Last Existence: Buddha's birth

Fragment of a relief depicting the Buddha’s birth. In the Lumbinī Park, Māyā gives birth to Siddhārtha holding the branches of a śāla tree. The infant Siddhārtha emerges from the right side. Gods and supernatural beings witness the event. The scene was framed by an encased column of the Gandharan-Corinthian type, of which only the left one remains. The base is plain, the cornice consists of two rebated plain fillets, a jetty decorated with a row of alternating vertical acanthus tufts and rosettes, topped by a plain band. On the top is visible a socket for cramp on the finished end. On the back face there are almost vertical parallel large flat chisel marks. The extant figured field preserves Indra on the right and Brahmā on the left, both shown standing in a three-quarter view. Indra is holding a swaddling cloth in his hands. He wears an uttarīya and a turban. Brahmā has joined hands. He is dressed in a tunic of the exomis type and his hair is possibly fashioned in a frontal, central loop and horizontal bundle of hair pulled behind the neck.