of existence other than human come to worship at the holy places. Here, again, a national Indian element makes itself felt—the fondness for the repetition of ritual- istic phrases, which thereby become more sacred and efficacious.

The animal world, again, shares also in the worship of the sacred places. Along with animal-representations, that are uncommonly true to life, come in throngs the monsters of mythology, to adore the places where a saint has lived, in order to obtain a better in- carnation. The juxtaposition of mythical and real animals has a highly startling effect: it looks as if the uncommonly animated and characteristically represented animal world was intended to impart a greater probability of existence to the fantastic creatures of very varied styles depicted beside them. While the latter, the Tiryagyoni-type, Garuda, etc., stand stiffly in rows (conf. illus. 26), the life of the real animals makes itself felt ; alongside a Garuda, adorned with earrings and carrying a ee an antelope (cervi capra—Indian gazelle or spotted antelope, Skt. Krishrasara). in a curious position, is trimming itself. The religious act—in a truly Indian fashion—becomes a Nature-scene.

1 Lassen, Ind. Alterthumskunde, Bd. II, Ss. 644, 661; ind. Ant., vol. X, pp. 229-331.

GENRE SCENES IN NARRATIVE RELIEFS. 59

If, owing to the objects represented, this change appears a very natural one, neither is it lacking in the representations of human beings. Ill. 34 shows the end of a long procession leaving a thickly peopled city. The gate of the city is of the same form as the gates of Safichi, though much simpler; the great volute looks almost like the rolled-up tongue of a dragon; the houses of the town are provided with open galleries, from which the inhabitants (men and

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34. REPRESENTATION OF A CITY. From the second architrave of the east gateway of the great stüpa at Safichi.

women) look down. This looking down from house-terraces is an element that became frequent in Greek art— very late, it is true— for the animation of the background; it belongs essentially to the old Indian art, which owes this form to the representation of towns in west Asian art. It forms a part of the composition—the re- joicing of the inhabitants of the town, who are witnessing the procession, is thus presented, exactly as ancient and modern Indian texts—and the Chinese pilgrims also—describe such feasts. The separation into little groups, each of which has its own interest, also begins here. The Indian character cannot endurerthe stitily historic, and breaks ape whe Whole te: a series of oenre-scemes:

The thickly-peopled terraces are the models of the superimposed storeys of the different heavens in the Buddhist universe.

A genre-scene in ill. 34, which has nothing to do with the main incident, shows a woman who has come through a postern in the city wall to fill her löfä with water from a pool. In the pool are growing water-lilies in flower; a second woman comes down the

60 REPRESENTATIONS OF THE HEAVENS.

same street to the pool, and this figure is made so large that the gate lintel passes right across her body like a paling. It is difficult to determine whether the elephant rider, or mahaut!, coming along the street on an elephant, belongs to the end of the procession (conf. ill. 39), or is taking the elephant to the water ; but the latter is more probabie. I shall return to these narrative-reliefs again.

The second category represents scenes from the life of the founder of Buddhism, or-from his pre- vious existences, the Jatakas, . In the. case of these reliefs also, very few are satisfactorily explained, for the character- istic elements almost disappear beneath the accessories. We are therefore obliged to seek for purely external proofs (the arrange- ment of the sculptures on the monument itself); and the result is curious.

Few of the scenes represented are so clear and simple as the relief on the inner side of the right pillar of the east gateway, above. It undoubtedly represents the dream of Mäyä, the mother of Buddha, in the briefest and simplest form. Above the sleeping woman is seen descending the elephant, in the form of which, according to the legend, Buddha came down to his mother. One is struck by the paucity of detail: the detached treatment of this really notable representation. Its place, too (up in the corner above a rich com- position of a different kind), is remarkable. Involuntarily one seeks for something corresponding. The highest panel of the inner side is a-continuation of what is seen on the front. The front of the pillar is filled by a large relief consisting of three double stages, z.e. storeys. Each of these storeys is divided into three compartments by pillars. In each middle compartment there sits a god with the thunderbolt and a round bottle as attributes. The space behind the god shows a second god, clearly subordinate, and ‘daughters of the gods’ with sunshades and whisks (Hind. chaurt). In these divisions there is always a group of dancing girls playing on instruments before the principal divinity. The background is filled up with fruit trees.

Ill. 1 shows the fourth storey, counting upwards. The two below it are much injured, but still it may be clearly seen that the repre- sentation of the second storey corresponded with those that have been preserved, while the lowest of all was filled with weeping and mourning figures seated in a circle. At the very top of the relief there is, on the roof, a group of gods and goddesses. Unfor- tunately, this group is also much injured. If this highest terrace, the roof of the whole structure, is not counted, one is naturally reminded of the six Devalokas,the six inferior heavens? of the gods. All six form the so-called Kämävachara heavens, the

' Hind. Mahiwat, Sansk. Mahdmdtra; the German has Kornak, Fr. Cornac. See Yule and Burnell’s Glossary, s.v.

2 As to the heavens of the gods, the Kämävacharas and Suddhäväsas (Tib. Gnas-gtsan-mai-lha) —an obscure expression—are attested at Barähat by inscriptions. Conf. Hultzsch, Zeit. d. Deut. Morg. Ges., Bd. XL, 8. 65, Nrs. 47, 48, 49.

THE HEAVENS OF THE GODS. 61

abodes of the gods in which desire is still potent. Now it was supposed that when a Bodhisattva, a pre-existent Buddha, attained the lowest heaven, great lamentations broke out among the gods, who feared the end of an earthly period. A thousand years after- wards the cries ofthe guardians ofthe world (Lokapäladevatä—the gods of the lowest terrace) proclaim that in a thousand years a Buddha will be born upon the earth: the so-called Buddhahalä- halam. The gods of the lowest terrace are represented lamenting; the subject must, therefore, be the birth of a being who is to be- come a Buddha. The panel is thus the beginning of all the pillar reliefs, and is continued on the inner side of the same pillar. The heavens are to be named as follows, beginning from below: the heaven of the Chaturmahäräjika-gods, z.e. the four great kings or guardians of the world; the heaven of the Tävatimsa-gods (Sk. Trayastrimsat), the so-called ‘three and thirty’ superior angels over whom Sakka presides; the heaven of the Yämäs, where there is no change of day and night; the Tusita-heaven (San. Tushita), where all Bodhisattvas are born before appearing on earth, and where Maitreya now is; the heaven of the Nimmanarati (Sk. Nir- mänarati), who create their own pleasures; and of the Paranim- mitavasavatti-gods, who indulge in pleasures created for them by others, and over whom Mara presides. These mighty terraces of the gods, mounting one above the other, over which again rise the meditative steps, belong to the grandest ideas which Buddhism has produced. The whole representation—this is not the place to examine it fully—with the ways of deliverance and the cataclysms which destroy whole worlds and put new creations in their place, had to be specially noticed here, for it is capable of affording us the necessary explanation of the representation on the other pillar (front side).

If we return to the reliefs which represent scenes from Buddha’s life, we shall find that some of those on the left pillar of the east gateway are highly instructive as regards ancient Indian relief- composition. The first of them, which is found on the middle of the inner side of the pillar (conf. ill. 35) has already been correctly identified, so far at least as determining the incident is concerned, although the naming of the individual figures may not be quite correct. Towards the bottom and to the right on the panel is seen a bearded man with bands of hair (jatd) twisted about his head turbanwise ; the knees of the crouching figure are held together by a band. This man (from his costume, evidently a Brähmana doing penance) is seated on the threshold of a hut thatched with leaves. Before him is a pond with aquatic birds and shell-fish ; lotus- flowers are in bloom upon the water. Buffaloes and an elephant come to quench their thirst. A bearded ascetic is bathing, another is drawing water, with which to sprinkle his body in the bath, in a vessel shaped like the /étd, which even at the present day answers this purpose. What has already been described is a rough repre- sentation (on a remarkably small space, though it is fairly broad)

62 KASYAPA LEGEND.

ofa Tirtha:or bathing-place at a river flowing past a Brähma»a hermitage. Higher up, in the middle of the relief, may be seen a temple-like house, before which a fire burns upon an altar; a second vessel containing fire lies further forward, with tongs and fuel; on the left side, approach unbearded figures carrying fuel; the ordinary occupations of the Brähmana-disciples are thus repre- sented. A row of Brähmanas stand round the temple in the attitude of adoration ; the background is composed of fruit trees, on which monkeys are climbing. Towards the man sitting before the leaf- covered hut, comes another Brahmawa from the right to announce what is going on in the fire-temple; in the middle of the temple sits a seven-hooded "snake; flames burst forth from the windows in the roof.

This relief re- presemis\ascene from the story of the conversion,at Buddha’s hands, of Käsyapa (Päli, Kassapa) of Uru- vulvarcbali, rue vela),a Brahmana ascetic, with his brothers and disciples.‘ “Phe figure sitting be- fore the hut is Käsyapa; to at-

35. RELIEF OF THE EAST GATEWAY AT SANCHT. tempt to name

Left pillar, middle of the inner side. The first scene the other Brah- of the conversion of Uruvilva-Kasyapa. manas would be useless. The

legend is somewhat to the following effect: When Buddha wished to lead all in the right way, he went to Uruvilva and begged for permission to dwell in the fire-hut. It was granted him; though Käsyapa warned him of a mighty snake that lived in the temple. Buddha caught it in his alms-bowl and sending forth flames of fire, which burst out at the roof, left the hut unharmed.!

In the main, the whole incident is well rendered on the relief,

!On the Kasyapa legend, conf. Fergusson, Tree and Serp. Worsh., pp, 143f.; Beal, Rom. Legend, pp. 292f.; S. Hardy, Man. of Bud., pp. 193f.; Bigandet, Legend of Gautama, vol. I, pp. 138f.; and Cunningham Arch, Sur, Ind., vol. XI, pp. 149f,

NONI OMRU NI ES CBRINERSEFEINSTEINZEINIS, SEEIFESCUTBMURES: 63

though at the first glance there seems to be a great deal that is superfluous. The Brahmaza disciples are not necessary to the representation of the incident; the Brahmaza bathing is quite superfluous, and the one with the /étd just as unnecessary, unless one supposes—what seems hardly probable—that he is fetching water to extinguish the fire. In short, the whole prolix and idyllic representation of the pond is a superfluous accessory. But the main point is—Buddha himself is not present at all.

36. RELIEF FROM THE EAST GATEWAY AT SANCHi. Left pillar, middle of the front side. he second scene in the Kasyapa legend.

_ More remarkable still is another and allied relief on the middle panel of the face of the left pillar (ill. 36). If one looks for nothing but the depicting of the situation, and puts aside any thought of a representation of Buddha, the incident can be explained as on the previous relief. he locality is determined by six large fruit trees, to which, though roughly outlined, botanical names can never- theless be given. On one of these trees are perched two apes,

64 NATURAL SCENERY ENLIVENS THE SCULPTURES.

one occupied in plucking fruit. But the trees are standing in water; the surface of the water is full of animation ; aquatic birds are swimming about upon it; one dips its head under ; another, with neck bent backwards, is preening its wings; and a pelican is devouring a fish. The waves, on the relief itself, rise very high indeed over the outer lines of the fruit trees; lotus-flowers, with very animated-looking leaves that do not lie flat, appear on the water, and a snail is tossed about on the waves ; above, in a corner, is seen an alligator. The water is thus in continual movement; the aquatic birds behave as if they had just gone into it. This must represent the overflowing of a river, or, at any rate, the flood- ing of a place planted with fruit trees.! In the middle of this landscape, three men are sailing in a boat. The one sitting in the middle is bearded, and his hair is twisted about his head turban- wise; he is therefore a Brähma»a. A bearded man, like the former, and one without a beard but with long hair,—therefore Brahmanas too,—are rowing in the boat, which is made of planks roughly joined together. This shape of boat is still in use in India, on the Madras coast and elsewhere.

Now among the miracles by which Gautama Buddha is said to have converted Uruvilvä-Käsyapa and his school, it is related that the river Nairanjanä was very much swollen, and that Buddha passed over the flooded place as if there had been no water there. The amazed Kasyapa followed him in a boat, but did not become his convert yet. The situation is thus broadly depicted here—but Buddha, the principal figure, is wanting.

On the lower part of the same relief, before a high stone plinth, are seen four men; behind them is a stone bench before a tree hung with votive offerings; it is therefore a second composition, which is connected with the former. The men, to judge from their dress, are Brähmazas. The hands of the middle figure, which are raised over its head, as well as the peculiarly high placed heels of the feet (unfortunately, these are partly broken off), prove that the figure is conceived as lying full length on the ground: the touching of the ground with eight limbs (ashtdnga) is hereby intended. The flowers near the figure, seen from above, seem to indicate that it is to be regarded as in a recumbent attitude. Similarly, the slab of the altar in ill. 38 is represented as seen from above, so that the flower offerings on it are shown. The Brähmanas standing beside the recumbent Brahmaza in an attitude of prayer have upright growing plants beside them to indicate that they are standing upon the ground. On the cast in the Museums, behind the figure in the ashtdnga-position and below the projecting stone, no wavy line is to be seen, as on Col. Maisey’s drawing (Fergusson's 7ree and Serp. Worship, pl. xxxi, 2, p.141). As the water which fills the middle ground is regarded as a surface seen from above, it thus happens that the background of the worshipping Brähmana is

'S, Beal, Romantic Legend of Sakya Buddha, pp. xi, note, and 302,

SUCCESSION OF SCENES. 65

looked upon asa platform. But this platform, with its far-projecting edge, is, it appears, mentioned in the legend of the conversion of Käsyapa of Uruvilva. Buddha, as the story goes, found a hempen garment which he picked up and wanted to wash in the river. Dakka presented him with va fat stone for the purpose.

Now with these explanations, in which justice is done to all the figures represented, and the characteristic common to all of which is—that they only witness to Buddha’s existence, but do not actually represent the sage himself, it is possible to connect a third relief belonging to the same cycle of legends.

Below the representation of the miracle of the snake, on the inner side of the pillar, is another relief (conf. ill. 37), the place of which on the pillar and the Brähmanas represented therein, clearly characterize it as being connected therewith. In a wood, planted with fruit trees, three Brahmawas are busy kindling sacrificial fires ; a Brahmawza disciple is bringing wood for fuel; a second carries a pole (H. dahangi, S. vihangrkd) supporting vessels in a network.

37. RELIEF ON THE EAST GATEWAY AT SANCHi.

Left pillar, inner side, under relief No. 35.

Two other bearded Brahmawas are splitting wood with heavy (stone?) hatchets. A round hive-like building decorated with shells and enclosed by a railing forms the background. Whether this building, as I am inclined to think, represents merely a hermit’s hut thus railed in as a protection from wild beasts, or something else is uncertain. The whole is a genre picture, and without the reliefs explained above, it would be impossible to determine its nature, so far as the persons and the occasion of the sacrifice are concerned,

66 CROWDING OF ACCESSORIES.

The legend of Käsyapa’s conversion relates that, after the miracle of the snake,a sacrifice was offered. When the Brahmazas tried to light a fire the wood, owing to Gautama’s power, would not burn. They made their trouble known to Käsyapa, who entreated Gautama to let the fire kindle. When Gautama gave his consent the wood took fire, and there was nothing to prevent the sacrifice.

Now these three reliefs give one a good insight into the relief- composition of ancient India. It stands on a level with that of the Middle Ages in the Western world. The same legend is continued on one relief; the same figures may therefore be repeated on the same panel. Land and water are always repre- sented as extending horizontally ; in consequence of this, the figures are of the same size throughout. The limits of land and water are indicated by sharply defined outlines; fiowers and plants are employed to determine whether the figures represented are supposed to be lying or standing. Along with this may be noticed a naive aptitude for converting the area into a landscape in which the principal groups occupy the centre. External details alone explain the incident depicted. Thus the only certain deter- mining factor to explain the three panels examined above is the circumstance that the persons represented are Brähmazas. Then the first relief may be explained by means of the snake and the flames bursting from the window in the roof; all the rest represents nothing but an ordinary sacrifice, and the second, or even the third panel, would be utterly unintelligible without the first. One way of laying stress on the characteristic features is the decided pro- minence of the object emphasized in the relief. The reliefs narrate the incident in extenso, adding also details that are not essential. As in the representations of the Middle Ages, the whole story of the sufferings of a believer is given on one relief or one picture, which is divided into a series of consecutive scenes: so is it in the Buddhist art, which in one relief combines a series of continuous events into a Nature-picture. Now the admirable rendering of nature, with the loose representation of accessory details, is apt to lead astray, because it overpowers the main motive.

Something exactly analogous occurs in Indian literature, especially in the so-called Advyas and the half-epic, half-lyric works related to them. The treatment itself becomes merely an opportunity for introducing descriptions of nature, and com- parisons with nature that are broad and sensuous—often delightful though sometimes repulsive, or at least bizarre. In this law—the rudiments of which are perceptible in ancient Indian reliefs, but which reigns supreme in the literature of a later period—chiefly lie the difficulties to the ordinary European mind in understanding their modes of thought; but, at the same time, to it is due the peculiar beauty of this tropical life, bursting forth so luxuriantly on every side. In the art of the Asoka period—on which that of

NO FIGURE OF BUDDHA: ONLY “A SYMBOL. 67

Saficht was modelled—everything is still naive, and no trace of refinement exists.

As already mentioned, no picture of Buddha appears on the reliefs of this older period. Only the signs of his activity were represented ; the footprints (fadah) which he left behind him, or the sacred tree beneath which he, or one of his mythical pre- decessors,. obtained enlightenment, or even a Sttipa erected in memory of him, are represented as being universally venerated. To these are added the symbols of his miracles: as snake and fire in the case of Käsyapa, and so on. The wheel (dharmachakra), as already mentioned. was adopted by Buddha's disciples as the symbol of his doctrine, and combined with other symbols—a trident placed above it, etc—stands for him on the sculptures of the Asoka period.!

From the Buddhist literature it clearly appears how irreparable was the loss sustained by the death of the Sage. Schisms soon broke out: there was no proper cult. Everything had to be developed, and it was a slow process. The wonderful growth of the more modern religion must not cause us to forget its simple and small beginnings. As long as the doctrine of the ‘Overcomer’ was pure, a Buddha cult could not be thought of; the tendency to this first made itself felt when the figure of the Sage was deified. _ Originally, Buddhism was only a philosophy, no religion: but therein consisted the weakness of the Buddha doctrines, which speedily became unpopular on that account.” When in the course of time the religion fell back into a worship of gods, the cult picture appeared. The countless legends which are related of the oldest Buddha pictures describe plainly the embarrassment oc- casioned when such a representation had to be made. The ability

1 In these different scenes, Bharhut, with its reliefs determined by the inscriptions, is very characteristic as compared with Saiichi and even Amarävati. The Dharma or Chakra symbol is adored by gods and men, who approach with offerings or with folded hands; purely external accessories determine the scene: thus the wheel and two gazelles are the representation of the discourse at Banaras, in the deer-park; Tree and Serp. Wor., pl. xxix, 2 (Safichi); pl. lxxi, 2 (Amarävati), etc.—even in modern Lamaist art, cf. the emblem on the roof of a Mongolian temple at Pozdneev, Zap. geogr. Obsheh., XVI, 1887, pl. on p. 38; the Dharma symbol with fire pillars sur- rounded by Brähmanas, the representation of the conversion of Käsyapa (Tree and Serp. Wor., pl. xx). Another emblematic representation is the celestial ladder, with footprints above and below, for the descent of the Bodhisattva from Tushita; Bharhut, pl. xvii (middle), also at Sänicht, Tree and Serp. Wor., pl. xxviii, 3; conf. 8. Beal, ut sup., p. 188. From this comes the idea that the descending elephant beside the sleep- ing Mäyä isa dream. The Bodhisattva descending on the ladder, appears, however, also in Gandhära sculptures. To this subject also belongs a modern picture from Kamboja in the Berlin Museum.

2 If in Buddhism the proud attempt be made to conceive a deliverance in which man himself delivers himself, to create a faith without a god, it is Brahmanical speculation which has prepared the way for this thought. It has thrust back the idea of a god step by step; the forms of the old gods have faded away, and besides the Brahma, which is enthroned in its eternal quietude, highly exalted above the destinies of the human world, there is left remaining, as the sole really active person in the great work of deliverance, man himself, who possesses—iuherent in himself—the power to turn aside from this world, this hopeless state of sorrow.—Oldenberg, Buddha, &e.,p.53.

68 BUDDHA REPRESENTED BY SYMBOL. STATUES.

s to create an ideal type was lacking, so a portrait was chosen which the artists beautified beyond nature, and which they tried to make authentic by tales of miracles that Buddha had wrought. Thus the Divyävadäna relates that Bimbisära, king of Magadha, desired to have a representation of Buddha painted on a cloth. The artist tried and failed. Then Buddha let his shadow fall upon it, com- manded that the outlines should be filled in with colour, and that the chief articles of the faith should be written upon it. This is an artistic authentication of a modern picture, as clearly no portrait was extant.! This point will be found of value in a subsequent chapter, for it proves that there was no desire to create an ideal type. In a modern branch of Buddhist art, in the miniatures of the Lamaist church of Tibet and China, notwithstanding the narrow limits of the canon, the individual appears surprisingly beautiful. It is, indeed, the only really artistic point in the endless series of absurd rites of the degenerate hierarchical representations. But the ideal type of Buddha—which spiritualized the simple monk's figure, and, notwithstanding the want of ornament, stood out from all else, —was created for Buddhist art by foreigners.

The doctrine of Buddha’s Nirväza can hardly be taken as afford- ing the reason for the fact that on the reliefs of Barahat, Gaya, and Sanchi the Buddha does not appear. The doctrine of the Nirväna, in its present canonical form, was probably not developed at all at that time. Later, when statues of Buddha were already in existence, the legends paid no attention whatever to the dogmatic conception: according to a legend handed down by the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang, for example, Buddha, who long before had disappeared into Nirvaza, came down from heaven to exhort the statue of Buddha, which king Udayana had made to serve the faithful as the symbol of the doctrine that brings salvation.

In the ancient Buddhist art, so far as the representation of the founder of the religion is concerned, the conditions are the same as in ancient Christian art: symbols, such as the fish, the lamb, etc., were employed at first by the early Christians, as types reminding them of Christ. The type of the Christ was long a fluctuating one, until that of Byzantium became universal. So it was in Buddhist art: the Gändhära type, which will be examined in greater detail below, became the prevailing one.

Tier single«pamels peceme comprehensible only by virtue of their connection one with another. For the chief figure does. not appear in their composition.

If we return to the reliefs of the left pillar, we are struck above all by the fact that these three reliefs of the Käsyapa legend, the scene of which was at Gayä, are so much separated from one another. From what was said above (p. 60) about the manner in

1 Udayana Vatsarija of Kausambi, and Prasenajit of Kosala are said to have had statues made of Buddha before his death. Beal, Si-yu-ki, vol. I, pp. 235-6; Eitel, Handbk. of Chin, Buddhism, pp. 137-8.

ASOKA CHAPEL AT GAYA, 69

3 which the heavens are represented, we expected something com- pensating sufficiently on the left pillar.

As middle panel on the left pillar we have a representation of a great tree so built about by a chapel, that the main branches grow out of one of the windows. Rows of men, in the attitude of prayer, stand round about it; gods areflyingtowardsit through the air to crown it with garlands. By means of rows of men at prayer, which fillthe upper panel, the composition is made to balance, to some extent, that of the right pillar, even astoform. Now the tree, the worship of which is so important, that he ould bie “placed opposite the palace of the gods on the

right pillaras a counter- NEFrFrereen FR] poise, and in fact in such |X ee ‚ N SANT a way that the Käsyapa m NN: SS Pi 7 a; 1 A : ES NN > legend had to be divided CNS ony ES

ın two, can be none other than the Bodhi treg of Gayä with the chapel which king Asoka had built round about it. The representation of the fig tree at Buddha Gayä, which is shown on the reliefs of Barähat, is indeed identical with our Safchi Ds nun (fig. 38)." (Cunningham, Bharhut, pll. xii and xxx). In

We see, therefore, that the middle is the Bodhi-tree of Gautama Buddha. the desire for symmetry ‘The REST a er A paemon ee a fhe agin Mime Me RR vailed among Indian archi- Pasenaji Kosalo”—the King Prasenajit, the tects, though not in the Kosala. | strict form in which we are accustomed to it from Greco-Roman art.

The reliefs, so far as their explanation is concerned, always refer one to the other. The main difficulty for us consists in separating the decorative elements from those that are important in the composition. Now those external determining points in the com-

38. RELIEF FROM THE SO-CALLED PRASENAJIT PILLAR FROM BARAHAT.

' Hultzsch, Zeit. d. Morg. Ges., Bd. XL, S 64, No. 46; Cunningham, Bharhut, No. 28, p. 134 and pl. xiii; Räjendraläl Mitra, Buddha Gaya, p. 96.

70 ARRANGEMENT OF RELIEFS: FIRST ANDSECOND ARCHITRAVES.

« positions are most apparent and most interesting on the architrave of the east gateway. Above the pillars there rise three transoms, which we shall call architraves ; the lowest of them rests upon the capitals, while the next two are laid upon supporting blocks, which are about as high as the architraves themselves. At the places where they rest upon these supports, the beams are covered with carved panels: the whole is of the nature of a timbered scaffolding in which the cross-beams are fitted in beneath ornamented panels. Now we notice that, of the six panels on the front, the two upper- most are carved each with a pair of zebu-riders, and on the other side all the six represent similar mounted groups. Only the two lower ones on the front are sculptured each with three winged lions. If we look more closely at them we see that all the carved surfaces of the architraves—that is, of the three on the back and the uppermost on the front—have purely decorative reliefs, which are continued beyond the panels ; only the two lowest on the front present compositions full of figures and of the processional kind described above. Another thing that strikes one is that the repre- sentations on the architraves, which project beyond the inlaid panels, do zo¢ continue the central compositions of the first and second architraves on the front. (Conf. ill. 39).

The relief on the central portion of the first architrave, reckoning from below (front), belongs to the narrative representations, which we discussed on p. 57. In the middle is to be seen a large fig tree with the same kind of building (a chaitya) encircling it as on the relief of the left pillar: it is, therefore, once more the Bodhi tree at Gaya. A large and solemn procession is winding round it, To the right, on the relief, a man in royal garb is getting down from his elephant, supported by a dwarf, surrounded and attended by women; chariots with warriors, elephants with mahäuts, archers and musicians, fill up the background. On the left, a great pro- cession approaches with flowers, vessels with perfumed water, flags, etc.; a large band of music, with drums of different kinds, fifes, and conch shells as trumpets, fill up the rest of the relief. It is therefore a procession to the Bodhi-tree at Gaya, perhaps on the occasion of Mahinda’s embassy to Ceylon (conf. p. 26). The winged lions in the inlaid panels may possibly be intended to suggest this. Lions are the armorial bearings of Ceylon: ‘the lion island, —Simhaladvipa (Pali, Sthaladipa). ‘The ends of the archi- traves, in the corners under the volutes, have a pair of peacocks of unusual size in their reliefs on both sides. On the right end a pair of lovers is represented behind the peacocks. In Pali the peacock is called Mora (Sansk. Mayüra); and as peacocks are the symbol of the Maurya! dynasty, their representation on the first architrave might indicate that the central incident, which refers to Ceylon, takes place in India.

The middle relief of the second architrave shows a small fig

1 Conf. Turnour, The Mahävansa, in Roman characters, p. Xx xix.

RELIEFS OF THE EAST GATEWAY AT SÄNCHI. 7a

tree in the centre ; this—if the previous relief has been correctly explained—may indicate the newly -planted slip. Again a great procession appears, just leaving asetty. Ehe princes: have dis-

GREAT STIPA AT S

HAST GATEWAY OF THE

ARCHITRAVES OF THE

39.

mounted; their horses are following the procession. The right side of the relief shows a king kneeling before footmarks!—pre- sumably Buddha’s—surrounded by servants with sacrificial vessels,

‘Yule, Travels of Marco Polo, vol. II, p. 260.

72 BUDDHA'S FOOTPRINT. SÄNCHI RELIEFS.

umbrellas, etc.—evidently the worship of the Buddhapäda, the foot- prints of Buddha, which he is said to have left on the Sumanaküfa (Adam’s Peak) on the occasion of his mythical visit to Ceylon. There a giant footprint has been regarded as sacred from ancient times and for all the religions prevailing in Ceylon! On the reception of Buddhism, it became a proof that Buddha had walked upon the island, and thus was taken as a pattern for similar foot- prints in Further India, &c. The ends of the architraves, next the volutes, show wild elephants in the jungle as companion pieces to the peacocks of the first architrave; and to correspond with the pair of lovers, a naked man and woman, both with bow and arrows. As, judging from the wild elephants, we are in Ceylon, these may be meant for Veddas.

Thus both reliefs are intimately connected with the story of the building at Sanchi given on p. 26. Itis an extremely interesting fact that, not only at the Christian era, but even in the days of Asoka, the footmark on Adam’s Peak was considered as the print of Buddha’s foot. No doubt, for the missionaries of the faith sent from India, it was a decisive proof of the true doctrine, when so striking an instance of Buddha’s visit to the island was given to them on the occasion of their bringing over the slip of the Bodhi- tree. The Buddhapäda, which existed later at Gaya, is now wor- shipped as the footprint of Vishzu.

Reliefs of the east gateway at Säücht.

Casts of this gateway were made in 1869 and are set up in the S. Kensington, Edinburgh and Dublin Museums of Science and Art, in the Royal Ethnological Museum at Berlin, at Paris, &c. (See above, p. 25). . The following is a brief description of the sculptures upon it. The only representations we yet possess of those on the other gateways are given in Fergusson’s Tree and Serpent Worship (1873).

Right pillar, front: Palace of the gods. Inner side: wor- ship of a sacred tree—the fig-tree at Gayä, where Buddha obtained enlightenment; below, the dream of Maya; the Bodhisattva comes down from the region of the Tusita gods in the form of a white elephant. Below, a large relief presents a great town, in the streets ‘ of which meet riders and men on elephants. ‘The windows of the houses are full of people, women with parrots in their hands look down into the streets. A chariot with a young man clearly charac- terised as a prince is leaving the city: a band of musicians goes before. Archers and an elephant with its mahäwat accompany the chariot of the prince. It is perhaps the procession of the youthful

! Locally known to the Tamils as Sivadippitham (Siva’s footprint) and Dharma- rajakkal (Buddha’s rock). The Muhammadans say Adam alighted on it when expelled from Paradise, and call it al-Rahun See E. Tennant, Ceylon, vol. II, pp. 132-6; and Skeen, Adam’s Peak.—J.B.

2 Since p. 25 was printed off, Mr. H. Cousens has sent me his re-measurement of the Sänchi stüpa. The diameter of the dome at the top of the ramp or plinth is 106 feet,

and of the encircling rail, outside measurement, 143 feet from E. to W.and only 1464 from N. to 8.—J.B.

SANCHi EAST GATEWAY. 73

Gautama on which the four appearances mentioned above (p. 13) were met with. This view is to some extent supported by the fact that on the lowest relief a fig-tree is again represented (the later Bodhi-tree, or the other one at Gaya, under which Gautama, ac- cording to the legend, first meditated?). Before the tree are five men in lay costume, worshipping (Fergusson, Zree and Serp Wor. p.145 and pll. xiii, xvii and xxxiii). The under half of the inner side represents a large figure of a man, in royal dress, resembling that on the left pillar. These figures appear to correspond to the Yaksha at the entrance of the Nasik chaitya temple (p. 36).

Left pillar, front: above, two rows of men worshipping. Below, the Bodhi-tree surrounded by the chapel over an altar or table bearing the trisula symbol (conf. p. 69). (Fergusson, Z’ree and Serp. Wor., pil. xiii, xvi and xxv, 3). Below that, the water miracle of Uruvilva (p. 63). The lowest panel is uninterpreted. The representation is divided into two scenes: on the right is a thickly peopled city, through whose streets pass a rider and a mahäwat on an elephant. The smaller half, clearly defined as a separate incident, shows two men in rich dress,—one in the attitude of a teacher, the other in a listening, devotional pose with folded hands. Inner side, upper panel: in the foreground is a pond with lotuses; buffaloes, zebus and goats stand on the bank, two buffaloes are up to their necks in the water. Beyond the pond is seen a large stone slab with an awning and two men worshipping. A young man with a sling-pole for carrying vessels (dahang7) stands behind the pond or river surrounded by women; a woman draws water with a lo/ä, others hold their lo¢as in their arms. The middle ground is occupied by a large house with adjoining build- ings ; near it are women engaged in preparing rice: one woman pounds the rice in a mortar, another cleans rice on a winnow, a third makes cakes, a fourth, who is occupied in the same way, is talking with a man (Zree and Serp. Wor., p.150 and pl. xxxv, 2): probably the meal which Sujata, with the help of the gods, prepared for Gautama, and the stone slab on which he partook of it, before he began the last decisive meditation which was to bring him enlightenment. The panels beneath represent the fire-miracle at Uruvilva (conf. above, p. 62, 66). The lower half of the inner face is filled by a man (or Yaksha) in royal dress.

The backs of the pillars, right at the top only, have each a small relief; on the left with a stüpa, on the right with a sacred tree which is worshipped by gods and men.

The outsides of both pillars show rich patterns of lotus- flowers ; on the right side is a flower pattern only (conf. p. 19); on the left side, a large garland which is alive with little aquatic birds and springs from the jaws of a large makara.

The capitals of the pillars are filled with men richly dressed, bearing flags and seated on elephants. Outside and joined to each capital is a dancing girl, or a Devi, on a large scale, under a tree—the one on the right being quite preserved (conf. p. 42).

74 SÄNCHI EAST GATEWAY.

The first architrave: front, inlaid panels,—winged lions; middle relief: Mahinda at Gaya, see p. 70 (Tree and Serp. Wor., pl. xv, 2). Outside: peacocks.

Second architrave: front, applied panels: winged lions ; see ill. pp. 18 and 71. Middle relief: the Bodhi-tree at Anurädha- pura (?), adoration of the Buddhapäda ; see p.69. Outside: wild elephants; see p. 72 (Tree and Serp. Wor., pl. xv, 1).

Third architrave: front—applied panels: zebu riders. Middle and ends of the beam: five stüpas and two sacred trees, worshipped by gods and men.

The blocks supporting the architraves bear on the front the following reliefs : between the first and second to the left,—a wheel (dharmachakra) adored by gods and men; to the right, the god- dess Siri on lotus flowers, &c.; see p. 39; between the second and third, to the left, the goddess Sirt; to the right, a sacred tree with gods and men.

First architrave: back, applied panels: on each a man and a woman with peculiar coiffure, riding on goats. Middle relief and ends of beams,—elephants bring BUR of flowers (lotus-flowers) to a stupa (Tree and Serp. Wor., pl. xv, 4).

Second Anchitraye: back, applied panels,—on each a man and a woman riding on dromedaries. Middle relief and ends of beams,—the animal kingdom adores a holy tree, the different animals bringing branches, flowers and blossoms ; see p. 48 (Tree and Serp. Wor., pl. xv, 3).

Third architrave: back, applied panels,—on each a man and a woman riding on horned and winged lions, clearly foreign types (conf. ill. p. 34). The middle and the ends. of the beams show seven holy trees adored by gods and men, evidently the Bodhi-trees of the six predecessors of Buddha and that of the Buddhas—Vipassi, Sikhi, Vessabhü, Kakusandha, Kozägamana, Kassapa and Gotama which are also represented at Barähat, as the inscriptions witness.

The blocks supporting the architraves show, on the back the following reliefs: between the first and second architraves,— groups of lotus flowers ; between the second and third architraves, —on each a stüpa with gods and men.

Between the ends of the architraves stand figures, some of which are still preserved: statuary groups of men on elephants and dancing-girls under trees. The small pillars which support the architraves bear in their reliefs lion-pillars (see p. 20), or simply ornaments. How the remaining spaces between the small middle pillars, or the highest architrave between the wheel-symbols, was further ornamented we do not know. On the other Säfchi gate- ways, small figures of riders and statuettes of different sizes are employed as additional decorations: motifs that remind one of the throne of Vikramaditya (see p. 29).

Above each pillar there was once a symbol of Beer the wheel with the trisula over it (see p. Ig and note 2).

a “ Foe at ah ei Fes a etl 2 _ 40. THE INFANT BUDDHA TAKING THE SEVEN STEPS (from Swät).

EIERN IP deiS Res ible lte

THE GANDHARA SCULPTURES (SO-CALLED GRACO-BUDDHIST SCULPTURES).

By Gändhära sculptures are designated the numerous images, carved friezes, pillars, &c., excavated from the ancient ruins of Buddhist monasteries and stüpas on the north-west frontier of India. They have been variously styled Greeco-Buddhist, Aryan, Indo-Greek, and Indo-Baktrian—terms which are open to the objection of implying a theory respecting their art origin. ‘They are all but entirely connected with Buddhist iconography, and many of them manifest some western or classical influence. And since they are found almost exclusively in the country which early writers named Gandhära, they may very properly be characterized by the area of their origin. The country of the Gandarioi, Gandare and Gandaritis is mentioned by Herodotos,! Hekataios, Ptolemy and Strabo. The Gandarioi furnished their contingent to the army of Darius in the invasion of Greece. Their country occupied the whole lower valley of the Käbül river—the ancient Kophen or Kubhä—from the Kau or Alingar river near the meridian of 70° W. longitude to the Indus, and from the Safid Koh range and the Kohat Toi river on the south to the borders of Kohistän, Chitral and the Hindu Kush on the north. It thus embraced the whole of the modern Afridi and Momand country, Swat, Bajaur, Bunér, &c. At one period, at least, it seems even to have included

1 Herodotos, bk. vii, c. 65, 66; conf. bk. iii, c. 91; iv, 44.

76 GANDHARA. POLITICAL HISTORY.

within its limits the great city of Takshasilä in the Rawal Pindi district, to the east of the Indus,—forming an area 170 miles from east to west, and above 100 miles from north to south.! The province between the Swat and Indus rivers, or the modern district of Yüsufzai and northwards to Kohistän, was known as Udyäna or Ujjana (Gr. Suasténé), and sometimes probably formed a separate principality. It was through the northern districts of this country that Alexander led his army into India. On the rise of the Graeco- Baktrian kingdom, in the middle of the following century, Gandhara was included in it.

The political events which followed the short reign of Alexander the Great in India terminated with the founding of two great states—the kingdom of the Prasioi with its capital PäZaliputra (Gr. Palimbothra, the modern Pä/nä) in the east; and the Gr&co- Baktrian kingdom, which retained for a time parts of India, the Panjäb, and portions of the North-Western Provinces of to-day. The heirs of the Greco-Baktrian kingdom and of its hybrid civil- ization, formed of Iranian and Greek elements, were the Yueh-chi or Indo-Skythians (cir. B.c. 126). The struggles which the Indian states carried on with them continued till the sixth century A.D.,and thus form the political background for the further develop- ment of Buddhism on Indian soil.

With the fifth century begins the darkest period of Indian history, political as well as religious. When, after centuries, the veil is lifted again, and Indian sources are once more fully at our disposal, Buddha’s doctrines have largely disappeared from the continent of India. foreign influences are overcome, and, whilst a complete transformation has taken place in Brähmanism,— which organizes the national worship and moulds it into an important system, —an entirely new development of the languages is in progress.

In detail, the following had probably been the course of affairs. After the death of Alexander the Great, his generals had divided his vast empire among them; his Indian possessions had fallen to Seleukos Nikator, king of Syria. But as the supremacy of Seleukos was immediately subjected to attack, and as he saw that western Asia would call for his utmost exertions —convinced of the extreme difficulty of retaining the eastern lands of his empire— he ceded the Indian provinces to Chandragupta of Magadha (cir. 305 B.C.) in return for a supply of war-elephants. A daughter of the Macedonian was married to the king of India, and a permanent ambassador, Megasthenes (whose narratives of Indian affairs, though only fragmentary, are of great value)” remained at the

1 It still retained the old name in the thirteenth century. The capital at different times was Pushkalävati, Purushapura, and Udakhanda or Waiband (Ohind).

?T’he Fragments of the Indika of Megasthenes have been collected by E. A. Schwanbeck (Bonn, 1846) and by C. Müller. They have been translated into English by J. W. McCrindle in Znd, Ant., vol. VI, 1877, and also separately (Bombay and London).

BUDDHIST MISSIONS. ASOKA. 77

Indian court at Pa¢aliputra. About a century later (BC. 260-230) Asoka did his best officially to propagate Buddhism within his wide domains, and also sought to procure an entrance for it into neighbouring states. About the year B.C. 246, we learn that a Buddhist mission was sent to Kashmir and Gandhära by the great Council held under king Asoka. It was led by an elder or monk named Majjhantika (Madhyäntika) of Dahala, who found a savage Yäga king, Arava/a, ruling the country. After strong opposition, the monk is said to have converted the king and gained over the whole population. “From that period,” says the Mahdvansa, “to the present day, the people of Kashmir and Gandhära have been fervently devoted to the three branches of the faith, and [the land] has glittered with the yellow robes [of the priests].” And the testimonies of the early Chinese pilgrims, together with the numerous remains of Buddhist monasteries and stüpas still found, amply confirm the statement that such was once the case.

King Asoka mentions in his inscriptions that he had carried on negotiations in reference’ to this object with the kings of the Yavanas—Antiochos of Syria, Ptolemy Philadelphos of Egypt, etc. The alliance with the Seleukidz continued, and about the year 256 B.C. Antiochus Theos concluded a treaty with Asoka.

But this condition of things was soon altered. Between the two great states there arose a new power which drove the Syrian monarchy from the Indian frontier for ever. The Graco-Baktrian kingdom, which was founded at the expense of the Syrian satraps, waxed powerful, and Eukratides, king of Baktria, took up arms against India (cir. 170 B.C.).! His armies seized upon the Panjab and perhaps made their way as far as Sindh and Gujarat. The Baktrian kingdom, however, was attacked by the Yueh-chi, a Skythian tribe, who drove the Baktrians, under their king Heliokles, over the Hindu Kush (B.C. 125).2 Somewhat later his successor, Menandros, whose dominions could no longer have included Baktria, had his capital at Säkala (Sangala or Särkala) in the Panjab, somewhere near the Hydraötes or Ravi river, and made considerable conquests in north India? A generation after Menandros, the Yonakas or so-called Greeks were again sub- jected to the onslaughts of Yueh-chi tribes, and Hermaios, about B.C. 25, seems to have shared his kingdom with Kadphises, the Yueh-chi chief of the Kishan tribe.

Among the kings of the Baktrian dynasty—whose contemporaries in India were