The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

234
172. Buddha preaching the First Sermon
from Sarnath.
Sdrndth, Archaeological Museum
One of the great masterpieces of Gupta
sculpture and, indeed, of Indian art of all
periods is the high-relief statue of Buddha
preaching the First Sermon, discovered in the
ruins of Sarnath [172]. It is, as usual, carved of
Chunar sandstone which retains traces of red
pigment on the robe. The Teacher is represented
seated in yoga posture, his hands in the
wheel-turning or dharmacakra mudrd; below,
on the plinth, may be recognized the figures of
Sakyamuni's earliest followers who, after a
period of apostasy, returned to him at the
sermon in the Deer Park. Between the two
groups of kneeling monks is the symbol of the
preaching, the Wheel, and, to give the setting,
two badly damaged figures of recumbent deer.
The back-slab, representing a throne, is carved
with hybrid monsters or ydhs and makaras.
Iconographically the relief is the final step in a
development that transformed the events from
the life of the Buddha into hieratic symbols,
rather than mere stories of Sakyamuni's mortal
career. In early representations of the First
Preaching, as in the reliefs of Gandhara, the
Deer Park sermon is represented as an actual
event, with the Buddha surrounded by his
disciples, with all figures on the same scale. In
the Sarnath relief it is the enormously enlarged
figure of the Buddha in dharmacakra mudrd that
stands for the event; the narrative elements of
the episode have been relegated to the base.
Both the svelte attenuation of the Sarnath
Buddhas and the quality of sensuous elegance
that distinguishes them are a kind of development
out of the Later Andhra style. The seated
Buddha is presumably carved according to a
system of five thalams to the total height of the
figure, and the image is composed in a triangle,
with the head as apex and the legs as the base.
The relief shows the development of the
Mahayana point of view : it is the eternal aspect
of the turning of the wheel, typified by the
Buddha and his gesture, that is important,
rather than the actual episode from the hero's