North Indian Inscriptions

PART B

further to the right, of which the left part only has been preserved. The relievo depicts a domed hut of the type used by hermits. Behind the dome of the hut the tops of two trees are visible. Judged by some remnants to the right of the hut, it looks as if he hermit had been sitting on a mat before the door of the hut.

   Dr. Kala informs us that Barua was of the opinion that the label on the left is com pleted by the word jātake on the right, and that the inscription should be read as gajajātaka sasajātaka, to be understood like biḍalajataka kukuṭajātaka of B 42, giving two names for the same story. This interpretation raises some difficulties: the Śaśajātaka─the tale of the hare jumping into the burning fire in order to offer his roasted flesh to a hermit─is well known and represented several times in early Indian sculpture^[1]. Dr. Kala himself was able to publish the up now oldest illustration of the Jātaka, found on the fragment of a Bhārhut pillar, recently recovered and at present in the Allahabad Museum^[2]. According to the part of the scenery left in our relieve, it is not impossible, that the panel to the right (labelled jātake) is again illustrating the Śaśajātaka. In this case the word saso would belong to the panel to the right, whereas the relief to the left ought to be a picture of the jātaka of the elephant. An elephant, however, is not to be seen in the relieve, and the animal in the hand of one of the two men in conversation with each other looks similar to the hare in the representation of the Śaśajātaka on the fragment of the pillar published by Dr. Kala. This fact is in favour of looking at the word saso as part of the label of the left panel. As yet we do not see a possibility to solve the problem. The propositions made by Dr. Barua and Dr. Sircar to connect the illustration with Jātaka 345 (gajakumbhajātaka)^[3] or Jātaka 322 (daddabhajātaka) are by no means convincing. There is nothing in the stories which would suit the picture.

B 43 (724); PLATES XIX, XL

    ON a pillar of the South-Eastern quadrant, now in the Indian Museum, Calcutta (M 2). Edited by Cunningham, PASB. 1874, p. 115; StBh. (1879), p. 52; 133, No. 13, and Pl. XXV and LIII; Hultzsch, ɀDMG. Vol. XL (1886), p. 64, No. 32; IA. Vol. XXI (1892), p. 230, No. 32; Barua-Sinha, BI. (1926), p. 85, No. 199; Barua, Barh. Vol. II (1934), p. 112 f., and Vol. III (1937), Pl. LXXIX (107); Lüders, Bhārh. (1941). p. 133. The sculp ture is reproduced in the English translation of the Jātaka by Cowell and others, Vol. II.

TEXT:
nāgajātaka

TRANSLATION:
The Jataka of the elephant.

  With the help of Subhūti, the sculpture to which the label belongs was identified by Cunningham with the Kakkaṭajātaka, No. 267 of the Pāli collection. In that Jātaka the Bodhisattva is a big elephant living with his mate in the Himālaya near a lake infected by
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^[1]For illustrations of the Jātaka in Central-Asian painting see A. von Le Coq(und E. Waldschmidt), Die buddhistische Spatantike, Vol. VI, pp. 57-58.
^[2]BhV. pp. 25 f.
^[3]Referring to Barua’s article in J. U. P. H. S., Vol. XIX, p. 48, Dr Baij Nath Puri of Lucknow University says that the sculpture can only relate to the Gajakumbhajātaka “which describes the pre vious birth of the Buddha as a minister of the King of Benaras who took a tortoise and a hare giving to the slothful king an object lesson of how the indolent came to misery. The tortoise is symbolised by his laziness and the hare by his activity, though the popular version is just the reverse.” [India in the Time of Patanjali, Bombay 1957, p. 233].Unfortunately the hare does not occur in the Pāli text.