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

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28. Railing and gateway from Bharhut.
Calcutta, Indian Museum
gateway are preserved in the Indian Museum at
Calcutta and in a number of European and
American collections [28]. At Bharhut and elsewhere
the gateways or toranas are imitations in
stone of the wooden portals of early Indian
towns, and in the same way the construction of
the railing itself is an imitation in stone of a postand-rail
fence with lens-shaped rails fitted to
openings in the uprights [41 and 27]. At
Bharhut there are three rails surmounted by a
heavy stone coping. The decoration of the one
surviving gateway is a conglomerate of forms of
western Asiatic origin, including palmettes and
Persepolitan capitals in the shape of addorsed
sphinxes. Most prominent in the decoration of
the railing are the carvings of yakshas and
yakshis on the uprights. These divinities who
populate the ambulatory at Bharhut are really
only a degree above humanity. They are the
wild and bloodthirsty nature-spirits of the
earlier Dravidian religion subdued and brought
into the fold o/Buddhism in much the same way
that pagan deities took their place in the
hierarchy of Christian saints. In addition we
find medallions filled with floral motifs, busts of
turbaned rajahs, Jataka tales, and scenes from
the life of Buddha.
One of the most frequent motifs of the
Bharhut railing is the dohada, a woman or
yakshi embracing a tree, usually the flowering
sal [29]. This is a symbolism that goes back to a
period in Indian history when trees were
regarded as objects of worship, and is associated
with old fertility festivals, when youths and
maidens gathered the flowers of the sal tree.
Although the exact original meaning of the
motif is not known, there are many Indian
legends relating the power of women and
yakshis to bring trees into immediate flowering
by embracing the trunk or touching it with their