Buddha’s birth at Lumbini, his enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, his first
sermon at Sarnath, and the Buddha’s death at Kushinagara. At the left,
Queen Maya, in a posture derived from that of earlier South Asian yak-
shis (FIG. 6-8), gives birth to Prince Siddhartha, who emerges from her
right hip, already with his attributes of ushnisha, urna, and halo. Re-
ceiving him is the god Indra. Elegantly dressed ladies, one with a fan of
peacock feathers, suggest the opulent court life the Buddha left behind.
In the next scene, the Buddha sits beneath the Bodhi tree while the sol-
diers and demons of the evil Mara attempt to distract him from his
quest for knowledge. They are unsuccessful, and the Buddha reaches
down to touch the earth (bhumisparsha mudra) as witness to his en-
lightenment. Next, the Buddha preaches the Eightfold Path to nirvana
in the Deer Park at Sarnath. The sculptor set the scene by placing two
deer and the Wheel of the Law beneath the figure of the Buddha, who
raises his right hand (abhaya mudra) to bless the monks and other
devotees who have come to hear his first sermon. In the final section of
the frieze, the parinirvana, the Buddha lies dying among his devotees,
some of whom wail in grief, while one monk, who realizes that the
Buddha has been permanently released from suffering, remains tran-
quil in meditation.
Although the iconography of the frieze is Buddhist, Roman re-
liefs must have served as stylistic models for the sculptor. For exam-
ple, the distribution of standing and equestrian figures over the relief
ground, with those behind the first row seemingly suspended in the6-11The life and death
of the Buddha, frieze from
Gandhara, Pakistan, second
century ce.Schist, 2 23 – 8
9 61 – 8 . Freer Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C. (a) birth
at Lumbini, (b) enlighten-
ment at Bodh Gaya, (c) first
sermon at Sarnath, (d) death
at Kushinagara.
This Gandharan frieze is
one of the earliest pictorial
narrative cycles in which
the Buddha appears in
human form. It recounts the
Buddha’s life story from his
birth at Lumbini to his death
at Kushinagara.6-10Meditating
Buddha, from
Gandhara, Pakistan,
second century ce.
Gray schist, 3 71 – 2
high. National
Museums of
Scotland,
Edinburgh.
Many of the earliest
portrayals of the
Buddha in human
form come from
Gandhara and
depict the Enlight-
ened One as a
robed monk. The
style of this Gand-
haran Buddha owes
much to Greco-
Roman art.India and Pakistan 165a bcd1 ft.1 ft.1 ft.