________________
326
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[AUGUST, 1903
ARYA SORA'S JÁTAKAMÂLÂ AND THE FRESCOES OF AJANȚA.
BY HEINRICH LÜDERS, PH.D. Translated from the Nachrichten von der Königl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften C
u Göttingen, Phil.-hist. Kl., 1902, pp. 758 to 762. [The following is a translation of a paper read to the Göttingen Royal Society, 13th December, 1902. As will be seen it is based on a passage in No. 10 of the Miscellaneous publications of the Arehwological Survey of Western India (Bombay, 1881). There, at page 81, a lithograph of tracings of inscriptions in Cave II, is given, and in the text Pandit Bhagwanlal Indraji's readings and remarks on the inscriptions are interspersed with my account of their positions in relation to the accompanying frescoes. The epigraphs are often so faint that it was almost impossible to trace them correctly, and mistakes were almost unavoidable: for example, in the case of No. 7 on the plate (Dr. Lüders's last), the abrasion of the upper left arm of the m left only ch. In other cases mislections seem to have been made in the transcripts, and in the following I shall not follow Dr. Lüders in repeating these and then correcting them by the facsimiles, but substitute at once the readings of the latter in place of the transcriptions, along with his parallel quotations from the Jdtakamdia. The paintings and inscriptions in question are in a small chamber outside and to the left of Oavo II., and unfortunately the former are as much destroyed as the latter, and Mr. Griffiths made no copies of the frescoes in this apartment.-J. BUBGES8.)
The twenty-eighth story of the Jâtakamála, — the Kshantijataka, is a version of the legend of Kshantivadin found in the Pali collection of the Jatakas (No. 813) and in the Mahkvastu (tom. III. p. 857). The contents of the Jataka, according to the representation of Arya-Sûra, are briefly as follows:
The Bodhisattva lived in a forest as a pious hermit. As he was fond of making forbearance the the subject of his discourses, people called him Kshantivadin - the preacher of patience. Now once on a hot summer day the king of the country with his barem were walking in that forest. Becoming tired from the walk and the drinking freely of wine, be lay down to sleep. When the women saw that their lord had fallen asleep, they wandered about at pleasure in the wood and came to the hermitage of Kshantivadin, who at once employed the opportunity to give them an edifying sermon on patience. Meanwhile the king awoke, sought for the women, and when he found them as they were sitting in a circle round the hermit, listening to his discourse, he fell into a terrible rage. The women seek to soothe him, but their pleading is in vain, and filled with fear -- they draw back. Meanwhile Kshậntivadin remains quite calm : he warns the king against too hasty action and advises him to cultivate patience. In fierce wrath the king draws his sword and strikes off the hermit's right hand, but his patience is not disturbed by this; even when the king hacks off one limb after another he has only a feeling of pity for the angry man. The merited panishment overtakes the latter : as he is just abont to leave the wood, the earth opens and swallows him. The people of the country dreaded a like fate for themselves; but Kshậntivâdin calmed their fears and, remaining true to his principles till death, when dying he blessed his murderers.
This story was pictorially represented in the frescoes of a small chamber outside and to the left of Care JI, at Ajanta. In the Inscriptions from the Cape-Temples of Western India, p. 81,9 Bargess says that on the back wall to the right of a door in it, a man is represented seated on stool (Dhadrâsana) in a plain dress indicative of a Sadhu or Brahman; his head is destroyed."
[Kern's edition in Lanman's Harvard Oriental Series, pp. 181-192.-J. B.] .. [The Jataka, od. by E. B. Cowell, Vol. III. pp. 28-29.-J. B.]
• The paintings referred to here are not contained in the fine work by J. Griffiths - The Painting of the Buddhist Cowe-Temples of Ajanta. I have therefore been throughout confined to the publication by Burges and Bhagw&nAl Indraji. - See above.-J. B.)
