North Indian Inscriptions

PART B

of the Stupa of Bharhut (1890), p. 8 ff.; Hultzsch, IA. Vol. XXI (1892), p. 226; 228, No. 12; Barua-Sinha, BI. (1926), p. 91, No. 211; Barua, Barh. Vol. II (1934), p. 135 f., and Vol. III (1937), Pl. II (3) and LXXXIV (125)^[1]; Lüders, Bhārh. (1941), pp. 91-112.

B 52 (769) ; PLATES XX, XLIII

TEXT:
kinarajātakaṁ

TRANSLATION:
The Kinnarajataka.

  The lower half of the sculpture to which the inscription belongs has been broken off, but enough remains to show that it represented a well-dressed man seated in an arm-chair^[2], together with a man and a woman, who by their kilts made of leaves are characterised as kinnaras, standing on his left. Whether the kinnaras have been represented with bird-legs cannot be said as the lower part of the relief is broken away.

   Cunningham, Rhys Davids^[3], and Grünwedel^[4] identified the sculpture with the Chandakinnarajātaka, No. 485 of the Pāli Collection. It is the story of a king who in the Himālaya meets a kinnara couple, falls in love with the kinnarī and shoots her husband, but leaves her, when she, enraged, rejects his love-suit. Sakka, moved by her lamentations, revives the husband.

   Vogel found a representation of the Jātaka in the Gandhāra sculptur^[5] published by Foucher, Mém. conc, l’ Asie Orientale, Tome III, p. 23 f., and Pl. IV, 4; 5. The sculpture follows closely the text as it appears in the Gāthās of the Jātaka. At first (1)^[6] we see the kinnara-couple diverting itself; the man plays the harp, and the woman dances to its music. In the second scene (2) they continue their play, but now they are watched by the king, who is concealed behind a tree. The king rides the horse with the bow at his back. In the next scene (3) we see the king standing behind a rock having the bow bent and aiming at the man who still plays on his harps, while his wife is dancing. A tree separates this picture from the following scene. (4) Here the man, shot to death, lies on the ground and the harp is seen in to take her away. In the next scene (5) he still holds her by the hand. She, enraged, rejects him. The scenes, which may have followed, are lost. The representations on Burmese tiles are more simple. On a tile from the Maṅgalachetiya in Pagan^[7], the archer has just charged the arrow which can be seen flying in the air. The kinnara sits before him, with the arrow in his breast, his lamenting wife at his side. On another tile from the Pagoda of Petleik^[8] three is a man who directs his bent bow against the kinnara standing at the side of
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^[1]Photograph; earlier in Cunningham’s work, only a sketch had been given.
^[2]A man sitting in a similar chair is found in the relief from Gayā in Cunningham’s Mahābodhi, Pl. IV; Barua, Gayā and Buddha-Gayā, Vol. II, fig. 63. Barua, p. 109, has probably rightly seen in this relief the representation of the Sujātaj. (306)
^[3]Buddhist Birth-Stories, Vol. I, p. CII.
^[4]Buddhist. Studien, p. 92.
^[5]it is kept in the Indian Museum, Calcutta, a replica in the British Museum. Jitendra Nath Banerjee, without knowing the article of Foucher, published the relief anew and identified it with the same Jātaka in IHQ. X, p. 344 ff.
^[6]I do not know why Foucher takes the first two scenes in reversed order. The repetition of the kinnara couple thereby becomes ununderstandable and the succession of the whole frieze is disturbed.
^[7]Grünwedel, Buddh. Studien, fig. 69; Foucher, l.c. p. 32, fig. 5 a.
^[8]Foucher, l. c. Pl. IV, 6.