Limestone drum slab depicting the birth of Prince
Siddhartha
From the Great Stupa at Amaravati, Guntur District, Andhra
Pradesh, India, 2nd century AD
The remains of the Great Stupa at Amaravati are some of the most
valuable and impressive expressions of early Buddhism in India.
This relief, one of the finest sculptures from Amaravati, shows
four scenes relating the birth of the Buddha.
The top-right panel depicts the sleeping Queen Maya, mother of
Prince Siddhartha (the Buddha). According to myth, Siddhartha's
conception took place when Maya saw a white elephant enter her side
in a dream. In this scene, she is with her attendant and the
Lokapalas, guardians of the four directions. The narrative
progresses to the panel on the left, where astrologers and seers
are collected to interpret this dream in the court of her husband,
King Shuddhodhana.
The bottom-right scene shows the next part of the narrative, the
moment after Siddhartha was born. Maya was walking in the Lumbini
forest, and, holding on to the branch of a shala tree,
gave birth to him, again from her right side. The image of a person
holding the branch of a tree is an ancient one in India, which is
also seen in the cult of the Shalabhanjika Yakshi (literally, the
yakshi who is breaking a branch of the Shala tree). The
baby Siddhartha is depicted symbolically as a long cloth held by
the four Lokapalas. His presence is indicated by the
presence of two tiny footprints on the cloth.
The last scene in the bottom-left of the relief shows Maya
taking the baby to the clan's yaksha, Shakyavardhana. A
platform with offerings around it underlines the sacredness of the
tree in which he resides. When the tree spirit recognizes the
baby's Buddhahood to come, he appears from the trunk, and
reverentially folds his hands, worshipping the child. Since
Siddhartha's divine nature is by this time known, in the last scene
we see his aniconic presence (his footprints upon the cloth)
sheltered by a parasol carried by an attendant.
D. Barrett, Sculptures from Amaravati in t (London, Trustees of the British Museum, 1954)
R. Knox, Amaravati: Buddhist sculpture (London, The British Museum Press, 1992)