Mahavira and his Teaching

Author(s): C C Shah, Rishabhdas Ranka, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: Bhagwan Mahavir 2500th Nirvan Mahotsava Samiti

Page 475

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ANAND KRISHNA
Some years back I discovered an incised drawing on a pair of stone sculptures now in the Indian Museum collection (acc. nos. R. 4.1. and 24.214) Calcutta, (figs. 1 and 2; and text figures. ...A-H). These show two sculptured effigies of the Buddha's Foot Prints in dark coloured Gayā stone, over a hemispherical base. According to the information supplied by the Indian Museum, these were collected from Bodh Gayā. From stylistic angles, we may date them in the eleventh century A.D.1 The sculptured "Foot Prints of Buddha" bear the auspicious marks, as signs of his super-human (maha-puruṣa) character and in the present instances have been depicted by means of incised fine drawings. Thus, although a part of the sculpture, for all practical purposes, they can be discussed here, as pictorial representations. It is interesting to find that the artist has actually used pictorial traditions in these representations; for example, we find in them, linear and two dimensional treatments.
The drawings show a number of symbols: a man blowing a conch shell, streamers supported by a pot, a shrine, a tray of sweet-balls, a cakra, peacock over a hill and flanked by hassas etc. (fig. 1, text figs. A-E). The second sculpture shows other symbols in incised drawings: fire altar attended by a cowrie bearer couple, water vessel over a wicker stool, wheel, an unidentified symbol, radiate Sun etc. (fig. 2, text figs. F-H). The drawings share characteristics with the W. Indian (Apabhramsa) illustrations, which can be seen in the linear treatments, jerky movements, conventionalised decorativism and so on. The serrated edges of the flames (text fig. F), the curving peaks of the hill (text fig. D), the fluttering streamers (text fig. A) can be cited as apt examples for the above. But the most interesting instances
Anyway they should be earlier than the twelfth-thirteenth centuries as the quality sculpture at Gayā practically stopped after the first Muslim invasion in the Magadha region. This is a symbol, known from the Punch Marked coins, see in John Allan, Catalogue of the Coins of Ancient India, London 1936, p. xxv, symbol no. 10.
2.