But this didn’t happen.
That Siam’s king declared the two images before the entrance to be the representations of the buddhistic king’s parents with their children seemed more than reasonable to me, especially, because of all difficulties being solved then. Didn’t Mayâ, like any other mother of Buddha, die seven days after his birth? And then, all writings known to me, don’t mention anything about Siddhârta’s brothers or sisters. And all these children can’t possibly be angels or celestials, because in the smaller panels, above the groups in the porch, we always see them hewn floating in the air.
However reasonable this idea of the hînayîstic king may have seemed to me, yet I could not maintain this when I was told by Mr. A. Foucher, the great knower of the ancient Indian Buddhism, that in Old Gandhâra he often saw the Buddha, just as is the case here, sculptured in the mudrâ of preaching, standing between the two Bodhisatthvas, Avalokitésvara and Manjusri. This, among others, is to be seen at Sârnâth in the northern environs of Bénarès which passes for the very place where the Buddha should have preached for the first time. This is ordinarily indicated by means of the tyakra between two gazelles, and consequently hewn at the foot of Buddha’s throne. Mr. A. Foucher also taught me that my fellow-country-man, Dr. J. Ph. Vogel, leader of the archaeological service in British India, rightly declared the two demi-relievoes in the porch (volume 4th of the “Bulletins de l’école française d’Extrême-Orient”) to be the representations of Hâritî and Kuvera, the goddess and the god of the Yakshas with some of their children. In many a cloister in Gandhâra he saw the Yakshî Hâritî represented with one child at her breast, and that, after she herself, who is said to have been the former personification of small-pox (variolae), had been converted by the Buddha.
He had taken away one of her 500 children, and remonstrated with her on the sorrow she gave the mothers of the children killed by her, in consequence of which she totally changed her character, became truly converted and afterwards honoured as a patroness of children.
I am not going to expatiate about the artistic value of this produce of the ancient plastic arts in Old India. One should see them oneself and then judge whether the Indian sculptor knew how to chisel out living thoughts which are not less striking and beautiful than those of the Greeks in the age of Pericles, and much better hewn than those of the Egyptians in the time of the hieroglyphics, of Memphis and Thebae, of Carnak and Philae[12].
But there are more things to be seen in the sanctuarium of tyanḍi Mĕndut.
The space within the four heavy walls is not a square or rectangular one, but rather a trapezoid with parallel front- and back walls. Its side-walls somewhat join each other from front to back. I don’t know any other example of deviation from the rectangular form, and therefore try to find its meaning in the sculptor’s effort to increase the impression the large images make upon the visitor, by slightly supporting its perspective.
Tyanḍi Mĕndut.
Imagery in front of the entrance of the ruin.
Kuwera, the god of riches and of the Yakshas, with some of his children.
Two niches have been spared in each of these side walls, but not symmetrically like we see them hewn before the impressive image-group, and not behind it or on the back wall. Half way between the entrance and the two corners however, two similar niches adorn the front wall. All these six niches have been framed with the garuḍa-nâga ornament, that is, with two composed serpent’s bodies whose tails disappear into the mule of a monstrous garuḍa head we see above the vault of these niches, and whose outward turned heads are provided with a proboscis.