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0372 Serindia : vol.2
Serindia : vol.2 / Page 372 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000183
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878 PICTORIAL REMAINS FROM THE THOUSAND BUDDHAS [Chap. XXIII

saved the accompanying inscription from effacement. According to M. Petrucci's brief explanation it mentions as the original a silver image preserved in the kingdom of Kapiga.

Though the help of inscriptions fails us elsewhere, equally clear indications allow us to identify four more of the images represented. Thus in figure xi the introduction of a pair of gazelles or deer into the ogee top of the vesica that surrounds a standing Buddha shows beyond all doubt that an image representing Buddha in the Deer-park of Benares, the scene of the First Sermon, is meant.' Figure v is of special interest because it shows a Buddha statue, standing with the right hand raised in the abhaya-mudrit and surrounded by an elliptical vesica which is filled with radiating rows of small Buddhas standing in the same pose and visible from the breast upwards. The whole agrees in all details, down to the folds of the drapery, with the two colossal stucco relievo statues which I unearthed in 190I on the southern corner walls of the great Rawak Vihâra of Khotan.8 M. Foucher has since proved that these and similar representations on a much smaller scale in Gandhdra relievos are intended to exhibit â.kyamuni in the act of performing the Great Miracle of Srâvasti.° An Avalokite§vara can be recognized with certainty in the richly adorned standing figure xii that holds the characteristic emblems of the lotus and flask, and the presence by his sides of various small attendant figures may yet lead to the exact identification of the image intended.

The standing Buddha figure xiii, which follows next in the extant portion of the painting, presents special iconographic interest. Its hieratic pose of peculiar stiffness, the treatment of the drapery, and what remains of the background of speckled rocks permit us to identify the figure with an image showing Sâkyamuni on the Grdhrakûta, or ` Vulture Peak ', which is exhibited in striking similarity also by the fine painting Ch. 0059, to be discussed presently, and by the large embroidery picture Ch. 00260.10 Apart from the indication, quite clear in all three representations, of the rocks which figure in various episodes of Sâkyamuni's later years localized by tradition on that famous rocky hill near Râjagrha or Râjgir,1' the identification is made absolutely certain by the figure of the vulture which Ch. 0059 shows painted above the grotto. The absence of an inscription makes it unfortunately impossible for us to ascertain where the Indian image which all three representations are intended to reproduce was assumed to be.12 But the absolute identity of the pose of both hands, and the extraordinarily close resemblance of all details in the treatment of the drapery, hair, dress, etc., leave no possible doubt that all three are replicas from one and the same model.13 That this was a sculpture in the Graeco-Buddhist style, or one closely affected by it, is

Buddha in Deer-park and Miracle of gravasti.

Image of gâkyamuni on Grdhra- kûta.

of the rulers who also held the Peshawar Valley. The identification with Kâfiristân, suggested Journal asiat., i915, janvier-février, p. 102 by M. Sylvain Lévi, does not find support in geographical facts.

' Cf. Foucher, L'art du Gandhdra, i. pp. 431 sqq., for Graeco-Buddhist relievos of the First Sermon. It is interesting to note that while in the scene at the top of the vesica gâkyamuni appears seated, as invariably in the Gandhâra relievos, the large Buddha statue below is standing.

e Cf. Ancient Kholan, i. p. 493, Figs. 62-4 ; Ruins of Kholan, Frontispiece.

g Cf. Foucher, Beginnings of Buddhist Art, p. 372, with note 1 ; for other Gandhâra relievos of this type, see my paper on Excavations at Sahrz=Bahlôl, in Annual Report, Archaeol. Survey of India, 1911-12, p. ion, Pl. XLVII, Fig. 19.

I may add here that the fragment xiv shows a similar vesica filled with small standing Buddha busts round the R. side of a Buddha seated on a throne in European fashion.

For another type of vesica showing two rows of small seated Buddhas and enclosing a seated Bodhisattva, see note on figure xvii in Descriptive List.

10 See for Ch. 0059, Thousand B., Pl. XIII ; for the great embroidery picture, Pl. Civ, and below, p. 895 sq.

" Cf. e.g. Hsüan-tsang's account of the Grdhrakataparvata, Julien, llfemoires, ii. pp. 20 sqq. ; Beal, Siyu-ki, ii. pp. 152 sqq. ; Watters, Yuan Chwang, ii. pp. 151 sqq., where other references in Chinese Buddhist texts are mentioned. See also Legge, Fdf-hien, pp. 82 sq.; Foucher, L'art du Gandhdra, i. pp. 497 sq., etc.

'2 Hsüan-tsang's account of the Grdhrakûta hill, referred to in the last note, mentions a ` life-size image of the Buddha in the attitude of preaching ', placed in a hall built close to a cliff where âkyamuni was believed to have often preached.

13 It may suffice to draw attention to the complete agreement in the stiff modelling of the R. arm hanging straight down, of its joints, and of the L. hand gathering up drapery at the breast in an ear' of identical conventionalized out-