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i H i Q Se yi — y b ~y ‘2 b e ; , Sy em a ae | v)) { e N SZ =i LAN J) Le Wass DESCRIPTION OF PLATES. 185 PLATE XXXYV. THE procession represented in the upper picture of this Plate is of a different character from those just described. It occurs in the front of the right-hand pillar of the Northern Gateway (Plate XII.). The second form the top. In this bas-relief the principal object is the sacred Horse richly caparisoned, who heads the procession, and towards whom all eyes are turned. Immediately behind him follows the man with the spouted pot, and behind him. a chief in his chariot, bearing the umbrella of state, not over himself, but apparently in honour of the Horse. Above him sits a young chief, with two women with Chaoris, but no Chatta, and in a balcony én his left three more women, and in an upper balcony, two others looking out. It is not easy to determine whether this scene is intended to represent the beginning of an ASvamedha or of some minor ceremony in which the Horse bore a ~ principal part. The whole, however, looks more like a scene from the Maha- bharata than from the Lalita-Vistara, and one is almost tempted to call the maf in the chariot Arjuna, and the king in the baleony Yudhishthira. They may, however, be intended for very different personages, and must for the present go without names. When speaking of the sculptures at Amravati, we shall have frequent occasion: to revert to this subject, for the Horse there plays a more important part than he docs at Sanchi, so much so as to open a wide door of speculation as to the connexion of this worship with that of the Sun god of the Scythians, in the still more mysterious worship of Poseidon by the’ Greeks. We learn from Herodotus* and others how important Horse worship and Horse sacrifices were considered by the Scythians, and cognate tribes, while we must not forget that both he (vide supra, p. 21) and Diodorus+ represent the Scythians as ‘born from @ woman who was a serpent from the waist downwards. They were essentially a Naga race, and their worship | of the horse and their Amazonian tendencies all point to similarities between them and the people depicted in these sculptures, which must lead to the most curious ethnographical developments, so soon as they are properly investigated. I refrain from entering on the subject here, for in the first place it is hardly germane-to the main object of the work, but more because to treat of the worship of the Horse, and the importance of the sacrifices in which he was a principal object, would require an investigation nearly as intricate as that of Serpent Worship, and almost as large a work to explain its historical and ethnographical peculiarities. Next after the Serpent ‘the Horse was probably the most important object in that, old prehistoric animal-worshipping ‘religion which prevailed among the Turanian . races of mankind. After him came the Bull, known in Egypt as Apis, and now in India as Nandi, To complete this work, after the Tree and the Serpent, ought to come the Horse and the Bull.. The two last must, however, be left for future * 1,216, LV. 61, 72, &e IL 43. 136 THE TOPE AT SANCHI.. explorers in the regions of mythology. The Bull, because he does not occur in our sculptures, and the Horse, because, though he appears frequently, it is not with such prominence that it is necessary to do more than notice his presence. It is much more difficult to fix anything like a definite meaning to the scene represented in the lower figure of the Plate, It no doubt tells a tale sufficiently familiar to those who first looked on the picture, but whether we shall now be able to recover the legend is more than doubtful. There seems no-one character in the group sufficiently prominent to give him a name, and no action ‘Sufficiently defined to hang a legend upon. . , In the upper left-hand corner four women are engaged in oueiepatinas sufficiently familiar to all who have visited the East; one is winnowing the grain, which a second pounds in a mortar, and a third rolls out into chitpattees. A fourth is engaged in the same occupation as the last, or ought to be, but is flirting instead with a man who sits beside her. Below this group is an altar, with the sacred Chatta:over it, under which two boys stand in attitudes of prayer, and around it are grouped buffaloes, oxen, sheep, and goats ‘Ave they being blessed? or are they worshipping? On the right hand stands a men on the edge of a pond, into which a girl is pouring water; he has a wreath (or is it a net?) in one hand and’a pole in the other, and beside him another man with his hands joined in an attitude of prayer. Next to him stands a woinan with a water-pot under her arm. Above them other men and women, and . at the top of the picture a man with a-bundle driving two oxen either to field or ‘to ‘market. It seems almost impossible to make a story out of so disconnected a picture as this. It may after all be merely meant to represent the family and the pastoral wealth of thé giver of the Gateway, in the same manner as the pictures on the tombs round the Great Pyramid represent similar scenes in. ancient Egypt. But whether this or any more recondite meaning should be given to’ it, it is a curious illustration of costumes, and life and manners in India in the _first century of the Christian era. This bas-relief occurs at the top of the left-hand pillar of the Eastern Gateway on the inner face (Plate XIV.). "FOREST SCENE. DESCRIPTION OF PLATES. 137 PLATE XXXVI. Tue scene represented in the lower figure of this Plate may possibly be an early version of one of the most favourite legends of the Buddhist chroniclers. It is mentioned by Fa-Hian,* and is narrated at length with the most miraculous accom- paniments both in the Ceylonese Atthakathd+ and the Tibetan Lalita-Vistara.t It is briefly this: when the Prince Siddhartha had reached his sixteenth year, his father sought a wife for him among the daughters of the neighbouring Rajas. All refused, however, because the Prince, though handsome, had not been taught any martial accomplishment, and was therefore incapable of controlling women. To prove his power in this respect, he strung a bow that no one else could string, pierced with his arrows iron targets thicker than those of the Warrior or Minotaur, and at distances which neither Armstrong or Whitworth could face; and lastly, shot an arrow an inconceivable distance, and where it lighted a spring of water gushed forth, which afterwards Fa-Hian tells us was formed into a fouxtain for travellers. The only points of resemblance between the picture and the legend are, that a young warrior is shooting across a river, apparently at a rock, out of which a spring of water is gushing. If this is the Prince Siddhartha, the man on horseback, with the Chatta over his head, must be the Sikya DandapAni, the father of the lovely Gop&, and the man seated above his head, talking to the monkey, one of his defeated rivals. Two others are standing behind him. These*three may be Ananda, Devadatta, and Saundaranda.§ _ In the foreground are three warriors armed with bow and sword, and beside them the usual accompaniment of drums and fifes. The scenf in which the action takes place is represented as a wood, inhabited by monkeys, who are gamboling among the trees, or seated in holes in the rocks. Through the picture runs a river, full of fish, and on its further bank two deer are lying. In none of the versions of the legend are we given to understand that the scene of the competition was in a forest; but we must recollect that the oldest written version we possess, which gives the details of the scene, is at least 400 years more modern than the sculpture, and in India far less time is - sufficient to overlay the simplest facts with the most preposterous fables. It may, however, be that by representing a forest and a river, as intervening between the place where the prince was standing and the object he was shooting at, the artist intended to convey an idea of distance. The bas-relief is the upper one on the standing pillar of the “Western Gateway on the front face. (Plate XIX.) * Foé-Koué-Ki, XXII. p. 198. t J. A.5S. B., VII. 804. t Lalita:Vistara, XII., 147, et seq. See also Cunningham, Bhilsa Topes, p. 219, § Ibid., 147. (4799.) 138 | | THE TOPE AT SANCHI. The upper picture in this Plate represents one of those transactions between the Hindus and Dasyus, which have probably only a local meaning, and to which, therefore, it is improbable we shall ever be able to affix any definite meaning. It occupies the corresponding position to that last described, but on the fallen foe of the Western Gateway. In the centre of the upper ae of the picture a Hindu Chief or Raja, accompanied by his minister, is conversing with a Dasyu, whose two wives or daughters are seen beyond him on his left hand. On the Raja’s right are two of the ordinary circular huts of the Dasyus, in front of which a man and woman are seated naked. They are sitting on their lower garments, and their upper cloaks are hung in their huts.. Two monkeys are playing above them. Between these two huts is seen the fire-pot, which is almost an invariable accompaniment wherever these Dasyus are represented. Below it is the water-pot, and beside it the ladle or pincers. From their position here, they would seem to be the sacred implements of the tribe. Did Fire and Serpent Worship go together? Whatever these implements may be, their universal presence in every scene where the Dasyus appear, and their absence in every representation in which the Hindus are the principal actors, point to a distinction which the sculptors of the Gateways meant to be typical. Whenever they can be identified with certainty, we shall know who the people were who employed them.