Part 2 - Synoptic Narrative Mode

In the Synoptic mode, multiple scenes from a story are shown within a single frame. There have no indicating any chronological sequence of the story. And there is no consistent order of representation with regard to either temporality or causality. The protagonist tends to repeat in all episodes. Almost all stories are depicted within a limited space of a roundel or a rectangular tablet. Stories are shown either as large panels or as part of a pillar. But the sequence in the story can be confusing unless we know the story very well. Then we can relate to the episodes.

8) Synoptic narrative, Mahākapi Jātaka (No.407)^[1], Sāñcī stūpa. (photo: ASI)

‘Five episodes from the Mahākapi Jātaka (tale of Monkey) are depicted within a rectangular panel from the Sāñcī stūpa. The viewer's attention is likely to be caught by the river that curves across the panel, the six prominent fore-ground figures, and perhaps by the monkey straddling the panel at the very top. However, even the knowing viewer must closely scrutinize the panel to "read" the story accurately, and to realize that the foreground figures are of little relevance to the action, or that the entire section to the far side of the river is marginal to the tale. To the lower left, behind a group of soldiers and musicians, a monarch is seen arriving on horseback. Roughly at the center of the panel is the half-hidden figure of an archer, bending back-wards as he aims his arrow directly upward. If we realize the importance of the archer and follow the upward movement of his bow, we see a monkey who has stretched him-self out to form a bridge across the river below, and we surmise that his monkey friends are escaping from the archer to the safety of a tree on the opposite bank where deer slumber in a quiet forest. Below the monkey, two men hold a piece of cloth as a stretcher, and to the upper left of the panel are the seated figures of the monkey and the monarch. Further analysis will make it evident that the river meandering across the panel creates a distinction between the area where all the activity takes place and a distant safe environment. The artist has left much unsaid and given prominence to subsidiary figures, so that even those familiar with the Buddha's previous life as the monkey-king will find it difficult to read this narrative correctly. They will need to supply more than one key element of the story, including the fact that the arch-enemy monkey jumped so heavily upon the monkey-king's back while escaping across the river that the monkey-king was mortally wounded and fell into the river. Viewers will need to supply the human monarch's admiration of the scene he has witnessed, understand the reason for the stretcher, and view the last episode as the monkey-king preaching to the monarch on the vital importance of attending, at any cost, to the welfare of his people. It is this virtue that the story exemplifies, and of which the viewer has to remind himself while stringing the episodes together. While the artist has undoubtedly supplied clues to reading the elements in some order, and while a certain structure appears to underlie that order, the viewer is able to "read" the tale in a coherent manner only after a recapitulation such as that presented above.’^[2]

Pictures of Synoptic Narrative Mode^[3]

9) Synoptic narrative, Chaddanta Jātaka (No. 514), Amarāvatī, 2nd century C.E. (photo: ASI)

Footnotes and references:

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[1]:

Ibid.

[2]:

Ibid., p.382f.

[3]:

Ibid., p.384.