Last Existence: Offering of Dust, Buddha performing a miracle before ascetics

Part of a frieze depicting two separate scenes from the Last Existence. The base probably consisted of two projecting plain fillet, the cornice of a row of saw-teeth between a plain fillet below and a projecting plain band above. Two vertical rectangular sockets are carved on both sides of the bottom face. The top and bottom faces show tool marks. The scene on the right depicts the Offering of Dust. Jaya and Vijaya, two boys of good family, see the Buddha while playing with dust and put a handful in his begging bowl as offer. The Buddha predicted Jaya’s rebirth as the emperor Aśoka. The Buddha is standing in a tree-quarter view on the left. He is holding his bowl in the left hand and stretching it towards Jaya on the right. He wears the saṃghāti and has a plain nimbus. Jaya, of whom only the outline can be discerned, was probably crouching with joined hands. Two figures are carved next to him. One is another child, Vijaya, who is standing and seems to be holding an object in his right hand. He wears a short flat band necklace. The other is a female figure who held either a palm leaf or peacock feathers in an upright cylindrical mount in her left hand. She probably wore a long tunic, a large garland, and ring-shaped earrings. On the left, a male figure is standing frontally with the head turning towards the Buddha. He was possibly holding an object in the left hand. In the background and on the right, a figure, possibly male, is carved in bust. The scene on the left represents the Buddha performing a miracle before ascetics. The Buddha visits an ascetic of the Kasyapa lineage and asks him to spend the night in the fire-house. The ascetic accepts but warns the Buddha that a poisonous snake dwells in it and might harm him. By a miraculous feat, the Buddha subjugates the snake who crawls in his alms bowl and emerges unharmed from the fire-house. Kasyapa and his disciples convert. The Buddha is standing in the centre of the scene. His right hand is holding the alms bowl where the snake is crawled. The left hand is raised. The figure has a plain nimbus. On the left, an ascetic is shown in the right profile sitting inside a hut on a rolled mat. His right hand is raised, his left is holding the kamaṇḍalu. He wears a loincloth and has hair with stacked coil and long beard. On the left of the Buddha, a figure is standing with the right hand raised possibly holding a fly whisk. Two male figures are carved in bust in the background on both sides of the Buddha. That on the left, either Vajrapāṇi or an ascetic, shows a long straight hair with a vertical knot held by a small coil. He seems to be wearing an uttarīya. The scenes are separated by a semi-column of the Gandharan-Corinthian type with modillion. The figure of a standing buddha (of which only the scanty traces of the outline can be discernible) was carved against the shaft.