Part 7 - The Buddha’s life and legend represented in Sārnāth art

Beginning of the Sārnāth monastic site may be attributed to Aśoka because the earliest antiquity of Sārnāth belonged to this period. The main Aśokan memorial at Sārnāth was the column made out of a single sandstone block of Chunar stone bearing the lion capital at the top. It was discovered to the west of the main shrine by F.O. Oertel in in 1904, under the supervision of the Archaeological Survey of India.^[1] Its original height was forty six feet. Aśoka, as a pious Buddhist erected several other pillars in front of some other stūpas. The lion capital of Sārnāth was unique and found nowhere else. The lion capital would appear to the lay man as bearing no relation to the Buddha, yet how subtly it represented the Buddha and his dhamma by pure symbolism is really well conceived and implemented by the genius of Aśoka. Above the lion capital there happened to be a wheel with thirty two spokes, now broken into pieces.

The common explanation of the capital is the dharmacakra or the wheel of law that the Buddha set on turning at Sārnāth and four lions stood for the Buddha or Śākyasimha in four directions.^[2] In the capital there are four lions seated back to back on an abacus. The abacus has four wheels with twenty four spokes and a moving animal in a clockwise direction between two wheels. The symbolism of this lion capital has been interpreted differently. Initially the four animals were thought to represent four great events of the Buddha’s life. The elephant signifies the conception of the Buddha to his mother’s womb. The bull stands for his zodiac sign taurus. The galloping horse means his renunciation of the world for the quest of truth. The last animal lion is the Buddha himself as he was often referred as the Śākyasimha. But later they were identified as the Mahā-Ājaneyapaśus. S. P. Gupta proposes that the lion capital of Sārnāth represented the chariot of the sun god. The four animals draw the chariot of the sun god. Alternatively these four animals represented four directions. Drawing parallels from various other sources, most scholars believe that the lion capital represents the solar theme. Being aware of the growing dissension of the order Aśoka wanted to check this tendency by his authority. He chose this symbol carefully to draw parallel about the eternal nature of the Buddhist truths with the eternity of the sun. At the shaft of this pillar he engraved his edict to warn the order to go against the eternal doctrines of Buddhism and to create division. Those four animals are related to the sun and also represented four great incidents of the Buddha’s life.

Thirty two spokes of the sun mean signs of super human being (Mahāpuruṣa Lakṣaṇa). As a whole the lion capital represented the Buddha and His doctrines or dhamma. Here the sun only stood as a symbol of the eternal nature of the dhamma. The inverted bell on which stands the abacus of the lions was identified as lotus with sixteen petals instead of a bell. The lotus probably originating from the octagonal diagram of the sacrificial altar was a popular religious symbol of the Vedic Brahmanism.it was associated with meditation in general. The Buddha, during his meditation sat in a posture that resembled the open lotus. Also, the lotus symbolised the conception of the Buddha to his mother’s womb.^[3] In any case the lotus is a very holy sign and associated in some way or the other with the Buddha. From all considerations the Sārnāth capital was an intellectual conceptualisation of the Buddha and his first sermon by a great king. Aśoka being an ardent preacher of Buddhism placed his whole message in a very restrained and symbolic way, suiting his ingenuity.^[4]

The Aśokan symbolism continued in the Sārnāth art though in a different form. A capital of a pillar of 1^st century BCE carved on the sides with Perso-Ionic volutes and with a palmette background. A prancing horse with a rider and an elephant with a mahut were carved. Presence of riders in these two animals makes it less restrained and hence inferior in art form. Fragment of a toraṇa lintel of the Kuṣāṇa period carved the regular Buddhist symbols of an elephant with a coiled tail, wheel (dharmacakra) etc. so the major incidents of the Buddha’s life now entered into the sculptural pieces. Rāmagrāma stūpa guarded by snakes that prevented emperor Aśoka from taking the Buddha’s relics from the shrine also finds place in this reliefs. Not only the incidents of the life of the Buddha but events like Aśoka’s exploration of an important Buddhist shrine made legendary by these artistic ventures.

Other than this class of reliefs, statues of the Buddha in different forms started coming from the Kuṣāṇa period. One such sculptural piece was a colossal statue of the Buddha dedicated by a sage Bala. The statue is of the time before the Buddha attained enlightenment. The statue has an inscription which reveals that in the 22^nd day of winter, in the 3^rdregnal year of Kaṇiṣka, the sage Bala erected this image of Puṣyabuddhi (an image of Bodhisattva) at Vārāṇasī, where once the Buddha walked. The place was held so sacred by the pious Buddhists that a memorial was put into the place. So it was not always the kings but the wealthy and devoted patrons of Buddhism held all the places related to the Buddha in such high esteem that a memorial of some kind was built there. The Buddha in diverse ways, events of his life and other important events all were incorporated in artistic activities.

By the Gupta time while on the one hand artistic refinement reached its height, regular representation of the Buddhist symbols were freely used to make it more implicative and appealing to the laity on the other. A Buddha image in a cross-legged position of the 6^th-7^th centuries CE corresponding to the late Gupta period depicts the enlightenment scene of the Buddha. The Buddha is sitting under the Bodhi tree. Above him, someone from the sky was showering flowers on him while the earth goddess with a vase responds to his call from the beneath of his right hand. A lion from a cave behind can be seen here. Probably it represents the forest of Uruvela where the Master received Bodhi. This gift was made by Budhagupta.

Another well preserved and relevant stele of the Gupta period depicts the four prime events of the Buddha’s life. Fanciful imageries are mixed with actual events to make it more fantastic and sublime. The first scene is of the birth of the Buddha. His mother Māyadevī stood under a Śāla tree. The child Buddha received his first bath from the two Nāga kings-Nanda and Upananda. The second scene is that of his enlightenment at Bodhgaya. He is seated under the Bodhi tree in an earth touching posture. The third one is the scene where he preaches his first sermon with the usual wheel and deer symbols. Lastly the nirvāṇa scene with bereaved figures, some of them showered flowers on him. By this time symbols as well as actual events started to be carved. Other than these some other anecdotes were also depicted in the stele. Honey was presented to the Buddha by a monkey at a forest of Kauśāmbī and it committed suicide and became a celestial being. This was carved just beside the birth scene. The scene how the Buddha tames the mad elephant Nalagiri at Rājagṛha or the event when his six rival leaders of heretical sects and king Pasenadi of Kośala submitted to the superiority of the Buddha’s faith were all depicted by the Gupta craftsmen. These places were frequently visited by the Buddha. Some of the real events mixed with anecdotes and legend available in the Buddhist oral and monastic traditions were borrowed in abundance to make it more lively and appreciable for the ordinary viewers so that a greater degree of reverence and admiration can be evoked in their hearts.

Realism mixed with fantasy makes the Buddha and his life, the places of his activities as central and special to the Buddhist world. Depiction of the Buddha and related events in the sculptural pieces left a visual effect on the audience. This experience mixed with the anecdote of the Buddha magnified his persona as a super human being in the eyes of the people. The element of overstatement and fancy was always present in early Buddhism. For example the Buddha’s attainment of enlightenment was described as the unique event in human history. As a matter of fact the concept of nirvāṇa was taken from the Upaniṣads. The faithful lay community that the early Buddhism could win was of particular help to create a hyperbole of Buddhism. This element made him a legend in the public eye. Sārnāth being a place of a prime event related to the Buddhism was also was also incorporated in the legend. So the scene of his first sermon frequently finds place in the art work.

What acquired a wonderful fame because of being the first place to receive the Buddha’s First Sermon, grew as a large monastic site with full lay sponsorship. The laity of early Buddhism ranged from individuals of various social rank and prosperity, to corporate bodies like guilds, residents of a village or town and local kings to the emperors like Aśokaor Kuṣāṇa monarchs. We may take a look at the archaeological lay out of the site and related antiquities to trace the growth and final form of the monastic institution.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Excavations at Sārnāth, ARASI 1904-05, p. 68.

[2]:

B.R. Mani, Sarnath, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, New Delhi, Archaeological Survey of India, 2012, p.59.

[3]:

B. Majumdar, A Guide to Sarnath,Delhi,Printed in India for the Manager of publications, By the Manager, Government of India press, 1947, pp.46-7.

[4]:

Lalit Kumar, Symbolism of the Lion Capital of Sarnath (The National emblem of India) in Rakesh Tiwari ed., Prāgdhārā, Journal of U.P. State Archaeology Department, no.10, 1999- 2000, Lucknow, 2000, pp.251-55.