And five years ago Speyer gave at length a full account of the Maitrakanyaka legend superficially treated by Oldenburg, and hewn on six sculptures of the lower series on the back wall. Oldenburg however, had only mentioned five of them.
In November 1899 I visited the Båråbudur in order to examine all these sculptures one by one, that is, in as much as they still existed and had not been lost or damaged, or no more to be recognized since the engravings studied by Oldenburg had been drawn in Leemans’ work.
It is a pity that these drawings are not exactly true ones, and not to be relied upon, but we shall afterwards speak about them.
As short as possible I shall successively treat these sculptures, mentioning again their numbers they refer to when counted from the preceding staircase, and afterwards from the first till the ninth reentering or projecting wall angle, and begin again from the eastern staircase, and walk towards the South. Doing this I’ll have to count in the disappeared and consequently missing sculptures—and many of them have been lost on the front wall—, because otherwise the numbers after each new loss would become quite worthless. Corner-sculptures are those which occupy the two sides of a wall angle, in Leemans’ engravings divided in two by a perpendicular line.
Let us begin with the upper series on the front wall after the eastern staircase.
Second corner, 3, 4 and 5 (W. L., 16, 17, and 18.)[46].
The Lord once lived as a rich man who did much good. One day rising from table to fill the beggar’s bag of a monk, Mâra, the Evil Spirit, opened a precipice before his feet wherein he saw hell flaming. But the Lord steps through this precipice, remains uninjured, and favors the monk, in reality a Pratyéka-Buddha, a heavenly saint, with a gift and the latter afterwards disappears in a brilliant cloud.
On 3 we see the benefactor with his gifts, on 4 he steps through hell, and on 5 the monk ascends to heaven.
Hell is represented here by condemned persons in a cauldron with boiling contents.
Second corner 11 and 12 (W. L. 24 and 25). The Bodhisattva once lived as a hare in a wilderness frequented by many hermits. Her authority over all other animals was honoured even in heaven.