North Indian Inscriptions

PART B

the man by the deity residing in the jambū tree. Another man is walking away carrying a small vessel which he apparently has filled at the tree. According to Anderson, Cat. Vol. I, p. 97, there is on the right a block of stone exactly like those of the relief described under No. B 73.

   The same scene, with slight modifications, occurs in a relief at Buddha-Gayā reproduced in Cunningham’s Mahābodhi, Plate VIII, No. 4. Here the man who receives the water of donation and the bowl with food from the tree-spirit is standing by the side of a māṛhā and a bench, and the man walking off is missing, but the block of stone appears here also in the background. Bloch^[1] referred the scene of the Buddha-Gayā sculpture to the feeding of the Bodhisattva by Sujātā. I am unable to discover the slightest resemblance between the relief and that story^[2].

    Barua-Sinha translate jabū by ‘ the rose-apple trees ’, which is not in keeping with the sculpture where only a single tree is represented. But I see no reason why jabū should be taken as a plural form, jambū being the regular nom. sing. of the feminine base, both in Pāli^[3] and Prakrit. I quite agree with Barua-Sinha in rejecting Hoernle’s suggestion that the jambū tree of the relief is the tree on Mount Meru from which Jambudvīpa derives its name.

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On the other hand I fail to see how it should possibly be connected with the jambū trees mentioned among other trees in Gāthā 584 of the Vessantarajātaka or with the Sambulajātaka (519), as suggested by those two scholars. R P. Chanda^[4] and Coomaraswamy^[5] see in the relief the representation of a legend narrated in the DhA. I, 203 ff. There we are told that five hundred ascetics on their way from the Himālaya to Kosambī come to a great nyagrodha tree in a forest. The goddess of the tree gives them food and water to drink and to bathe. At the request of the oldest of the group of ascetics she comes out of the tree and informs the ascetics that she had gained great power for having fasted unto death in a former life as a workmaid of Anāthapiṇḍika. Now the relief corresponds to the story as far as the miraculous feeding by the tree-goddess is concerned. But I am very doubtful whether just this story is illustrated. The tree in the relief is a jambū tree, in the story, however, it is a nyagrodha. That speaks against the identification, as well as the circumstance that the men being fed and offered a drink in the relief are not ascetics. Hoernle’s^[6] explanation of the Bhārhut relief is quite mistaken, and Barua himself withdrew the curious explanation he gave (BI. p. 97 f. and Barh. II, p. 162 ff.) later on in Barh. III, p. 4.^[7] The story of the jambū tree represented in the relief is one of the Naḍoda legends which have not yet been discovered in literary sources; cf. the remarks on No. B 73.

B 75 (711 AND 901) ; PLATE XXIII

FRAGMENTARY inscription on a coping-stone, now lost. Edited by Cunningham, StBh. (1879), p. 131, No. 22, and Pl. LIII. The inscription appears to be identical with the fragment published by Cunningham, ibid. p. 143, No. 18, and Pl. LVI. It was edited again by Barua-Sinha, BI. (1926), p. 86, No. 201 ; Barua, Barh. Vol. II (1934), p. 115; Lüders, Bhārh. (1941), p. 89 f.
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^[1]ASIAR. 1908-09, p. 143 f.
^[2]Bloch’s statements are wrong in details. Sujātā feeds the Bodhisattva after he gave up the penance and not the Buddha after he gained the Bodhi.
^[3]Kachchāyana 2, 1, 34.
^[4]MASI. No. 30, p. 5 ff.
^[5]JRAS. 1928, p. 393.
^[6]IA. X, p. 121.
^[7]Regarding the label Barua-Sinha say that all former editors read jabu. The right reading jabū however has already been given by Hultzsch, ɀDMG. XL, p. 62 and in my List No. 708.