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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
PART B those Kinnaras, on either side of the tree, two men of much larger size than the rest of the figures stand, and therefore are certainly meant to be gods. They are represented in the conventional attitude of delight, waving their garments with their right hands and touching their lips with their left hands either in astonishment or to sound a whistle. The building round the Bodhi tree is found once more in a relief on a cross-bar (No. 55) reproduced by Cunningham on Pl. XXXI, 3. It shows three gates which do not appear in our relief, but in other respects it does not differ very much, if it is borne in mind that the roof here is opened, as it were, in order to reveals the tree. Even the pillar with the elephant[1] appears here again[2]. At Sāñchī there is an image of the building resembling even more closely that of the pillar relief on the southern gateway in the scene of Aśoka’s visit to the Bodhi tree. In all these cases the building evidently represents the hypaethral temple erected by Aśoka round the Bodhi tree. This temple, it is true, appears instead of the tree with the plain seat also in a relief on the western gateway at Sāñchī, which clearly illustrates the temptation of the Bodhisattva. Here on one side Māra’s hosts are retreating, while on the other side the gods are celebrating the victory of the Bodhisattva. But in the Bhārhut reliefs there is absolutely nothing to indicate that the sculptors wanted to represent anything but the sanctuary of the Bodhi tree and its worship by divine and human beings. The visit of the holy sites is recommended in the Mahāparinibbānasutta (D. II, 140) as apt to cause religious emotions and a similar effect was apparently expected from looking at their images. The relief is thus an exact counterpart of the two adjoining upper reliefs (Cunningham Pl. XIII, side and inner face) where the parinirvāṇa is alluded to by some Stūpa and the dharmachakrapravartana by the Dharmaśālā of King Prasenajit at Śrāvastī (see B 38, B 39). This is decisive for the interpretation of the inscription. It is impossible for me to follow Bloch l.c. note 1 who translates it ‘the attainment of supreme wisdom by the holy Sākyamuni’. Bodha cannot be used here in the sense of enlightenment, but must denote either the Bodhi tree or the building erected around it. It may be pointed out in favour of the latter alternative that the label is engraved on the roof of the building just as the names of the Sudhammā sabhā (B 21) and the Vejayanta palace (B 22) are written on the roofs of the buildings to which they refer, and secondly that the term used for the tree in Nos. B 14 etc. is bodhi, not bodha.
Sakyamuni is the designation of the Buddha already in the Pāli Canon[3]
and in the
Aśoka inscription on the Rummindēi pillar. The aśvattha tree has been, as far as I know,
everywhere and at all times the acknowledged Bodhi tree of the last Buddha. Bloch’s statement that the author of the Nidānakathā and other Pāli writers call the tree a nigrodha tree
is due to a misunderstanding of J. I, 68 f. The nigrodha tree under which the Bodhisattva
was sitting when Sujātā offered him the milk rice has nothing to do with the Bodhi tree. The
Nidānakathā shares the common view regarding the nature of the Bodhi tree as appears from
such passages as J. I, 15: assattharukkamūle abhisambujjhissati; I, 16; bodhi tassa bhagavato
assattho ti pavuchchati.
[1]Both Cunningham, p. 121, and Anderson, Cat. Vol. I, p. 57, assert that the figure is an elephant.
In the plate it is not quite distinct. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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