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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
PART B like a while cloud, entered the womb of his mother: pāṇḍaravarāhakanibho bhavitva gajarūpi shaḍḍanto…. mātuḥ kukshismiṁ okrānto. In the following verse I, 207, II f.; II, 12, I f. the queen narrates this to her husband as a fact (rājavara pāṇḍaro me gajarājā kukshim okrānto), but immediately afterwards the king speaks to the astrologers of a dream (supinasmiṁ asya sarve bhaṇātha bhūtaṁ phalavipākaṁ). As an actual event, the entering of the elephant in the womb of the mother is furthermore spoken of in the praise song of Nāmatideva in I, 98, 12: Māyāyā devyāḥ kukshismiṁ praviśishu sa kumudasadṛiśo varo gajarūpavāṁ, as well as in the Gāthā II, 298, 6: Tushite bhavane divya otaritvā himasamo nāga bhavitva shaḍvishāṇo rājño agramahishīṁ pravishṭo kukshiṁ tato trisāhasra prakampe lokadhatu Windisch thought it possible to add to these passages another one. In Mvu. 11, 8, 16 f. it is said of the dream of Maya:
atha supinaṁ jananī jinasya tasmiṁ kshaṇe paśyati varavipākaphalaṁ||
The stanza occurs again in the Lalitav. 55, 6 ff. Mayadevisukhaśayanaprasuptā imaṁ svapnam apaśyat | himarajatanibhaś cha Shaḍvishāṇaḥ sucharaṇachārubhujaḥ suraktaśīrshaḥ | udaram upagato gajapradhāo lalitagatir dṛiḍhavajragātrasandhiḥ[1] ||
The Lalitav. account is similar in general to that of the Mvu. The vision of the elephant
is taken as a dream. But in the introductory sentence (55, 3) the remark is found that the
Boddhisattva entered the womb of the mother as a young white elephant (pāṇḍuro gajapato
bhūtvā). As Windisch mentions, this is hinted at already in the Prachalaparivarta 39, 6 ff.
There the Boddhisattva in the Tushita heaven asks the assembly of gods in which form he should
enter the mother’s womb. The gods make different propositions, and afterwards Ugratejas,
a Brahmakāyika god, decides the question with the statement that according to the texts of
the Brahmins a Bodhisattva has to enter the womb of the mother in the form of a great
elephant with six tusks. That the artist of Bhārhut took the matter as a real occurrence is
shown by the inscription according to which, the arriving or, if we take ūkraṁti as a mistake
for okraṁti, the descent of the Bodhisattva is represented in the sculpture. The reality of the
elephant is also hinted at by the gesture of one of the female attendants sitting in front of the
couch. Her raised hands can scarcely be interpreted otherwise than as an expression of
astonishment at the miracles[2]. One could object against this view by saying that in the old [1]This stanza, apparently old as is shown by the tradition in the texts of two different schools, has been used by the poet of another verse in which the queen narrates her dream (Lalitav. 56, 14 ff.; 57, 11 ff.):
The stanza in Pushpitāgrā metre together with the introductory remark reappears also in the
story of Dīpaṁkara’s conception, Mvu. I,205,2 ff.; here, however, with the variant se=aśyāḥ for vs.
and Windisch wished to conclude therefrom that we have originally in the stanza not the words of
Māyā, but a story, that means the historification of the dream. But se does not stand in the manuscripts. It has been added to the text by Senart as expressly stated by him on p.537. So it is nothing
else than a false conjecture for me as we can now state on account of mama in the recast stanza of the Lalitav. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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