North Indian Inscriptions

PART B

Pl. XLVI and LIII; Hoernle, IA. Vol. X (1881), p. 119, No. 4; Hultzsch, ɀDMG. Vol. XL (1886), p. 62, No. 15, and Pl; IA. Vol. XXI (1892), p. 228, No. 15; Barua-Sinha, BI. (1926), p. 83 f., No. 196; Barua, Bharh. Vol. II (1934), p. 100 f., and Vol. III (1937), Pl., LXXVI (99); Lüders, Bhārh. (1941), p. 151 f., 174.

   TEXT:
sechhajataka

TRANSLATION:
The Jātaka of the student.

    The sculpture to which the label belongs was identified by Rhys Davids with the Dūbhiyamakkaṭajātaka, No. 174 of the Pāli Jātaka book; see Buddhist Birth Stories, Vol. I, p. CII. In the Jātaka the Bodhisattva is a brahmin in a village of Kāsī. One day, wandering along a road, he comes to a place where a trough is put up which people use to fill with water from a deep well in the neighbourhood for the use of animals. The brahmin draws water for himself, drinks it and washes his hands and feet, when a monkey approaches him begging for water. The brahmin fills the empty trough and gives the monkey to drink and then lies down under a tree to take rest. When the monkey has quenched his thirst, he pulls a monkey-grimace to frighten his benefactor, and when the Bodhisattva upbraids him, he soils him. The sculpture undoubtedly represents the Jātaka, but it differs from it in details. On the left side stands a young man wearing plain dress and his hair cropped with the exception of a knot over the forehead. He is pouring out water into the hands of a monkey from a vessel, while a similar vessel, apparently wrapped round with cords, stands in front of him. On the right the same man is represented carrying a pole (vihaṅgikā) with two water-vessels under a tree on which a monkey is seated, maliciously looking down on the man. In the outermost .right corner is another tree.

   The sculpture clearly represents two stages of the story, on the left the gift of water to the monkey, on the right the mocking of the monkey. It is of little consequence that in the relief there is no well from which the man has drawn the water and that he is not lying under the tree, when the monkey makes faces at him. The version of the story followed by the sculptor apparently related that the man was fetching water, when he met the thirsty monkey on the road, and that , after having given him something to drink, he was derided by the monkey, when he continued his way. On the other hand, it is of importance for the interpretation of the inscription that, judging from his dress, the man represented in the sculpture cannot be meant to be a brahmin. Nor does he look like an ascetic. He has the appearance of a bramachārin who, according to Manu (2, 219; 193; 182) and other law-books, may wear his hair clipped with the exception of a lock, has always to keep his right arm uncovered, and whose duty it is to fetch pots full of water daily for his guru. In the label he is called sechha^[1] Barua-Sinha’s derivation of the word from siñchati in the sense of water-drawing is absolutely impossible, and Hoernle was certainly right in taking it as equivalent to Pāli sekha, sechha being the true western form for the sekha of the eastern dialect. In the language of the Buddhist scriptures sekha has assumed a special meaning. It denotes a monk as long as he has not acquired arhatship, but it cannot have been used in this sense in the inscription, as the person represented in the sculpture is not a Buddhist monk. In Sanskrit śaiksha occurs only in the Kośas. It is said there to mean a tyro who has just begun his studies
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^[1]In the Sāñchī inscription (List No. 570) the corresponding word for ‘student’ occurs in the form sejha.