The widow’s tress made the professor suppose that the beautiful moustache (with which Wilsen adorned this little sculpture in Leemans’ work) should be a mistake of the draughtsman. And he observed this rightly, and so did I after heaving read Speyer’s essay,[55] because I have been able to ascertain in loco that even the woman’s breasts, Wilsen didn’t see or engrave at least, are clearly to be seen and palpable. To be very short the legend runs as follows:
Maitrakanyaka was still a child when his father was shipwrecked on a voyage. According to time-honoured usage he was afterwards inclined to choose his father’s profession. In the beginning his mother told him that he had kept a shop, and afterwards had dealt in perfumes and in gold.
Maitrakanyaka did likewise, and gave his mother the first 4, 8, 16 and 32 kârshâpanas he gained, that they might be divided among the brahmins and indigent. These were four good deeds.
But when he was told that his father had gone abroad on business, and as he soon saw that his mother could not deny this he resolved to tread in his father’s foot-steps in spite of his mother’s resistance who feared to lose her only child in the very same way like she formerly lost his father. Bathing in tears she fell on her knees at last, and tried to detain him at the last moment, but he gave her a kick and went on board. This was one evil deed, and according to the doctrine of the karma, the eternal law of cause and consequence, he should be punished for this deed of his as sure as he would be rewarded for his good deeds.
On the second sculpture we see him shipwreck, and after having reached the shore he finds there four celestial young women who reward him for his first good deed by letting him, for many years, dream a dream of perfect happiness till his karma drives him away from there, successively showing him eight, afterwards sixteen, and at last two-and-thirty more and more beautiful nymphs in return of the as many kârshâpanas he formerly gave away to the indigent. Finally he happens to enter a castle which gate closes itself behind him, and there he sees a martyr bearing a red-hot wheel turning for ever on his head, that is, the inexorable punishment to all who insulted their father or mother. This wheel the unhappy one will always bear till another, guilty of the same deed, will release him.
On the third, fourth, and fifth sculpture have been hewn the encounters with the 8, 16 and 32 nymphs, though, for want of room, we can’t see 5 of the 16 and 19 of the 32 nymphs. And on the sixth and last sculpture we first see Maitrakanyaka suffer under the torture of the red-hot wheel, but at a short distance from this we see him released by the expression of his self-denying wish, that another, guilty of such a deed, may never come to free him.
I think the last group of this very same imagery should refer to the conclusion of this karma-legend: the Bodhisattva’s dying and his transition into the nirvâna.[56].
Foucher means that the four relievoes which precede the shipwreck, refer to the same jâtaka, and that Maitrakanyaka may have been already represented with his mother on the first sculpture where the son offered his mother a purse filled with the kârshâpanas he first gained. On the following panel, divided into two by a style of building, Foucher sees, to the right, the son in his last business which may appear from the goldsmith’s balance whereas the larger purse should refer to the very same one in which he gathered the 32 kârshâpanas.
On the other, left part, Foucher thinks he also sees the mother at her son’s feet. So does Speyer, and so do I.
As with regard to the following relievoes I refer to that which I already said formerly.