Previous Births: Dīpaṃkara Legend

A relief depicting the Dīpaṃkara legend. The bodhisattva as the ascetic Sumati pays homage to Dīpaṃkara – a buddha of the past – by launching flowers obtained from a woman and by spreading his hair on the ground to make a passage over the mud for the Awakened One. Then, Sumati vows to become a buddha in the future and Dīpaṃkara predicts that this will indeed happen in a future existence. The base consists of a square cut groove decorated with a raw of saw-teeth running on both sides. The left side is carved with a horizontal raw of square panels bisected into triangles, each containing an indented triangle. The right side shows a tower with a string course and two rectangular loopholes. Part of the tenon is preserved. A Kharoṣṭhī mason mark is carved on the bedding surface for the superimposed cornice. The tenon shows horizontal marks of chisel. Sumedha is depicted twice. He is standing at the center turning left to the flower woman. His right hand holds a bunch of lotuses, the left the kamaṇḍalu. His long flowing hair is pulled up and fashioned into a side loop. He wears a skirt with rolled up edge and a crossed cord. On the left, the woman who gave the lotus flowers to Sumedha is standing inside a city gate. She is bearing a bunch of lotus flowers in the left hand, and a pot under the right arm. Her long, curly hair is pulled up in a knot. She is dressed in a sāṛī (with open sleeved jacket?) and wears pendant earrings, a short flat-band necklace, wristlets with raised edge, and anklets. On the right, Sumedha is prostrating, his hair being spread onto the ground. The Buddha Dīpaṃkara is shown larger than all the other figures. The right hand was in abhayamudrā, the left held an edge of the saṃghāti. The outline of a plain nimbus is still visible. The drapery folds are rendered in a V-shaped pattern. The city gate is of the Western type and features an architrave decorated with a raw of saw-teeth and a cornice decorated with a flat fillet and a raw of dentils-and-bars with bars of the same height and smaller width. Above the city gate, two attendees (a male-female couple?) are carved in bust. They were possibly leaning out from a balcony, remains of which appear to be discernible on the right. The right hand of the first figure lies onto the cornice of the city gate.