Pygmalion and prometheus 111
shy, the girl looks down and does not speak but reaches her arms out to
the painter and draws him to her bosom. He notices that a jeweled brooch
on her chest rises and falls as though with breath. The painter believes
she is a real woman— but who is she? Could she be his host’s relative, his
wife, sister, or daughter? Or a serving maid? There follows a long passage
as the painter weighs the moral risks of having sex with the willing young
woman in his room.
Finally the painter gives in to his aroused feelings and takes the girl
in his arms with “violent passion.” Thereupon the mechanical girl breaks
apart, “her clothes, limbs, strings, and pegs falling to pieces.” The painter
realizes he’s been tricked by a cunning artifice. Mortified, he conceives of
a way to get even with his host. Taking out his supplies, the artist spends
the rest of the night painting a gruesome trompe l’oeil image of himself
hanging dead, suspended from a rope on a hook on the wall.
In the morning, the host, fooled by the painted illusion, summons
the king and his ministers and citizenry to see the tragic scene of the
broken mechanical woman and the painter’s suicide. He calls for an axe
to cut down the body of his guest. The ruse is revealed when the painter
suddenly steps out from hiding and everyone has a good laugh.
The Buddhist story reflects the lifelike realism that was achieved by
painters and makers of mechanical androids in ancient Asia (see chapters 5
and 9 for other ancient Buddhist tales about robots). The theme of intense
rivalry between the two master artists who trick each other with their
creations of preternatural realism is similar to anecdotes related by Pliny
(35.36.64– 66) about trompe l’oeil contests between the classical Greek
artists Zeuxis and Parrhasius (chapter 5). But the Buddhist tale is also a
philosophical parable about illusions of self- control and the timeless ques-
tions of human free will raised by creations of artificial life. In her study
of mechanical beings in ancient Indian literature, Signe Cohen points out
that the soulless female automaton stands for the soullessness of all beings,
embodying the Buddhist teaching that, in essence, “We are all robots.” 18
Pygmalion’s statue of Galatea is an example of an inert object instilled
with life by transcendent love or a god’s “supernatural power . . . with no
reference to mechanical craft.” Accordingly, Minsoo Kang places it in his