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Lord Mahâvîra
spiritual power, to transport an artist to the heavenly mansions to observe the excellent marks of Buddha's body, and carve a sandalwood statue. When Tathagata returned from the heavenly palace, the carved figure of sandalwood rose and saluted the Lord of the World. The Lord then graciously addressed it and said, 'The work expected from you is to toil in the conversion of heretics, and to lead in the way of religion future ages.'
But Fa-Hien, who visited India in C. 400 A.D. gives a similar account, but here the image is reported to have been installed at Sravasti rather than at Kausambi. He writes: " ...we arrive at the country of Kiu-sa-lo (Kosala) and its chief town She we (Sravasti). There are very few inhabitants in this city which king Prasenajit governed...When Buddha ascended into the Trayastrimsas heavens to preach for the sake of his mother, after ninety days' absence. King Prasenajit, desiring to see him again, carved out of the sandalwood called Gosirsacandana an image of the Buddha and placed it on Buddha's throne. When Buddha returned and entered the vihara, the image, immediately quitting its place, went forward to meet him. On this Buddha addressed these words to it: Return, I pray you to Your seat. After my Nirvana you will be the model from which my followers (four schools or classes) shall carve their images-This image, as it was the very first made of all the figures of Buddha, is the one which all subsequent ages have followed as a model..."
The account further shows that the image was installed in the famous Jetavanavihara and that once in a fire-accident all the seven storeys of the vihara were destroyed but the sandalwood image was miraculously saved. But the importance of this account lies in the fact that as early as the beginning of the fifth century A.D., there was current a tradition of a life-time sandalwood image of Buddha, and that this image was supposed to have been the model for all later images of Buddha.
We are thus faced with two similar traditions, one Jaina and the other Buddhist. Both suggest the same fact of the existence of a sandalwood image of the leader of each of the two sects, carved in his lifetime, in the fifth or the sixth century B.C. At least one of the two traditions must be correct and reliable, even if one of the two sects burrowed from the other.
It may be remembered that the Jaina account is more reliable
