Manuscript Illustrations Of Uttaradhyayana Sutra

Author(s): W Norman Brown
Publisher: American Oriental Society

Page 95

THE ROAD OF PENANCE
43
. JP, always the most original of the manuscripts, has two illustrations. The first
(fig. 122) has three registers. At the top is the lake with the lotus, and beside it two monks standing in meditation. In the middle register a monk sits at the left under a tree, with a peculiar object above his head which I cannot recognize; perhaps it is a weight or a disk; a layman watches him. At the right another monk is seated upside down, cross-legged, his head on a cushion, practising a difficult posture (virāsana) for meditation. At the bottom a monk sits on his wooden seat, and another monk rubs his feet. This last scene appears to be a variety of internal austerity consisting of service to the guru. In the second painting of JP (fig. 123) the upper register has two monks standing before a layman, and they may be assumed to be begging. The text (stanza 19) refers to the austerity of following different routes in begging. At the bottom of this painting a monk lies on a heap of blankets or mattresses, with another monk standing at his head and a third sitting at his feet holding a bowl full of something which is perhaps a cluster of Alowers. This scene appears to illustrate the fast unto death (stanza 12), which is one of the external austerities."
1 Or it might be the internal austerity known as service of the guru when sick (stanza 33; see Jacobi's note, p. 179, where sickness is listed as one of the ten conditions for rendering service of the guru).