Previous Births: Dīpaṃkara Legend

A panel depicting the Dīpaṃkara Legend. The bodhisattva as the ascetic Sumati pays homage to Dīpaṃkara – a buddha of the past – with flowers obtained from a woman, and by lying down and 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 the same will happen in a future existence. The base consists of a plain fillet. There are deep chisel marks on the back and bottom of the relief. There are two circular nail holes cutting across the relief, in in the upper left side and the other in the lower left. Sumati is depicted four times. He is standing in the centre of the scene in three quarter right profile towards Dīpaṃkara. His right hand held a bunch of lotuses, and the left the kamaṇḍalu. He has flowing hair pulled up and with a top knot. He probably wears a tunic of exomis type. Before the standing Sumati, in the foreground, is depicted the same character while prostrating himself in front of the Buddha Dīpaṃkara and spreading his hair onto the ground. Sumati is then depicted on the left upper part of the scene, flying and kneeling with joined hands (añjalimudrā). One last time he is depicted standing in three quarter left profile turned toward the woman who gave him the lotuses. She is standing frontally, her head is turning to the right. She is bearing a bunch of lotuses in the left hand, and a pot under the right arm. She is dressed in a sāṛī and is crowned by a large wreath. She wears large globular earrings. In front of the first standing Sumati appears the Buddha Dīpaṃkara, the weight of his body is placed on the left. His right hand is in abhayamudrā, the left is holding an edge of the saṃghāti. The nimbus was originally decorated with the five lotus flowers thrown by Sumati. On the right, besides the Buddha, stands Vajrapāṇi followed by a monk. Vajrapāṇi wears a short tunic and holds a disproportionately large vajra in his left, and a fly whisk in the right. The monk is wrapped in his overrobe, the body slightly turned to his left while the head looks at the rest of the scene to his right.