North Indian Inscriptions

PART B

No. 186; Barua, Barh, Vol. II (1934), p. 73 f. and Vol. III (1937), Pl. LXV (78); Lüders, Bhārh. (1941) p. 16 ff.

TEXT:
Sirima devata

TRANSLATION:
The goddess Sirimā (Śrimati).

  The goddess is represented standing on a rail like the Yakha Suchiloma (B 9) represented on the opposite side of the pillar. The artist did not, as usual with other deities, characterize both these figures by a vāhana. The goddess carries in her right hand, which is damaged, the same object, probably a chāmarī, as the goddess figured in the centre of Cunningham’s Pl. XXI.

   Amidst the solitary figures at Bhārhut some smaller deities are found the names of which occur in the canonical literature, and which therefore have their proper home probably in Eastern India. So our goddess as also the Yakha Suchiloma (B 9) are probably figures from the old Buddhist literature. Sirimā as a woman’s name occurs in the Nidānakathā (J. I, 34, 26; 41, 3), and also in the donor inscription No. A 48. It is the feminine form of Sirima which appears as the name of a man above in No. A 110. It corresponds to P. Sirimatī, Sk. Śrīmatī as remarked long ago by Hultzsch. In the Vv. I, 16, we are told that there was a beautiful courtesan at Rājagaha, called Sirimā, who on account of her devotion to the Buddha was reborn as a goddess.^[1] But the Sirimā represented on the Bhārhut pillar shares probably only the name with this goddess. In the Mvu. and in the Lalitav. there is a travelling-benediction pronounced by the Buddha for the merchants Trapusha and Bhallika. The text, preserved in two only slightly different versions, contains a list of divine maids (devakumārikā) who, in groups of eight, guard the four quarters. The first two guardians of the Western region are called Lakshmīvatī and Śrīmatī in the Mvu. (III, 307, 8), and Śriyāmatī and Yaśamatī in the Lalitav. (389, 7), where Śriyāmatī is only an attempt to sanskritise Sirimatī in accordance with the metre. This devakumārikā Sirimatī,^[2] having her seat in the West, is undoubtedly identical with our Sirimā devatā and her statue has probably been, not without reason, assigned to a pillar of the South-West quadrant to protect that side of the Stūpa. Of course she too has nothing to do with the deity Śri (Siri). Siri appears in the Jātakas in allegorical poems as personification of good luck, thus in the Sirikālakaṇṇij. (382) by the side of Kālī, the personification of bad luck. Here she is the daughter of Dhataraṭṭha, the regent of the East, whereas the father of Kālī, Virūpakkha, is the regent of the West. In the Sudhābhojanaj. (535) Siri, Good Luck, Āsā, Hope, Saddhā, Devotion, and Hirī, Modesty, are the daughters of Sakka. They show themselves in different directions, and here also (G. 44) the East is assigned to Siri.

   It is completely false when Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, p. 217, compares the Sirimā of Bhārhut with the Diana of Ephesus for he sees a token of fertility in her developed breasts. If the artist gave well-developed breasts, thin waist, and broad hips to the statue, he did not give them as special tokens of fertility, but he intended only to accomplish the ideal of the female body as it has been described to us again and again in Indian poetry.^[3]
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^[1]Her story is told at length in DhA., Vol. III, p. 104 ff. and VvA., p. 74 ff., and alluded to in Mil., p. 350.
^[2]In Mahābh., 9, 2621 Śrīmatī appears among the Mothers in the retinue of Skanda.
^[3]e.g. Kāvyādarśa 1, 87, 91; 2,218.