NO. 6 ■ YAKSAS COOMARASWAMY 35 



and Amaravati reliefs and elsewhere/ the step is very easy from a 

 Vrksaka holding the branch of a tree and in the hanche ("hip- 

 shot ") pose, to that of Mahamaya giving birth to the child, who 

 was miraculously born from her side.^ The addition of attendant 

 deities and later a further complication of the scene by a repre- 

 sentation of the Seven Steps, etc., would present no difficulty. The 

 literary versions are probably older that the oldest known sculptures 

 of the Nativity ; ' how far each may be dependent on the other can 

 hardly be determined. In any case, it is certain that the sculptor had 

 ready to hand a composition almost exactly fulfilling the require- 

 ments of the text, so far as the principal figure is concerned. 



2. The dohada motif. The, in India, familiar conceit that the 

 touch of a beautiful woman's foot is needed to bring about the blos- 

 soming of the asoka-tree seems to be equally a form of the YaksT- 

 dryad theme ; one railing pillar, J 55 in the Mathura Museum, repre- 

 sents a woman or Yaksi performing this ceremony* (pi. 6, fig. 3) and 

 the motif survives in sculpture to the eighteenth century (pi. 19. 

 fig. 2), if not to the present day. In Kalidasa's Meghaduta the exiled 

 Yaksa speaks of himself as longing for his wife no less than the 

 asoka-tree desires the touch of her foot. Even in the Malavikagni- 



* The formula was certainly not, as suggested by Foucher, L'Iconographie 

 bouddhique, I, 164, created " par I'art superieur des artistes Indogrecs " ; it is 

 only possible that they were the first to put in the attendant figures, but we can- 

 not be sure of even this. Even the crossed legs, described by many European 

 writers, grotesquely enough, as a dancing position, are taken over from the 

 Yaksi-dryads. Le Coq, Bilder- Atlas, figs. 153 and 156 not only describes Maha- 

 maya as being in " Tanzerinnenstellung," but also a dryad from Bharhut, who 

 with both arms and one leg is clinging to her tree, while her weight is rested on 

 the other foot (pi. 4, fig. 2) ; to dance under either of these circumstances would 

 not only be a remarkable acrobatic feat, but in direct contradiction to the whole 

 pose. To stand with crossed legs, particularly when leaning against a tree, is in 

 India a position of rest and therefore not inappropriate (as a dancing pose 

 would be) to the representation of a miraculously painless parturition. 



The motif has been well discussed (with reference to this and other misunder- 

 standings) by Berstl, Indo-koptische Kunst, Jahrb. as. Kunst, I, 1924; where a 

 Western migration of the motif is also recognized. 



^ It is perhaps worth remarking that Cunningham once " erroneously identi- 

 fied " one of the Mathura railing dryads " with Maya standing under the sal 

 tree " (Vogel, Cat. Arch. Mus., Mathura, p. 6). 



'The legend of the miraculous birth is found already in the Acchariyabbhuta 

 Sutta, No. 123, in the Majjhima Nikaya, thus considerably antedating the 

 Nidanakatha version (Chalmers, in J. R. A. S., 1894). The Four Devas are 

 mentioned. 



* Vogel, Catalogue, pp. 44, 153; La belle et I'arbre asoka, B. E. F. E. O., XI, 

 191 1 ; Cf. [Gangoly, O. C], A brass statuette from Mathura, Rupam, 2, 1920. 



