Life of Buddha in Indian Sculpture (Astha-Maha-Pratiharya) An Old and Rare Book

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Dr. Ratan Parimoo is a Professor of Art History at the M.S. University of Baroda. He is also a painter and has worked as the Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts during the years 1975- 1981. He has been teaching History of Art and Aesthetics since 1959, and was appointed Head of the Department of Art History in 1966. He studied History of Art at the London University on Commonwealth Scholarship when he widely travelled in Europe. He was deputed to visit the USSR under the Indo-Soviet Cultural Programme and he received a Rockefeller Grant to travel in the U.S.A. He was invited to participate in the 23rd World Congress of the International Society for Education Through Art, held in Australia. He is the author of the book "The Paintings of the Three Tagores- Abanindranath, Gagaenedranath and Rabindranath", for which he earned the doctorate degree. This was followed by 'Studies in Modern Indian Art' and 'A New Light on the Sculptures of Elephanta. He organised and edited the Proceedings of UGC Workshop in History of Art. He has been contributing research papers both on the contemporary and the traditional arts Currently he is working on a project dealing with Vaishavna themes in Indian painting and sculpture. He was born in Srinager in 1936.

This study of the relief sculptures depicting the life of the Buddha has grown out of my teaching courses in art historical methodology and textual sources of Indian art, during the last few years at the Baroda University. Some of the ideas in their initial stages were presented in a Seminar on Pala and Sena Art at the Calcutta University during 1978 and in 1979 in a lecture at the School of Studies in Ancient Indian History and Culture of the Jiwaji University, Gwalior. Invitation to a seminar at the Department of Fine Arts of the Punjab University (1980) and during January 1981, the invitation to deliver the Dr. Radhakamal Mukherji Memorial Lecture Series of the U.P. State Lalit Kala Akademi at Lucknow, provided the opportunities to expand the material and to have a feedback. I am thankful to the respective heads of institutions for the valued encouragement, namely Prof. B.N Mukherji, Prof. R.N. Misra, Prof. B N. Goswami and Shri O.P. Agrawala. An earlier version of the typed script had been read by Shri C. Sivaramamurti, whose affirmative opinion impelled me to prepare the material for publication. The final text has had the previlege of being scrutinized by Dr. Grace Morley, to whom I am grateful for sparing the necessary time. Help was also rendered by my colleague Shri Deepak Kannal and two of my research assistants, Shri Shailendra Khushwaha and Shri. Shivaji Panikar, and the young photographer Shri Himanshu Pahad. Shri Jaidev Jani assisted me with the Sanskrit texts. The publisher Shri Jayant Baxi, deserves special thanks for undertaking to see it through the press.

For helping me in my frantic search for the necessary photographs, I also wish to thank the Directors and Curators of the National Museum, New Delhi, Govt. Museum, Mathura; Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh; State Museum, Lucknow, Indian Museum, Calcutta; Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta; Patna Museum, Patna; Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay; the British Museum, London; and of course the Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi. I have special gratitude to Shri M.A. Dhaky and Shri V.R. Nambiar of the American Institute of Indian Stidies, Varanasi.

Many events from the life of the Buddha have been depict- ed in sculptures and monuments by Indian artists during the span of more than a thousand years from the Shunga to the Pala dynasties. Episodes of the Buddha's life not only continued to fascinate artists but also retained their popularity with devotees as well as the masses. The episodes inspired some of the greatest relief compositions in Indian art and are to be counted among the world's outstanding narrative sculptures. These relief compositions constitute a veritable biography of the Buddha, depicting his spiritual journey from his sheltered life of worldly pleasures and temptations as a young prince to his attainment of the highest knowledge through meditation, eventually to reach the state of final extinction (i.e., parinir- тала).

It is not intended in these pages to cover the entire gamut of events of the Buddha's life, but only to consider the major eight episodes as they became crystalized over the centuries. These ashta-maha-pratiharya have been frequently represented in single sculptural reliefs (also called stelae) during the Pala period, dating from the nineth to the twelfth centuries in eastern India. Generally, such a relief consists of a dominant image of the Buddha in the bhumisparsha mudra, signifying the Enlightenment, and occupying its central portion. He is seated on a high throne (simhasana), surrounded by representations of seven other episodes from his life, beginning from his birth, shown on the lower left or right, to the final episode, the Mahaparinirvana (see the fronticepiece).