PLATE XIV
IMAGES OF BUDDHAS AND BODHISATTVAS
XIV
The large but unfortunately poorly preserved silk painting (Ch. xxii. 0023), of which this Plate reproduces remains of the left-side portion, on the scale of one-third, presents exceptional iconographic interest. It shows numerous Buddha and Bodhisattva images arranged in separate compartments and drawn in an Indian style which is unmistakably derived from the Graeco-Buddhist art of Gandhāra. As first recognized by M. Petrucci from the few Chinese inscriptions still legible in the cartouches,[29] the figures were intended to reproduce sculptured images worshipped at various sacred sites of India. Eleven of them appear in the portion of the painting as shown by the Plate, and seven more are traceable partly above this portion or in detached fragments.[30] In the case of six the characteristic poses or attributes enable us at present to identify with certainty the particular divinity which the original images were intended to represent. For others definite clues have yet to be searched for.
The figure in the top corner on the left reproduces an image of Gautama Bodhisattva, seated in the famous scene of Māra’s attack immediately preceding the Illumination. This is shown by the characteristic pose of the hand touching the rocky seat bhūmisparśa-mudrā and by the triple monster head forming a crown over the Bodhisattva’s head and symbolizing the demon army of Māra. It was in that pose that the miraculous image at the sacred site of Bōdh-Gayā, described at length by the great Chinese pilgrim Hsüan-tsang and still traceable in numberless replicas, presented Śākyamuni at the moment of Enlightenment. The identification of our figure with this far-famed image is confirmed by the Chinese inscription placed against it which describes it as a statue in the kingdom of Magadha. In the figure now seen in the top right-hand corner we meet again with a Bodhisattva seated in the bhūmisparśa-mudrā. His robe is like that of a Buddha and red. Two white crescents are shown within the nimbus, which, like the vesica, is flame-edged. Here, too, a fortunate chance has preserved the accompanying inscription from effacement. According to M. Petrucci it mentions as the original a silver image preserved in the kingdom of Kapiśa, which corresponds to the region of the present Kābul.[31]
Iconographic indications define four more of the images represented. The figure in the middle of the topmost row shows the statue of a Buddha standing with the right hand raised in the pose of ‘Protection’ and surrounded by an elliptical vesica which is filled with 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 two colossal stucco relievo statues excavated by me in 1901 on the southern corner walls of the great Rawak Vihāra of Khotan.[32] Of these and similar representations on a much smaller scale in Gandhāra relievos M. Foucher has proved that they are meant to exhibit Śākyamuni in the act of performing the Great Miracle of Śrāvastī.[33] In another standing figure, the one on the right of the middle row, the introduction of a pair of gazelles or deer into the ogee top of the vesica proves that an image representing Śākyamuni in the Deer Park of Benares, the scene of the First Sermon, is intended. The richly adorned standing figure of a Bodhisattva in the bottom row, holding the characteristic emblems of the lotus and flask, is certainly an Avalokiteśvara, and the presence by his side of various small attendant figures may yet help to the exact identification of the image intended.
Special iconographic interest attaches to the standing Buddha figure in the right-hand bottom corner of the Plate. Its hieratic pose of peculiar stiffness, the treatment of the drapery and what remains of the background of speckled rocks, leave no doubt as to the identity of the figure with the image of Śākyamuni on the Vulture Peak, which is represented in striking similarity also by the fine painting of Plate [xiii] previously discussed and by the embroidery picture of Plate [xxxiv]. The vulture shown in the former makes it quite certain that the background of all three paintings represents the famous rocky hill near Rājagṛha or Rājgir in Bihār, where ancient tradition localized various episodes of Śākyamuni’s later life. There is no inscription to tell us where the Indian image which all three representations were intended to reproduce was assumed to be. But the absolute identity of the pose, and the extraordinarily close resemblance of all details in the treatment of drapery, hair, dress, &c., prove all three to be replicas from the same model. That this was a sculpture in the Graeco-Buddhist style is obvious at a glance.
The rigid adherence in details to a common original model which is proved in this particular case supports confidence in the general fidelity with which the other figures, too, in our painting may be assumed to reproduce the original images represented. A close parallel is furnished by the miniatures in certain Nepalese manuscripts of the eleventh century which illustrate various sacred images and shrines of Buddhist India. M. Foucher has conclusively proved that their painters, in all that concerns essential points, have always been at pains to reproduce faithfully the stereotyped models furnished by long-continued traditional imagery.[34]
In what form our painter had received the types he thus conventionally reproduced is uncertain. But the clearly preserved Graeco-Buddhist style shows that they were indirectly derived from Gandhāra, and early transmission through Central Asia is obviously most probable. The question may be hazarded whether the votive object aimed at in the painting and its assumed prototype was not that of securing the religious merit which might have attached to an actual pilgrimage to those distant sacred sites. The drawing in mere outlines with little or scarcely any colour, similar to the technique of certain Khotanese mural paintings, and the perished state of whole portions of the silk seem to point to the painting being of early date.