North Indian Inscriptions

PART B

by Cunningham, PASB. 1874, p. 112; StBh. (1879), p. 83; 138, No. 89. and Pl. XXVIII and LV; Rhys Davids, Buddhist Birth Stories (1880), p. CIII; Hultzsch, ɀDMG. Vol. XL (1886), p. 71, No. 98, and Pl.; Burgess, ASSI., Vol. I (1887), p. 65, note 3; Hultzsch, IA. Vol. XXI (1892), p. 235, No. 98, Ramaprasad Chanda, MASI. No. I (1919), p. 20, and Pl. V; Barua-Sinha, Bl. (1926), p. 52 f. No. 151 ; Barua, Barh. Vol. II (1934), p. 11 ff., Vol. III (1937), Pl. XXVI (35); Lüders, Bhārh. (1941), p. 45-52.

TEXT
bhagavato ūkraṁti^[1]

TRANSLATION:
The conception of the Holy one.

  In the sculpture Māyā is represented sleeping on her bed. She is lying in full dress on her right side with her right hand under her head. A lamp on an ornamental stand is burning at the foot of the bed, while a water-vessel is placed at the other end. Two women seated on cushions are in attendance, one having a chāmarī, the other raising her hands as if in astonishment. A third women is sitting on the opposite side with her hands joined in the attitude of devotion. In the upper part of the medallion a big six-tusked elephant with an ornamental cloth on the top of his head is seen flying down through the air.

   The question is whether the descent of the Bodhisattva in the shape of an elephant was meant by the artist only as a dream of the mother or as a reality. The legend has been treated in details by Windisch, Buddhas Geburt, p. 153 ff. The texts of the Pāli canon do not yet know it; it is mentioned neither in the Achchhariyabbhutadhammas. of M. (123) nor in the Mahāpadānas. of D. (14). In M. III, 120 it is only said shortly: sato sampajāno Bodhisatto Tusitā kāyā chavitvā mātu kuchchhiṁ okkami, so also in D. II, 12 of Vipassin with the addition: ayam ettha dhammatā. In the original text of Aśvaghosha’s Buddhach. I, 3 the Bodhisattva is clearly indicated as a fruit of the conjugal intercourse of Śuddhodana and Māyā. In the following verse the entering of the elephant is mentioned quite shortly as a dream of Māyā. In the Nidānakathā, J. I. 50, 2 ff. as well, it is only said at first that the Bodhisattva took his rebirth in the womb of the queen. Later on in a sort of appendix the entering of the elephant as a dream is narrated in greater extent than anywhere else. It is peculiar that the description ends with the words: “So he took his rebirth under the constellation Uttarāshāḍhā” (evaṁ uttarāsāṭhanakkhattena paṭisandhiṁ ganhi).

In the story in the Mvu. II, 8, 16 ff. as well as in the identical narration of the conception of the Buddha Dīpaṁkara in I, 205, 2 ff. in general a dream is told, but in the verse I, 207, 8 ff.; II, 11, 19, ff. it is said that the Buddha having taken the form of an elephant,
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^[1]Although the meaning of ūkraṁti is undoubtedly ‘conception’, it is difficult to account for the form of the word. [Cf. above p. VI, §2 (II).] The term used for conception in Mvu., II, 17, 11; Lalitav. 76, 7, is garbhāvakrānti, and avakram is generally used for the Buddha’s entering into the womb of his mother Mvu. II, 8, 19 f.; 9, 6; 20; 10, 6; 11, 21; 12, 2; 6; 16; 20; Lalitav., 55, 5. Hultzsch therefore read okraṁti in the inscription, but the first letter, as he remarks himself, is distinctly ū. Unless we will assume a mistake of the engraver, it will be impossible to trace ūkraṁti back to avakrānti, there being no evidence that ava ever became ū in any dialect. The prefix ū can go back only to upa, as taught by Hemachandra in his grammar I, 173. The examples quoted by him from the Prakrit can be parallelled by forms of ūhad and ūhas in Pāli (Beobachtungen über die Sprache des buddhistischen Urkanons, 1954, §110). I am therefore of opinion that ūkraṁti represents Sk. upakrānti, and in support of this view I may refer to the ancient verse in Mvu., II, 8, 18 and Lalitav., 55, 8, where the ordinary kukshim avakrāntaḥ is replaced by udaram upagataḥ.