A small Pagan andagu stele with scenes of the Eight Great Events on Buddha’s life. Burma. 12th/13th century
A small Pagan andagu stele with scenes of the Eight Great Events in Buddha’s life. At the centre in full round, the Buddha seated in meditation on a double lotus supported by ‚running’ naga, the right hand in bhumisparsha mudra, showing the moment were he conquered Mara at Bodhgaya, with standing bodhisattva to both sides. The back slab is carved with small scenes of Buddha’s life, starting from the lower left: nativity in Lumbini, the first sermon at Sarnath, the taming of the Nalagari elephant, the mahaparinirvana, the miracle at Sravasti, the decent from Tavatimsha heaven and the presentation of honey in the Parileyyaka forest in Vashali. The base shows elephants, lions and atlants in the upper register, and in the lower register the Seven Jewels of a chakravartin: chakra, elephant, horse, jewel, queen, father, and general. At the base a large cavity, a few red veins run through the material. 12th/13th century.
Height 8.8 cm
Such stelae carved of whitish beige-coloured soft phyrophillite (called andagu in Burmese) dating from the 8th to 12th century have been found in Eastern India, Bengal and Burma but also in far off places such as Sri Lanka und Tibet. The soft material allowed for deep carvings with undercuttings so that some of these stelae show the Buddha in the full round with additional carving to the back-slab behind the Buddha.
These stelae and figures are quite small, none higher than twenty centimetres. Thus they could easily be transported and in consequence are considered souvenirs of Buddhist pilgrims to Bodhagaya and other Buddhist historical sites in India. The small carvings could also be worn around the neck as amulets encased in shrines.
Claudine Bautze-Picron has studied these andagu carvings and subdivided them into three groups. While the origin of these carvings are presumed to be in various places in India, the pieces in group C are believed to be of Burmese origin, more specifically of Pagan, where the workshops were inspired by the Indian models. The availability of Burmese stelae enabled Burmese Buddhists to make imaginary pilgrimages to sites in India at times when the Muslim invasion made actual journeys impossible.
Provenance
Private Collection, Hungary
Literature
John Lowry, Burmese Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 1974, no. 7 (height 8,5 cm); Susan L. Huntington and John C. Huntington, Leaves from the Bodhi Tree, Seattle/London 1990, no. 62, p. 217-222 (Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge); Claudine Bautze-Picron, Between India and Burma: The „Andagu“ Stelae, in: Donald M. Stadtner (ed.), The Art of Burma, New Studies, Marg Publications, Mumbai 1999, p. 37-52; the same, New Documents of Burmese Sculpture: Unpublished ‚Andagu’ Images, in: Indo-Asiatische Zeitschrift, no. 10 (2006), p. 32-47; the same, The Bejewelled Buddha from India to Burma, New Considerations, New Delhi/Kolkata 2010 (Sixth Kumar Sarat Kumar Roy Memorial Lecture) and Ulrich von Schroeder, Buddhist Sculpture in Tibet, vol. 1, India & Nepal, Hong Kong 2001, p. 371 (369-405)