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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
PART B his wife. From the heaven Sakka descends to make good the calamity brought about by the man. Warren[1] rejected, in my opinion rightly, the identification of the relief from Bhārhut with the Chandakinnaraj. mentioned above, as there does not exist the slightest similarity between the two. In the Jātaka, the king shoots the kinnara in a mountain range or in a forest; here, however, the kinnara and his wife stand in front of the king who sits comfortably in an arm-chair. Warren himself wanted to explain the relief as a representation of the Bhallāṭiyajātaka (504). The Bhallāṭiyaj., different from the bulk of the Jātakas, is a complete, small epic poem which in its prose does not offer anything beyond the statements about the persons engaged in dialogue, exactly as it happens in the Mahābhārata. The contents are as follows:- Bhallaṭiya, king of Benares, sees, when hunting on the Gandhamādana mountain, a kinnara couple, which embraces each other weeping and lamenting. On his question the kinnarī tells him as the cause of their grief that they had been separated for one night by a swollen river 697 years ago. This moving story is inserted into another one, which is narrated by a person called samaṇa, as becomes clear from the last three Gāthās. This samaṇa adds the admonition, apparently addressed to a married couple, to avoid quarrel and fight. He therefore receives the thanks of one of them, whether of the husband or of the wife cannot be decided from the Gāthās. According to the prose narration the samaṇa is the Buddha himself who, with the help of the story, reconciled king Pasenadi and his wife Mallikā after they have had a matrimonial quarrel. Later on the queen expressed her thanks to him.
Oldenberg[2], though hesitatingly, followed the identification of Warren. Foucher also first joined him and explained as Bhallāṭiyajātaka[3] two reliefs from the Boro-Budur, where a king is depicted in a scenery of rocks having a conversation with a kinnara couple, whereas Grünwedel, l.c., considered the same as representing the Chandakinnarajātaka. Since the Gandhāra frieze mentioned above was discovered, Foucher became inclined to the view that in Bhārhut as well as on the Boro-Budur the Chandakinnarajātaka was depicted: ‘si grande est la routine de l’art bouddhique’[4]. I cannot believe in the correctness of this view. The oldest illustration of the Chandakinnarajātaka is given in the Gandhāra frieze. If this was the traditional one, then we should expect that the representations in Bhārhut and on the Boro-Budur were similar to it, but this is not the case and it does not convince me that the Javanese artist should have suppressed the essential episode, the murder of the kinnara, as violating the sentiment, and that he should have depicted instead of it the king in conversation with the kinnara couple, although the story does not give any occasion for such a talk. The attitude of the figure ─the kinnara-couple speaking, the king worshipping the two with hands joined together─seems to me to speak decisively in favour of the interpretation of the Javanese reliefs as Bhallāṭiyajātaka.
On the other hand I agree with Hultzsch who opposed the identification of the
Bhārhut relief not only with the Chandakinnarajātaka but also with the Bhallāṭiyajātaka,
for the reason that the king sitting in his arm-chair can impossibly represent the king hunting
in the mountains as told in the Bhallāṭyajātaka. Foucher as well declares, that this reason
[1]Warren, Two Bas-Reliefs of the Stupa of Bharhut, p. 8 ff. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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